Empty storefronts in Oakland (Photo: Evan Symon for the California Globe)
The Empty Storefronts Of Downtown Oakland
The Globe visits Oakland and sees the stunning retail vacancies of downtown
By Evan Symon, March 28, 2024 3:51 pm
Visiting Downtown Oakland can be a sobering experience. At some points it is full of life, with shopkeepers stepping out for a moment to enjoy the day or customers coming in for the lunch rush. But walk a block away, and it is dead. And walking through there is a curious mix of empty storefronts sometimes going three or four stores in a row, then a restaurant, maybe a clothes store, then another closed store.
Retail vacancy is a hard thing to really track with leases expiring, stores suddenly closing, new “pop up” stores and other variables severely affecting just how many open places there are.
Neighboring San Francisco is currently around a 6% retail vacancy. But most people living there will report the same phenomenon as Oakland, with a lot more open stores than 6%. In 2015, Oakland had under a 3% retail vacancy, and in 2019, had only 2%. Today it is sitting at 7%.
Of course, this isn’t bad as office vacancy. Right now Oakland is at about 20%, with San Francisco approaching 37%. The excuses for both retail and office rates are the same too: Economic uncertainty, high inflation, rising insurance costs, more people working from home, the rise of AI and automation, the continued rise of e-commerce, the rising crime rate, high rental costs, and businesses still adjusting to a post-COVID climate have all been named as factors.
But when going around Oakland, it seemed higher than 7%. All of those above factors have to create an above 7% retail vacancy rate. So let’s dive in.
“It is way above 7%,” said a Bay Area real estate advisor “Jan” to the Globe on Thursday, joining this reporter on a walk around the city. “It is way emptier than that. So, some places just take their rental property off the market for awhile for a variety of reasons. That’s why many are painted over or have slick artwork covering them. And this is a common tactic. A lot of cities actually commission artists to paint over abandoned or for lease storefronts, and malls and even airports use this to cover up untaken places.”
“But in Oakland it is especially notable because it is everywhere. The more expensive places have those clear windows with the for lease signs in them, but the idea still holds.”
When asked on which street to begin on, as to not “cherry pick” the best streets to have the most vacancies, Jan laughed.
“Just pick a street here and we’ll see vacancies within a block.”
Sure enough, each block had, on average 2-3 store vacancies, not not mention many office vacancy signs. In some places, there were entire rows of open store fronts in prominent areas.
“Look at that. Right next to a BART station, next to the Tribune Tower, and on a busy street. Rent is probably on the higher side, but a good business owner could make it work. And no one is there.”
Later on, when going around 12th Street, Center Walk, and Clay Street, restaurants getting lunch rush businesses were broken up by strings of empty store fronts.”
“This is the way the market is right now to some extent, but it also is a very strong visual reminder of just how far many cities around here have fallen. East Bay, San Francisco, San Jose. This sort of thing is everywhere. Get a tenant for one, and another one or two fall open. We have seen more black owned businesses here and new places are still opening up, so it isn’t dead. But we have a lot of businesses needing security guards either outside or inside too.”
She points to a Walgreens right by the 12th St/Oakland BART station and a deli close by.
“They have security guards around all the time because so many people kept stealing or trying to rob them. There are many others in the city too, but these are just the closest. Oh, and go inside that Walgreens, and you’ll have cashiers behind security panels and your items going under them like you’re in an inner-city gas station. A lot of prospective business owners see that that is the situation here and say ‘no thanks.'”
“And you’ll see a lot of these store fronts are covered up and without lease signs. Yeah, they’re just not being bothered with. And because they aren’t for lease, they’re not really vacant. Or they’re just leased out very short term, and technically not vacant. Or there is a string of short term tenants in a year. If you included them in the vacancy rate, you’d see it on the same level as office vacancy most likely. Honestly, look at this like a mall. Mall vacancies are usually measured just by empty stores at any given time. Do that to Oakland right now, and we’d be at office levels. At least. It’s a very hidden thing, but you have eyes and can see all the open storefronts and lease signs. And remember, we are just downtown. A lot of areas of the city are not doing as good. Think about that.”
Finally, we end at the City Hall where she looks up at the California state flag being bunched up on the flag pole, barely moving in the wind.
“We can’t get stores or offices to work. And look, we can’t even get the flags to work.”
Updated Bay Area office and retail vacancy figures for Q2 are due to start coming in sometime in June.
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March 23, 2024
Whoa is Oakland.
Whoa is San Francisco.
Whoa is California.
Oh if only we could figure out what is driving these closures.
What do they all have in common?
If only we could add 2+2, we may figure it out.
Hint…
They are all uber liberal run cities in an uber liberal state.
Wake Up Californians.
You’ll find the same issues in Republican ran states. Quit making everything about political parties. Seems like everyone has gone stark crazy and just plane ole mean spirited. Dems and republicans can’t solve your woes or mine either. Quit looking for politicians to end societal issues.
Spoken like someone who has a big stake in the anarchy and hell-on-earth that results from Dem/Marxist-run cities. Hope you will open your eyes soon because this isn’t going to end well for you either.
Wrong. Only Democrats impose their tried and true recipe for instant third world status: raid the treasury and hire the relatives. That is why good governments go bad.
Put a nepotism thermometer in their mouths, and watch it correlate with thier looming bankruptcies. Yes, let’s talk about this .
I think you mean ‘woe’ is Oakland
Hope it means stop this in Oakland and don’t let it spread. Whoa.
Brought to you by the town that makes its 100+ year old seniors paint over graffiti on their property or they fine them.
No kidding.
In the many many MANY cities controlled by Dems such as Oakland, law-abiding, tax-paying citizens, workable sensible policies = BAD
Criminals, corrupt politicians, ruinous policies, neglect, filth, and backward upside-down thinking = GOOD
And they have their department of transportation take classes on white fragility instead of filling potholes and fixing the streets.
Just say it like it is, we all know the Truth. What they all have in common is amazingly stupid voters and they are all run by Democrats. Democrats seem to love using their own beds as a Toilet and then get mad because someone else hasn’t cleaned up the mess!
You could have mentioned Oakland’s loss of the Raiders, Sharks, Warriors and now soon the Athletics.
Seems to me the voting process locally and statewide has been seized by the ballot harvesters, government employees and activist unions, and the “results” remarkably always favor rising government salaries, increasing handouts to special interests, rising crime, and higher taxes while delivering fewer and fewer services.
The gap between what you are asked to believe, and what the average person experiences is too broad to bear, so businesses and people do the only sensible thing and relocate.
You’re absolutely right. In this particular case I believe Oakland’s airhead mayor and possibly other city officials were elected through ranked-choice voting, a parlor trick that seems on its face to make sense but actually results in the exact opposite of what voters intended.
Government employees are pension prostitutes. Doing as little as possible, to not jeopardize their later lifetime government pensions. No risks taken or proposed, no personal accountability for work product, just cogs in the partisan pay to play win the next election scheme.
Tax payers, time to take this scandal back into our own hands, just like Prop 13. Tax payer revolt is the only option left.
A YouTuber named Metal Leo produces videos documenting the closure of stores, restaurants, and other businesses in Democrat controlled cities like Oakland and the resulting devastation:
(https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hf36qNx_wm4)
Love that guy. But I hate what he has to walk through.
Robyn – – currently it is 11 to 1 against you. Grady Mack even threatened you! And look at all the conspiracy theories… These people don’t take well to opposing ideas. They are ready for the bloodbath… And I only mean that about vacancies… Lol
Still, even down here in sunny SoCal there are alarming rates of homelessness, crime, dislocation. We’ve had decades of mostly Dem leadership – – so how does one answer that? Eventually there will be more deterioration in the economy and a voter backlash like in the 80s. What if Grady is right?
Societal ills need solutions from government but that should mean parties working together to bring the best ideas and adjusting the course as needed. Can we all just get along?
Bums, blight, vagrants, crime and crazies. That all came first in growing concentrations, and that is why people finally left downtown and shopped online. Covid only cemented this outward flow of downtown business activity.
Used to dress up to go to Capwells, I Magnin and then have a coffee crunch sundae at Edy’s. You shopped all the Oakland downtown stores for your prom dress – no need to go anywhere else. Used to wait for the bus at night at 14th and Broadway after my evening college job shift was over, before returning to the Cal campus. That is the way it used to be.
Oh my.
Sure, we know and even expect that things will change over time, but not like this. It’s such a huge loss, in so many ways, and it’s a loss for everyone, even people who don’t live in Oakland or in any of the state’s cities. We live in California and all of California’s cities are our cities. Every bit of this devastation has been completely avoidable and unnecessary all along.
I live in Oakland, grew up here, lived back east for many years, and returned in 1990. The devastation exacerbated by COVID is visible in Berkeley, Richmond, Hayward, and San Leandro downtowns too. But it looks worse in Oakland and SF because, for one, it’s concentrated. You drive through and your eye falls on empty stores everywhere. Berkeley’s shopping areas are more spread out, and the city has so much student housing under construction. There’s more hustle and bustle, nightlife, and foot traffic there. The second reason the decimation hits Oakland and SF so terribly is that both cities have fallen so far from their former glory. But these are the downtowns we’re upset about. Oakland still has seven major shopping districts that residents get to very easily–Fruitvale, Rockridge, College Ave, Grand Lake/Lakeshore, Park Blvd, Temescal, and Laurel District.
I don’t blame political parties because I don’t believe, in my heart of hearts, in either Dems or Repubs. Growing up, I saw them work across the aisle to legislate and run government. Those good ole days are gone. I hope many small independent parties and groups of like-minded individuals will continue to rebuild the cities and their downtowns gradually.
The infrastructures, rail systems, hospitals, beautiful waterfronts and beautiful weather, all remain. It feels cyclical, e.g. I watched Brown Sugar restaurant go from a bustling hole-in-the-wall in West Oakland to a big space smack in the middle of downtown. I spent mucho dinero there, hosted several family events there. Crowded weekends, doing middling-ass weekdays is no way for a business to succeed. I watched the owner look more and more dejected as COVID dealt her out…even so, I know somebody else will eventually try again…not her but another entrepreneur. I have faith our big cities, including Detroit, Philly, and Oakl, will rebuild. They’ll just look very different and have different ethnic makeups.
Government employees were allowed to unionize. They became an autonomous entity unto themselves and for the past two decades learned to game election 99% in their own favor .
That is when this state went into real decline and few feel they can ever get it back again. These unions grew in power; and now work against us while holding control over every aspect of our daily lives .They are micromanages on steroids and we are forced to pay for them.
We now work for them; instead of a civil services working for us. There is your turning point in California. Teacher unions destroyed our once very fine public schools. SEIU and other affiliates destroyed our relationship with our own government .
We are resentful and feel Stockholm Syndromed by these new and unelected masters – the vast armies of nearly 500,000 government bureaucrats in this state holding power over all of us.