Nearly 38% of Oakland’s downtown office space was empty in the first quarter of the year, according to a new report from the commercial real estate firm Cushman & Wakefield.
The findings, first reported by the East Bay Times, show that Oakland’s vacancy rate remains stubbornly high six years after the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic. Oakland isn’t alone in this problem, the paper reported: vacancy rates in downtown San Francisco and downtown San Jose are hovering at 31%. But while San Francisco and San Jose have seen slight declines in their vacancy rates over the past year, Oakland’s has ticked upward.
Oakland’s downtown vacancy rate is steeply up from 2019, shortly before the pandemic, when the rate was 10.8%, the East Bay Times noted…