Goodwill San Francisco Bay will close its San Francisco headquarters and 11 thrift stores and donation sites across the Bay Area after its merger with a Phoenix chapter.
The nonprofit job training services unit of Goodwill of Central and Northern Arizona will shutter its local headquarters at 750 Post Street and a clearance center at 1301 30th Avenue, in Oakland, SFGate reported.
Goodwill will also close 10 additional stores and donation sites from Vacaville to Redwood City, while planning to open big-box Goodwill stores in the suburbs, the San Francisco Business Times reported. It plans to replace them with larger big-box stores across the region.
The closures came after Goodwill San Francisco Bay merged with Phoenix-based Goodwill of Central and Northern Arizona last fall, in addition to two Maryland chapters, creating the largest Goodwill organization in the world. They’re all part of Goodwill Industries International.
The combined group, run out of Phoenix, includes 150 thrift stores and donation centers.
Goodwill plans to absorb most of the administrative roles from San Francisco headquarters layoffs into Arizona, but it’s hunting for a larger Bay Area warehouse and a facility for its mission services.
Tim O’Neal, CEO of Arizona’s Goodwill, said it struck an agreement to open a 27,000-square-foot store this summer at an undisclosed Bay Area location — that’s not in San Francisco or Oakland.
Two similar stores are expected to open early next year, while Goodwill has 14 letters of intent in place at properties between 18,000 and 25,000 square feet at undisclosed locations.
The larger-store format is modeled after successful stores in the Phoenix market.
Goodwill negotiates its real estate deals through Phoenix-based Thrive Services Group, led by O’Neal. All profits, he said, are channeled back into Goodwill services.
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