{"id":243445,"date":"2026-03-30T14:28:10","date_gmt":"2026-03-30T14:28:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/243445\/"},"modified":"2026-03-30T14:28:10","modified_gmt":"2026-03-30T14:28:10","slug":"as-kaisers-presence-in-downtown-oakland-dwindles-so-does-foot-traffic","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/243445\/","title":{"rendered":"As Kaiser\u2019s Presence in Downtown Oakland Dwindles, So Does Foot Traffic"},"content":{"rendered":"

Mejia arrived in Oakland from Sacramento in 1970. By January 1992, he opened his 19th Street Station, a bar in the heart of downtown.<\/p>\n

\u201c\u200aI fell in love with Oakland,\u201d Mejia said. \u201cIt was a beautiful city back then.\u201d<\/p>\n

For decades, his bar had thrived on a stream of Kaiser Permanente employees<\/a> who worked nearby.<\/p>\n

\"\"Roy Mejia tends bar at 19th Street Station in Oakland on March 16, 2026. Mejia says he\u2019s able to keep costs down by not employing others to work at the bar. (Martin do Nascimento\/KQED)<\/p>\n

Kaiser Permanente \u2014 long one of downtown Oakland\u2019s largest employers \u2014 has been steadily shrinking its local office presence in recent years.<\/p>\n

The health care giant has relocated workers to suburban offices, reduced its real estate footprint and laid off hundreds of employees across California, changes that economists say are contributing to quieter streets and struggling small businesses in the city\u2019s core.<\/p>\n

Kaiser Permanente, once an anchor of downtown Oakland\u2019s office workforce, has in recent years pulled workers out of the city\u2019s core.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

In 2024, Kaiser relocated over 1,000 members of its Oakland workforce to a suburban hub, citing \u201cchanges in how and where employees have been working since the COVID-19 pandemic.\u201d Not too long after, they issued a memo<\/a> directing downtown Oakland employees to stay inside for lunch due to safety concerns.<\/p>\n

And in 2025, Kaiser laid off over 400 employees across 16 California counties. Alameda County \u2014 home to Oakland, the company\u2019s national headquarters, and the Kaiser Pleasanton campus \u2014 accounts for nearly half of these layoffs.<\/p>\n

But in a written statement, a spokesperson from Kaiser said that it \u201cremains committed to the City of Oakland, which is an integral part of Kaiser Permanente\u2019s history and future.\u201d<\/p>\n

The layoffs coincided with Kaiser\u2019s decreasing real estate footprint in Oakland, a trend that followed the COVID-19 pandemic. In 2020, the Kaiser Center at 300 Lakeside Drive was sold to TMG Partners<\/a>, and Kaiser terminated their occupancy in the building.<\/p>\n

\"\"An empty storefront at 19th Street and Harrison Street in Oakland on March 16, 2026. (Martin do Nascimento\/KQED)<\/p>\n

Similar acquisitions happened in 2024: Kaiser\u2019s 2000 Broadway building was sold to BART, the office tower and garage on Franklin Street went to Behring Companies, and 10% of Kaiser\u2019s Oakland-based employees were moved to Pleasanton.<\/p>\n

An SEC filing<\/a> shows that in January 2025, Kaiser extended its lease for 236,692 square feet of the Ordway building through 2027. The space, listed as Kaiser\u2019s corporate office on Google Maps, is down from the 366,000 square feet that Kaiser occupied in 2024, according to the San Francisco Chronicle.<\/a><\/p>\n

\u201cThe broader health care sector remains one of Oakland\u2019s few stable pillars supported by the presence of hospitals, clinics and social service providers,\u201d said Christopher Skerritt, an economist at Kincaid Wolstein<\/a>. \u201cBut office consolidation and telehealth adoption have limited in-city job growth.\u201d<\/p>\n

As a result, big cities like Oakland and San Francisco are losing commercial real estate to suburban hubs like Pleasanton and Walnut Creek, which have seen comparatively faster rates of economic recovery since the pandemic, according to Skerritt.<\/p>\n

\"\"Empty storefronts along 19th Street in Oakland on March 16, 2026. (Martin do Nascimento\/KQED)<\/p>\n

Many of the health care workers who remain in the city are remote or hybrid employees, Skerritt said, a change that, combined with Kaiser\u2019s downsized office footprint, has contributed to downtown Oakland\u2019s quieter streets.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe shift has cut daytime population density, reducing spending at restaurants, coffee shops, small retailers that depend on office workers for business,\u201d Skerritt said.<\/p>\n

Small businesses in downtown Oakland have felt these effects. Tierra Mia Coffee, a six-minute walk from 1 Kaiser Plaza, has \u201cmost definitely\u201d seen a drop in business since early 2024, according to its supervisor, Odiseo Castrejon.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Mejia arrived in Oakland from Sacramento in 1970. By January 1992, he opened his 19th Street Station, a…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":243446,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[34],"tags":[143,145,144],"class_list":["post-243445","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-oakland","tag-oakland","tag-oakland-headlines","tag-oakland-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/243445","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=243445"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/243445\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/243446"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=243445"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=243445"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=243445"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}