AUDASE

Metreon to be revamped
By Katie WorthExaminer Staff Writer
The Metreon will be undgergoing a renovation on three of its floors. Cindy Chew/The ExaminerSAN FRANCISCO – After years of struggling with an identity crisis, the Metreon may finally have found a new face to put forward.
Next month, owners will unveil plans to revamp the 300,000-square-foot mall, which has struggled to turn a profit despite sitting on some of The City’s most prime real estate — adjacent to the Yerba Buena Gardens on Mission and Fourth streets.
The plans include bringing in a slew of new restaurants, retail stores and cultural spaces, and redesigning the first, second and fourth floors of the four-story mall, while leaving intact the successful movie and IMAX theaters on the third floor, said Amy Neches of the Redevelopment Agency.
The first floor of the building, which now houses the food court, a bookstore and a handful of other small retail shops, will be redesigned so restaurants and retail wrap around the building, with entrances facing the street, in contrast to their current inward orientation, Neches said. The food court will be expanded and be more centrally located, rather than compressed on one end of the shopping center, as it is now, she said.
“It’ll be more of an urban, pedestrian-oriented experience,” she said.
The second floor, which contains a large video-game arcade but is otherwise vacant, will be redesigned to house restaurants, retailers and permanent cultural attractions, Neches said. The fourth floor, which has been without a long-term tenant for years, has been leased by New York restaurant giant Tavern on the Green, and is slated to become a large restaurant with public and private dining rooms.
Though they are choosing to stay mum specific details of their plans till they are presented to the Redevelopment Agency’s commission, Metreon owners Westfield and Forest City believe the changes will “captivate, appeal to and draw consumers to Metreon,” said Westfield senior asset manager Heather Almond.
That kind of success has remained elusive for the Metreon, despite high hopes and great fanfare when it opened in 1999. Then-owner Sony conceived it as a hybrid mall and high-tech theme park, and hoped it would become a mecca for techies and gamers that would attract both tourism and local dot-com dollars.
But after all the initial gusto, the Metreon never lived up to expectations. Sony sold it in 2005 to Westfield, owner of the thriving mall across the street.
Ashley Williams, a clerk at Chronicle Books on the ground floor of the building, said the changes will be positive, particularly opening the building up to the street more.
“I always get people asking me, ‘What is the Metreon,’ because you can’t really tell from the outside,” she said.
“You come in and it’s confusing, you don’t know what to categorize it as,” Tiffany Parker, another clerk at the bookstore, said. “You think it’s a mall, but there are really very few stores that actually sell stuff. It’s as though it’s not really sure what it’s meant to be.”
kworth@sfexaminer.com
Metreon makeover
Owners of the retail and entertainment space on Mission and Fourth streets are exploring major renovations to the building.
Current first-floor setup: Food court, restaurants, electronics stores, book store and small retail booths.Proposal: Remodeled floor plan that wraps restaurant and retail spaces around the building, allowing them to open out toward the street. New, centralized food court.
Current second-floor setup: Video-game arcade.Proposal: Revamped floor plan that includes restaurant, retail and cultural attractions.
Current third-floor setup: Movie and IMAX theatersProposal: No change.
Current fourth-floor setup: Vacant.Proposal: Owners of Tavern on the Green restaurant in New York would build a restaurant