A Whole Foods Market in San Francisco announced Monday it was shutting its doors due to safety concerns after being open only a year.
"We are closing our Trinity location only for the time being," a Whole Foods spokesperson said in a statement to The San Francisco Standard. "If we feel we can ensure the safety of our team members in the store, we will evaluate a reopening of our Trinity location."
"Deteriorating street conditions" involving drug use and crime forced the store to close, according to one City Hall official quoted in the report.
The news didn't shock some journalists and Bay Area residents, who blamed city and state leadership for the city's growing problems with crime and homelessness.
WHOLE FOODS IN SAN FRANCISCO CLOSING ONE YEAR AFTER OPENING DUE TO SAFETY CONCERNS: REPORT
Journalist and author Michael Shellenberger charged Gov. Gavin Newsom to send in the National Guard to clean up the city and protect residents and tourists.
"San Francisco is a failed city. It cannot protect the safety of its residents, tourists, or businesses. Gov. @GavinNewsom needs to halt his presidential run and send in the national guard to shut down the dangerous and deadly open air drug markets," he tweeted.
"If Newsom can call in the National Guard to protect the capital from pro-Trump protesters, then he can certainly call in the national guard to protect San Francisco residents from aggressive and violent criminals and drug dealers," he added.
Ian Miller, writer for OutKick Sports, also called out Newsom for attacking Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis when his own residents are fleeing the state.
California's population fell by 500,000 people between April 2020 and July 2022, Fox News previously reported.
"Sure San Francisco continues to decline rapidly, with Whole Foods closing just a year after opening due to rampant crime & drug dealing after SF lost ~8% of its population from 2020-2022, but hey, at least Gavin Newsom is lecturing Ron DeSantis on how to be a successful governor," he tweeted sarcastically.
Jeff Jacoby, op-ed columnist at The Boston Globe, called out the soft-on-crime policies in the liberal state for putting businesses at risk.
"It's really not complicated: When DAs [District Attorneys] refuse to prosecute shoplifting, shoplifting increases. When shoplifting increases, stores go out of business," he wrote.
San Francisco ousted its radical DA Chesa Boudin last year, but rampant crime remains a serious problem.
A Silicon Valley architect argued that left-wing activists sabotaged their own equity efforts by pushing soft-on-crime policies.
"What's tragi-comic about the Whole Foods closing in SoMa is that the same activists who screech about "health equity" and the lack of grocery stores in "underserved communities" are the same folks who push social policies that make it impossible to operate a grocery store there," Adam Mayer tweeted.
"San Francisco is one of the most beautiful cities in the world but leadership better get its act together quickly. Stories like the one below are becoming the norm, and they shouldn't be," Jacob Jaber, co-founder of San Francisco-based coffee chain Philz Coffee, added.
The grocery store on Market Street cut its operating hours in October over high theft and hostile visitors, one of the store's managers told the outlet. In November, the store changed its bathroom rules after syringes and pipes were found.
Businesses and residents have voiced their anger at city leadership over the homelessness epidemic.
More than 100 businesses and property owners in the same district where the Whole Foods Market was located demanded tax refunds for having to deal with rampant crime and drug use, Fox News previously reported.
Fox News' Landon Mion contributed to this report.
