Uniqlo Opens a Market Street Flagship October 9, With a Repair Studio

Uniqlo will open a flagship store at 801 Market Street on Friday, October 9, putting the Japanese retailer back in downtown San Francisco for the first time since it left Powell Street. Hoodline reported the date on September 14, and the San Francisco Chronicle also reported the opening.

Where It Is

801 Market Street sits on the corner of Market and Fourth, directly above the Powell Street BART and Muni Metro station and two blocks from the Powell Street cable car turnaround.

The ground-floor space was an Old Navy flagship until 2023. Old Navy had run it as its largest single store, according to SFGATE, and it has been dark since.

What Is Different About This Store

The Market Street store carries LifeWear for women, men, children and babies, and adds services the chain has been putting into selected locations: a repair studio, embroidery, hemming on selected pants, and UTme!, the counter where you print your own design onto a t-shirt or tote bag. Ship-to-store is also available. The repair and embroidery work falls under what Uniqlo calls RE.UNIQLO, per reporting by WhatNow.

That matters for a visitor for a practical reason. A downtown store where you can get a garment mended or a name stitched on is a different errand from a downtown store where you can only buy things, and it is the kind of service that usually lives in suburbs rather than on Market Street.

The Powell Street Store It Replaces

Uniqlo’s previous San Francisco flagship was a 29,000-square-foot store at 111 Powell Street near Union Square. It shut permanently in March 2021 with 69 jobs lost, SFGATE reported at the time. The chain kept a Bay Area presence at Stonestown Galleria and in Emeryville, Daly City, Hillsdale, Concord, Milpitas and Santa Clara.

What It Says About Downtown Retail

Union Square retail vacancy is running at about 15 percent, down from a peak of roughly 22 percent in 2025, per figures cited in Hoodline’s report. Mayor Daniel Lurie met Uniqlo leadership in July 2025 about downtown and permitting, and his office has pointed to the return as evidence the commercial core is filling back in.

There is a second name attached to the building worth noting. 801 Market Street is owned by Ponte Gadea California LLC, the property arm of Amancio Ortega, who founded Zara, according to The Real Deal. The same owner holds 400 Post Street, where Zara has announced a four-story flagship, moving from 250 Post Street. One landlord is therefore behind two of the larger downtown retail moves of the year.

The other large downtown retail question is still open two blocks away. The San Francisco Centre remains empty and in the hands of its bondholders, who took a second round of bids this month; we covered the sports-complex proposal and, before that, the collapse of the earlier sale.

Practical Info

Opens: Friday October 9, 2026. Where: 801 Market Street at Fourth Street. Getting there: Powell Street station on BART and on the Muni Metro lines that run under Market; the F Market historic streetcar and most Market Street bus routes stop within a block.

Store hours have been reported but not confirmed by the company, so check uniqlo.com before making a special trip in the first week.

Photo: Beyond My Ken, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons.