A famous family-owned toy store in San Francisco that inspired Disney’s “Toy Story” is set to close after 85 years, the owners announced this month.
The owners said the closure was due to the “perils and violence of the downtown environment,” inflations, and consumer spending.
The reasons for the store’s closure are the same as those of Jeffrey’s Toys, which also shuttered last year.
The store on Kearny Avenue will close Feb. 10, according to Mr. Sterling.
“The family is saddened it has come to this,” he said in an emailed statement.
“The leadership of the City of San Francisco and the Downtown Association have their work cut out for them on how to revitalize what was once a vibrant and fun downtown experience.”
The owners are working with landlords and creditors, Sterling said.
The store also announced its closure last week on Facebook, saying:
“All things must go.”
They thanked customers and said all full-price items were 30 percent off.
The shop has been operated for decades by four generations of the Luhn family.
Matthew Luhn told SF Gate in December that he had been co-running it with his father, Mark, and his stepmother, Rosie Coronado-Luhn, the Epoch Times reported.
His great-great-grandparents started the business in 1938 as a variety shop, but began selling toys in 1953.
During its height, the store opened several locations around the Bay Area, including:
San Leandro
Oakland
Hayward
In 2015, the store moved to Berkeley as San Francisco rentals began soaring but relocated back to the city in 2017.
The store inspired Matthew Luhn to go to animation school, where he later became an animator, writer, and story director at Pixar, where he became one of the animators for the original “Toy Story” movie.
His father would give the team ideas, and they visited the store often, he told SF Gate.
The store began struggling and begged city officials to keep it open.
Besides the plummeting business after the COVID-19 pandemic, crime in the local area became an issue for the store.
During one incident, someone attempted to stab one of the employees, who later quit her job after working there for five years.
The news comes just months after another iconic retail store in San Francisco announced it would close its doors after 160 years.
San Francisco retailer Gumps CEO John Chachas told the host of the Fox program “The Story with Martha MacCallum” that high crime and rampant public drug is out of hand.
“It’s a sad state of affairs,” Mr. Challas told MacCallum.
“I spoke to a customer today who’s come to us for 50 consecutive Christmases and who won’t come back because the city is in a difficult and awfully dirty condition.”
READ: Downtown San Francisco Resembles a “Ghost Town” as 22 Stores Shuttered in Under 2 Years
