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.
Developer Blatteis & Schnur purchased the building in 2016 and redeveloped it into office and ground-floor retail space, eventually opening the finished project in 2023, the sfstandard.com reports. Today the building includes 65,000 square feet occupied by hospitality company Convene, with Japanese-Peruvian restaurant Chotto Matte running the rooftop space, according to the same outlet.
Turo isn't the only new name associated with the address. Streetwear retailer Kith is also expected to join the tenant mix at 100 Stockton, alongside a restaurant, per sfstandard.com's August report. Separately, a Cushman & Wakefield market report lists Kith among several large Union Square leases signed during the third quarter, alongside Los Angeles Apparel at 111 Powell Street and Crankstart at 48 Stockton Street.
Union Square's Numbers Are Finally Moving in the Right Direction
The new lease lands amid broader signs of life in a district that spent years synonymous with boarded-up windows. Cushman & Wakefield reports Union Square's overall vacancy rate declined to 19.9% in the third quarter of 2026, down from 20.3% the prior quarter and a steep drop from 22.7% a year earlier. Citywide, San Francisco's overall retail vacancy ticked up slightly to 6.6% in the same quarter.
Foot traffic is climbing too. Union Square logged 3.8 million pedestrian visits in the third quarter, averaging 1.3 million a month, up 8.5% from the second quarter and 8.1% from a year earlier, per Cushman & Wakefield's data. Asking rents for premier ground-floor Union Square space have followed suit, reaching roughly $600 per square foot per year, a 20% jump from both the prior quarter and the year before.
San Francisco retail sales hit $41.8 billion in the third quarter, up 7.7% year over year, the same market report shows. A separate account from sfstandard.com notes Union Square's foot traffic in July ran 6% higher than the same month a year earlier, with momentum tied to a packed convention calendar that includes the NBA All-Star Weekend, Super Bowl LX, and the FIFA World Cup. The outlet also points to the fully leased, four-story Britex Fabric building — now home to Bang & Olufsen on its bottom two floors — as another sign that landlords are finding takers for once-stubborn vacancies. A year-ago Cushman & Wakefield figure separately put Union Square's vacancy rate at 20%, down from 23% the year before, underscoring just how sharp the district's reversal has been.
