Cinemark is shutting its theater in San Francisco's biggest mall as the downtown exodus continues

• The Cinemark in San Francisco's Westfield mall is closing due to "local business conditions."
• The announcement came just days after Westfield said it was surrendering the mall to lenders.

Cinemark is turning out the lights at its theater in downtown San Francisco as more businesses continue to leave the city.

The 52,000-square-foot site in the Westfield San Francisco Center will have its final screenings on Thursday, SFGATE reported. None are listed on its website after Thursday.

The operator announced the closure in an email to patrons on Wednesday, The San Francisco Examiner reported.

"Cinemark can confirm it has decided to permanently close the Century San Francisco Centre 9 and XD theater shortly before the conclusion of its lease term following a comprehensive review of local business conditions," the company told Insider.

Cinemark did not immediately respond to a request for comment from Insider, made outside normal working hours.

The announcement came just days after The San Francisco Chronicle reported that Westfield had stopped paying its $558 million mortgage on the San Francisco mall – the city's biggest – and was surrendering it to lenders.

Retailers deserting the city have largely attributed their decision to rising crime levels.

Whole Foods closed its San Francisco store in April, just 13 months after it opened, after a number of thefts and assaults as well as a deadly overdose.

The retailer did not list specific concerns but said that the closure was related to concerns about the "safety" of its staff. Other retailers that have closed or are shutting downtown outlets include Old Navy, Amazon Go, Office Depot, and Nordstrom.

But statistics from the City and County of San Francisco suggest that, though crime rates fluctuate each year, there hasn't been an overall marked rise since 2009 and the number of annual robberies has actually declined significantly.

Data from the San Francisco Police Department shows that although there were more incidents of burglary and motor vehicle theft this year than in 2017, the number of reported rapes, robberies, and larceny thefts significantly decreased.

Thousands of people left the city during the pandemic as remote work lured people to states with lower taxes and more lenient COVID policies such as Florida.

San Francisco's population fell by about 7%, or 62,000 people, between 2020 and 2022, per estimates from the US Census Bureau. This has affected its businesses and cultural institutions, the city said.

Tourism in San Francisco has not fully recovered either, with visitors levels still about a fifth below pre-pandemic levels, city officials said in a report in May.

The city's plan to rejuvenate its economy includes improving its public transport, boosting police services, and encouraging the conversion of some office buildings to housing.