Express closed its Powell Street store in October 2023, but the space will become a Shoe Palace, and sneaker-heads may relish that it will be open in time for next month’s NBA All-Star Game festivities.When the Express store at 301 Geary Street closed 15 months ago, it barely made much news, considering that Union Square had recently seen much higher-profile closure announcements like the Old Navy flagship and the T-Mobile flagship (oh, and some burglars had just rammed their car into the Dior store three blocks over about ten days before). The site has sat vacant since, but it won’t be empty much longer. The SF Business Times reports that a Shoe Palace is opening in that 16,000 square-foot space, and it plans to open “in January.”  That’s fortuitous timing, as the opening will be prior to next month’s NBA All-Star Game in San Francisco. Shoe Palace sells sneakers and athletic shoes, as well as athletic apparel, so that would be well-aligned with the kind of tourists that will be mobbing Union Square the weekend of February 14-16. Shoe Palace also has SF locations at the Stonestown Galleria, and also nearby at the mall now called the Emporium Centre SF.   The address is technically 301-323 Geary Street. The building’s owner is Jon Handlery of Handlery Union Square Hotel and Handlery Hotels fame, and that hotel is just four doors up Geary Street. Longtime readers may recall the controversy that ensued when Handlery struck a deal to bring the Express store to the space. It meant evicting longtime beloved dive bar — the only one of its kind so close to Union Square — the Gold Dust Lounge back in 2012, which occupied the lower-level space on the Powell Street side of the building that Express wanted to use for a side entrance and escalator. That bar made a move to a much less charming space at Fisherman's Wharf in early 2013, and finally closed for good in January 2020, right before owner Nick Bovis got brought up on federal corruption charges alongside former Public Works chief Mohammad Nuru.As the Business Times also notes, this Shoe Palace will be right across the street from the new Union Square Nintendo store. That store will be at 331 Powell Street, right next to the Westin Saint Francis, and the Business Times says that Nintendo store is expected to open “in the coming months.”Shoe Palace originally opened as a single store in San Jose, and now has 200 stores nationwide. Related: It’Sugar Abruptly Closes Union Square Store, But New Tenant Supposedly Lined Up [SFist]Image: Kevin Y via Yelp