San Francisco's Mayor Breed to Turn Westfield Mall Into a Soccer Stadium

Earlier today, San Francisco's Mayor London Breed spoke with reporters about building a potential soccer stadium that might one day replace the struggling downtown Westfield Mall. Breed told reporters and business leaders that the city and the architecture firm Gensler were doing “Some preliminary design work on what potentially is possible” for a stadium that could be built at Westfield’s San Francisco Centre site at Market and Fifth streets. As of now, San Francisco does not have its own soccer team but the idea may soon be a reality. Breed made her comments about the theoretical stadium after a speech to business leaders in which she emphasized progress she said her administration is making to revitalize the city’s downtown. “We of course want to give people an understanding of what could happen and get a developer and others excited about making investments into the stadium as a way to diversify what happens in the downtown area,” Breed said. She added, the area’s proximity to BART, Muni and cable cars and said a stadium there could not only host professional soccer matches but also concerts, suggesting that such a facility could have a seating capacity of about 25,000 people — even more than Chase Center, which can seat about 18,000. “We hope to be able to share that information with the public fairly soon and potentially get the ball rolling,” Breed said, adding that “there has been a lot of interest in the Westfield mall” property. She did not specify who or what kind of entity was interested in the site. Full Story via Bizjournals.com