Gump’s department store was founded in San Francisco in 1861. In 2018 the store went bankrupt and was purchased by John Chachas. Today Chachas ran a full page ad in the San Francisco Chronicle warning that San Francisco’s current business conditions were not survivable.

“Gump’s has been a San Francisco icon for more than 165 years,” he wrote in the ad. “Today, as we prepare for our 166th holiday season at 250 Post Street, we fear this may be our last because of the profound erosion of this city’s conditions.”…

The letter asked the governor, mayor and city supervisors to clean up the streets, remove homeless encampments, enforce laws and bring San Francisco back to “its rightful place as one of America’s shining beacons of urban society.”…

“I’m hoping that what this galvanizes is a real conversation to change what San Francisco’s doing,” said Chachas, who said he believes that city and state leaders act “like there’s something humanitarian and evolved in their permission of that kind of behavior. There’s nothing evolved.”…

“People don’t walk into stores in Salt Lake City and steal things because they know that the police will arrest them, and the district attorney will charge them, and they will be found guilty and put in prison, so people don’t do it,” he said.

It sounds like Gump’s wasn’t doing well even before the pandemic and since then things have obviously gotten worse. Still, there must be some reason why so many major retailers in the city have closed for good lately. In other words, this isn’t just one company complaining, it’s part of a broader trend that the city can’t afford to ignore.

OPEN LETTER from a San Francisco legacy business. This letter, a full-page newspaper ad published today. It summarizes what majority of residents lament. pic.twitter.com/2WlcSHTrxR

— Richie Greenberg (@greenbergnation) August 13, 2023

Part of the problem is crime and people with drug problems and mental problems taking over the streets. The other part is the work-from-home trend which probably wouldn’t change all that much even if the other problems miraculously went away.

Chachas says Gump’s may not survive in SF but he has been looking at locations in other states where the company might do better thanks in part to better foot traffic and better street conditions. This isn’t the first time he’s criticized the city’s leadership. Back in 2021 he said crime in the city had become “atrocious.”

“My concern as a business person is you don’t have a functioning environment anymore when you have people outside of the city who are afraid to come to the city because of rampant crime… and grit and filth,” Chachas explained…

“Today, you can steal up to nine hundred ninety five dollars worth of goods and it’s a misdemeanor, and the people that are doing this know that the police are not likely to actually do anything about it,” Chachas stated.

“If they did something about it, the district attorney is not likely to prosecute,” he continued. “So until you change things back to a law abiding society, you just invite this kind of chaos.”

That’s all true. The crime wave continues because the chances of being held accountable are pretty slim. At worst, thieves will end up in some misdemeanor level diversion program which isn’t much of a disincentive to people already living on the street.