Turo, the San Francisco-based peer-to-peer car-sharing app often described as the Airbnb for car rentals, has leased 30,000 square feet inside the former Macy’s Men’s Store building at 100 Stockton Street in Union Square. The single-tenant building, built in the 1970s, had empty upper floors while Macy’s continued occupying its retail floors before being gutted and renovated during the pandemic era.
According to San Francisco Business Times, the lease follows an $80 million renovation of the prominent Stockton Street building. The report, later covered by CoStar News, frames Turo’s new lease as part of the changing face of Union Square, where long-vacant storefronts have started finding new life.
The building’s backstory stretches back decades. Macy’s announced in 2016 that it would shutter its Men’s Store in Union Square, according to a technical account published by Structure magazine, which also reports the structure was originally designed in 1973, while property listing site commercialsearch.com states the building was originally completed in 1974. The dossier does not resolve which date marks the true start of construction.
From Empty Department Store to Mixed-Use Hub
Structure magazine describes the redevelopment plan for the eight-level building, which holds roughly 31,000 square feet per floor plus a basement, as converting the lower three floors and basement to retail, adding flexible office or retail space on two more floors, placing offices on the top three floors, and topping it off with a rooftop restaurant. A third-floor outdoor terrace now wraps the building’s west and south sides, per the same account…