After Safeway departure, SF shopping center gains new grocery store
A new Grocery Outlet is slated to open at San Francisco’s NorthPoint Centre following Safeway’s departure last year.
In a Monday press release, Supervisor Aaron Peskin confirmed that a Grocery Outlet will replace the former Safeway site located at 320 Bay St., in a move that will offer affordable groceries for locals in the touristy Fisherman’s Wharf and North Beach neighborhoods.
“The departure of Safeway has been a hardship for many people in this community who have had to go outside the neighborhood on transit to find reasonably priced groceries and essentials like baby formula and diapers,” Peskin said in a statement shared with SFGATE. “Our work to enhance public safety and give grocery stores tax incentives helped convince Grocery Outlet to locate in this 30,000 square-foot facility.”
Safeway permanently closed its NorthPoint Centre storefront in 2023, leaving a massive vacancy at the struggling shopping center. Leading up to the closure last spring, Safeway assistant store director Dermot Harris told SFGATE that financial issues were the main reason behind the closure.
Months later, San Jose company Anchor Pacific Capital purchased NorthPoint Centre and the adjacent NorthPoint Vistas apartments for a whopping $25.76 million deal, according to the San Francisco Business Times. At the time of purchase, Anchor Pacific Capital managing partner Anton Qiu told the Business Times that the shopping center needed “a lot of work, but we’re willing to put in more capital to make it work.”
“Our goal right now is to try and stabilize the center, to try to land another supermarket to activate the center for the neighborhood and Fisherman’s Wharf,” he told the Business Times.
The opening date for Grocery Outlet’s new location has not been announced. SFGATE contacted Grocery Outlet for comment but did not hear back by publication.
