Requiem for Sony Metreon The San Francisco mall was set to revolutionize urban entertainment in 1999, burning bright before a spectacular fall

Requiem for Sony Metreon The San Francisco mall was set to revolutionize urban entertainment in 1999, burning bright before a spectacular fall

The original Sony Metreon press release wasn’t just a piece of retail marketing. It read like the invitation to a utopian society.

Like everything else involved with the project, the chrome marketing folder was shiny and filled with hope, as if the owners were selling a new subdivision on the moons of Jupiter.

“Metreon is all about people. Interaction. Civilization. A celebration of urban life and vitality,” Sony declared in giant type, with key phrases highlighted in red. “A world leader in imagination and innovative technology, Sony has changed the way people have fun. Metreon … a new generation of entertainment in San Francisco.”

The Sony Metreon didn’t aim to bolster tourism in San Francisco, so much as raise the profile of the city surrounding it, with the biggest urban entertainment center of its kind in the world. And in the beginning, that’s exactly what happened.

But 20 years after the Sony Metreon boldly declared itself the future, the building is nestled squarely in the present; a routine destination anchored by a multiplex, City Target and food court. A mall like a thousand others.

Hundreds of Metreon opening-year images were recently uncovered in The Chronicle archive, resurrecting that 1999 moment. But even with the images in front of us, it still seems like a dream.

May 27, 1999: A model of the Sony Metreon in San Francisco is on display, one month before the retail and entertainment center opened to the public. May 27, 1999: A model of the Sony Metreon in San Francisco is on display, one month before the retail and entertainment center opened to the public. Photo: Eric Luse / The Chronicle 1999 Photo: Eric Luse / The Chronicle 1999 Image 1 of / 15 Caption Close Requiem for Sony Metreon: San Francisco’s retail failure from the future 1 / 15 Back to Gallery

I moved back to the Bay Area from Los Angeles the month the Sony Metreon opened, and the new center highlighted the contrast between the two California metropolises.

Old-school Los Angeles was still embracing swing dancing and ska and an organ player at Dodgers Stadium. San Francisco during the first tech boom had a new ballpark sponsored by Pets.com and Webvan, and a shopping mall with space-age inset neon lines, as if someone powered it up like a computer. It felt like stepping from the set of “Swingers,” into the world of “Blade Runner.”

Covering the full length of Fourth Street between Mission and Howard, the Sony Metreon was the striking centerpiece in Yerba Buena Gardens, the former skid row in San Francisco.

The old newsroom M&M bar on the corner of Howard and Fifth streets suddenly looked ancient. Younger reporters began defecting to Jillian’s, a dark wood sports bar/pool hall a block away, with the largest wall of televisions we had ever seen.

“Here comes Metreon — sailing into San Francisco’s South of Market district June 16 like some vast cruise ship of pop culture,” Chronicle urban design critic John King wrote on June 6, 1999. “… The $85 million complex aims with clinical precision at such vast markets as moviegoers, casual shoppers, tourists — even families, the last sector of society one would expect to find in the SoMa of old.”

King’s cruise ship comparison was perfect. The Metreon was curated and branded from master tenant Sony, with a Sony theater complex (the largest in San Francisco history, including the city’s first IMAX screen), a Sony PlayStation store and a one-of-a-kind Microsoft retail store.

The center only got weirder and cooler as customers traveled upward through the mostly windowless building.

The Airtight Garage on the second floor was filled with games based on designs by French graphic novelist Jean “Moebius” Giraud. The arcade included the Metreon’s first hit: HyperBowl lanes that let gamers simulate bowling on steep San Francisco streets and a rocking pirate ship.

Author Maurice Sendak himself showed up to promote the “Where the Wild Things Are” play space on the fourth floor. The low-tech park included artwork and games inspired by Sendak’s 1963 book, including a 17-foot-tall Wild Thing carved into the wall.

“Five million people spending money in our city. Do I love to hear those numbers clicking,” San Francisco Mayor Willie Brown said on opening day, standing behind a shiny curved podium.

“I think it’s great, fantastic. It will revitalize this whole area,” George Lucas added later that day, before bringing his date to “Austin Powers: The Spy Who Shagged Me,” passing up the three Metreon theaters screening “Star Wars: Episode I — The Phantom Menace.”

But even in that first year, when Metreon officials declared they had surpassed admission goals, it was clear that the mall may have been a little too ahead of its time.

I remember walking past long stretches of the mall that looked abandoned, then waiting in frustrating lines at HyperBowl. No one played the other two games in the Airtight Garage more than once. (The free games in the PlayStation store were more fun.)

Attractions including “The Way Things Work,” a 3-D presentation based on David Macaulay’s book, weren’t built for repeat visits. And the series of escalators and walkways had a strong M.C. Escher vibe. Two decades later, I’ve never been to the fourth floor of the Metreon and have no idea how to get there.

Sony officials declared success continuously from the beginning to the bitter end, but anyone who went to the mall saw that the concept was failing.

The Metreon quickly turned from a futuristic beacon to a starting point for stories about the struggling economy. By early 2002, media stories referenced “the troubled Metreon.”

I still remember reading the May 1, 2002, takedown from Chronicle business columnist David Lazarus twice. He reported that the Metreon’s nine-member customer-relations staff had been laid off, and the high-tech Discovery Store was shutting down before its posted 10 p.m. closing time because there were no customers. He also had a possible explanation for the Metreon’s optimistic visitor numbers.

“The facility counts among its daily visitors even those people simply cutting through the building to get to Moscone Center or Mission Street,” Lazarus wrote.

In the years that followed, observing the changes at the Metreon was like watching a kid swinging wildly at a piñata while the candy-filled donkey was safely suspended 4 feet above his head.

There was the short-lived “Walk of Game,” an attempt to duplicate Hollywood’s Walk of Fame, except with fictitious video game characters, including Sonic the Hedgehog and Lara Croft from “Tomb Raider.”

I walked in one day and much of the prime real estate on the first floor had been turned into a hastily organized food market. (The empanadas were good. Sadly, they lasted less than a year.)

After repeated denials that Sony was looking to sell, the owners of the Westfield San Francisco Centre across the street bought the space in 2006. A Sony spokeswoman, predictably, declared victory.

“We had success in Metreon,” Lisa Carparelli said. “We attracted an average of 6 million people a year, but the decision is based on corporate resources.”

Reporter Lazarus followed days later with another cut-through-the-b.s. column, interviewing original Metreon creative director Trevor Bryant.

“It crushed me,” Bryant said. “I was hired by Sony to create a new vision for urban entertainment. Nothing I designed is still standing.”

That turned out to be only a slight exaggeration.

Westfield’s massive redesign in the early 2010s turned the second floor into a City Target (rest in peace, Walk of Game) and added windows to the first floor. Take away the park views, and you could be in any food court in Northern California.

Gone is the striking vertical black, white and red METREON sign on the corner of Fourth and Mission streets. Now Target and AMC are the dominant signage, which resembles a birthday present wrapping job thrown together by a small child. A much smaller vertical gray Metreon sign blends into the facade, like an apology.

Twenty years later only two original Metreon businesses remain: salute to the survival skills of Sanraku sushi restaurant and Buckhorn Grill.

Digging through The Chronicle archives, where we routinely find new photos from the 1800s, it’s hard to view negatives from 1999 as a nostalgic find.

But the Metreon photos are striking to look at. The bright and bold design is stunning in places, looking more futuristic in 1999 than any Bay Area mall in 2019. Even buying a ticket at the Sony Metreon was a memorable experience; the stylish neon lighting at the kiosk cast a yellow glow on passersby, with jagged metal lines splayed across the ceiling like an alien spacecraft.

“It was supposed to be a place where you couldn’t tell where the entertainment ended and the retail began,” creative director Bryant told Lazarus. “I truly believed in it 100 percent.”

Perhaps, as Bryant suggested, Sony didn’t commit enough financial support to the model. Perhaps, as The Chronicle reported, the affluent-family target demographic never showed up, and the frugal teens ignored higher-end businesses. Perhaps it was simply bad timing and a bad economy.

But for a year, and maybe a few months more, I was sure the Sony Metreon would last for generations. Perhaps it really was the future, and we just didn’t believe in it enough.

Peter Hartlaub is The San Francisco Chronicle’s pop culture critic. Email: phartlaub@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @PeterHartlaub



