This court-appointed expert is tasked with righting Emporium Centre mall

The huge Emporium Centre San Francisco mall that dominates the intersection of Market and Fifth streets is like a large, half-empty ocean cruise liner crashing through stormy seas, with retailers as recently as this month getting ready to jump ship amid the economic headwinds.

At the wheel, working to keep the ship aright through the gale, stands Gregg Williams, a receiver appointed in October by a San Francisco Superior Court after the mall’s owners said in June that they would walk away from their mortgage, making him a captain with wide authority and a mandate to stabilize the massive property.

Williams — who a spokesperson said was unavailable for an interview — is the principal and founder of Trident Pacific Real Estate Group, a Newport Beach-based firm that specializes in taking over management of distressed commercial real-estate assets for repositioning, with possible outcomes including sale or foreclosure.

In the case of the Emporium Centre, Trident is being paid up to $30,000 per month to manage the nearly 1.5 million-square-foot retail and office property at 865 Market St. It was appointed after Wilmington Trust and Wells Fargo sued the owners, including Westfield parent Unibail-Rodamco-Westfield, for stopping payments on their $558 million mortgage in June 2023.

Williams declared in a court filing that “the most significant issue relating to the mortgaged property is security,” and he indicated he could put guards with dogs at the mall’s entrances, which he did.

“Based on my experience, I believe these security measures will discourage bad actors from engaging in bad acts, and will provide comfort to customers knowing that security at the Mortgaged Property is in place,” Williams wrote in a court filing.

Trident Pacific, in turn, hired commercial real-estate firm JLL to manage and lease the property. JLL officials were not available for comment. In late February, the two companies announced that the mall would drop the Westfield brand and henceforth be called the Emporium Centre San Francisco, a nod to the site’s original incarnation.

“When it opened its doors in 1896 as The Emporium, it was hailed as ‘The Grandest Mercantile Building in the World’ and was the first department store on the West Coast,” Williams said in a press release.

“During the Centre’s 128-year history, it has evolved with the times to sustain and reinvent itself as a community gathering place,” he said. “We’re committed to working with our existing retailers and restaurants, the City, and the community to ensure that this historic location has a new foundation to succeed.”

Emphasizing that the mall remained open with retailers still in business, Williams said his job was to “write the Centre’s next chapter by simultaneously stabilizing and improving the property.”

Williams said the new name celebrates the mall’s history and staying power.

“The foundation of this site has spectacular elements with the historic dome and Beaux-Arts façade, which remain attractions and define its stalwart history,” he said. “The façade was the only part of the building to survive the 1906 earthquake and was viewed by residents as a symbol of ‘courage and vigor’ during the City’s rebuilding.”

The press release said the mall’s managers were focused on curating tenants in the “experiential, entertainment, and culinary sectors,” and hoped to reestablish the location as a community focal point with “events and activations, community partnerships, and opportunities for local arts, music, and performances.”

Investing in and repositioning the huge mall is challenging given that office and retail vacancies in The City have continued to rise to new records as buying patterns changed, remote work became the new norm and companies have cut back on space leased.

The Union Square area is a particular soft spot , especially across Market Street along the three blocks of Powell Street from the cable car turnaround to Union Square itself. That was true even before Macy’s announced in late February that it planned to eventually close its giant store directly on the square.

Multiple retailers have left Emporium Centre or announced plans to do so following the closure last August of Nordstrom, an anchor tenant that occupied vast space. Numerous other retailers — notably anchor tenant Bloomingdale’s — remain.

The latest blows came from American Eagle Outfitters, which filed a notice with the state this month indicating that it would close its 52-person operation there, and clothing purveyor Ted Baker, which announced it was closing 40 stores in the United States and Canada. American Eagle’s parent company in September sued the mall’s former operators for allegedly allowing it to “deteriorate into disarray, leaving American Eagle and its employees to suffer and respond to gun violence, physical assaults, burglaries, and robberies.”

Sarah Dennis Phillips, executive director of The City’s Office of Economic and Workforce Development, said at a recent legislative hearing that the area was “obviously struggling with a very high vacancy rate, especially on Powell Street” and in the Emporium Centre.

On the positive side, Phillips said six tenants had signed leases at the Emporium Centre since March, including three San Francisco small businesses, though she did not provide details.

JLL has been “working directly” with The City’s Office of Small Business as it seeks to fill the mall’s empty spaces, Phillips told the Board of Supervisors Land Use and Transportation Committee, and the Emporium Centre and other landlords have been getting very “aggressive” about the deals they are offering.

“So they’re really seeing success, and I think that’s why we’ve seen a lot of interest from our local small businesses in the Emporium,” Phillips said.

Trident explains the role of a receiver on its website and why a lender might want a receiver in order to avoid having to take title for a property, which could trigger problems including issues with insurance, liability, and tenant management and retention, among others.

Since founding the firm in 2008, Williams has personally been appointed as receiver in more than 152 cases in 41 states for a wide variety of properties, including office, retail, multifamily, industrial, student housing, senior care and self storage, according to court documents.

In the case of the Tropicana Centre, a 557,382-square-foot retail center in Las Vegas, a previous receiver wanted to sell the property for about $25 million but was replaced by Williams, who presided over a sale for almost $40 million, according to Christopher Maling, a real-estate broker who worked on the case.

Williams supported sending a delegation to the Arkansas headquarters of Walmart and Sam’s Club to get advance lease renewals and then made sure others knew, which resulted in tenants grabbing space, Maling said.

“He’s very, very good,” said Maling, who has worked with Williams a half-dozen times over 20 years. “It’s not surprising that he’s highly respected in the industry nationally.”

CoStar News, a service of real-estate information company CoStar, published a profile of Williams in May 2023 in which he recounted how he got started in the receivership business after being laid off from his job as a real estate developer. Last year, Williams filed a court statement in San Francisco citing his extensive experience developing office, residential, and mixed-use projects.

Williams told CoStar his company employed eight people and had 21 ongoing receivership cases. It took 15 months to get his first court assignment, which involved three residences in Los Angeles, he said. This month, JLL announced that Williams had hired the firm to market for sale a 52-story office tower in downtown Los Angeles for which he is receiver.

Gerard Keena, president of the Bay Area Receivership Group, which provides services similar to Trident’s but on an admittedly smaller scale, said the receivership business was relatively quiet for years but picked up more recently as property owners faced financial difficulties.

“Now is an exciting time for receivers,” Keena said.