A Local Summer at Jack London Square: What Changed on the Waterfront This Year

Sunday at Water Street still looks like Sunday. The farmers market tents go up around eleven, someone unrolls a yoga mat on the lawn by Scott's Seafood a little before two, and the freight trains keep their own schedule down Embarcadero West. What has changed, if you have not walked the district in a few months, is almost everything happening between those familiar routines. Two of the storefronts you passed last fall are now something else. A third is about to go dark. And the reason all of it is happening at once is a piece of state legislation that took effect on January 1.

That is the thread worth pulling. The churn along the estuary this spring is not the usual restaurant-industry weather. It is the first visible run of tenants signing leases under a rewritten rulebook, and the mix that lands here over the next year will tell you what your neighborhood is becoming.

The rule that quietly rewrote the tenant list

Most of Jack London Square sits on land held under the state's Tidelands Trust, which for decades restricted leases to uses tied to the waterfront: fisheries, navigation, recreation, and what the state calls "visitor-serving commercial establishments" like restaurants and hotels. The Port of Oakland, which owns several parcels in the district, had to fit every tenant into that frame. As KQED reported last fall, that is why the closest thing to a grocery store in walking distance has been a restaurant supply house, and why the bartender at Merchants' Saloon has to drive to Alameda for basics.

A bill authored by State Senator Jesse Arreguín, signed by Governor Newsom and effective January 1, 2026, lifted those limits. The Port has said publicly that it can now consider leases with grocers, salons, gyms, and makerspaces. In its own announcement in May, the Port framed the shift as a bet on "steady, year-round foot traffic" from tenants who serve the people who already live here, not just weekend visitors from across the bay.

So when you notice new signage this summer, read it as data. Every lease signed after January is a small vote on what the estuary is for.

What actually opened this spring

Three additions changed the ground-floor experience of the district between May and late June:

• Dave & Buster's opened at 55 Harrison Street on May 4, taking a big-box footprint the Port has been trying to activate for years.
• Kitsch Coffee started pouring in May inside Narrative, a vintage design collective operating out of the old Bed Bath & Beyond space. The sublease model, coffee counter inside a retail tenant, is exactly the kind of hybrid the old rules made cumbersome.
• Reem's celebrated its grand opening on Friday, June 26, next door to Dyafa. The new location combines Chef Reem Assil's Arab bakery and restaurant with a wholesale production kitchen, all under a worker-owned cooperative structure. It marks the brand's return to Oakland after its Fruitvale storefront closed in 2021, and its Ferry Building kiosk closed in January 2025 when the property manager did not renew the lease.

If you tracked Reem's through its Berkeleyside coverage, you already know the flagship is meant to function as a community space as much as a bakery. Practically, for residents, it means a full-service kitchen open Tuesday through Saturday until 9 p.m., with shorter Sunday and Monday hours running to 3 p.m.

What is leaving, and why the timing matters

The same week Reem's opened, KTVU confirmed what regulars had been hearing: Plank will close in August after twelve years on the waterfront. Owner PT Lovern told the station that pandemic-era debt, never forgiven, caught up with the business despite steady effort to work through it. Plank first opened three weeks before the March 2020 shutdown, which turns out to be a long shadow.

Losing the beer garden, bowling lanes, and bocce courts in a single tenant is not a small subtraction. Plank was one of the few places in the district built for long, low-key afternoons with a group. Its footprint is also exactly the kind of large, multi-use space that will now be legal to reimagine under the new law. What replaces it will be worth watching, because a Plank-sized parcel gives the Port real leverage to bring in something the neighborhood has been asking for. Everett & Jones owner Dorcia White told KQED, standing in her Broadway location, that a nail salon would be welcome; she currently drives to Alameda for manicures. Merchants' Saloon's Chris Strong said he would settle for a grocery store where he did not have to buy fifty pounds of onions at a time.

Those are quotes from residents, not consultants. They are also, functionally, a wish list the Port can now legally fulfill.

Your Sunday, mapped

The weekly rhythm on the waterfront has not changed, and for people who live within walking distance it remains the easiest hour-by-hour argument for staying put. The Jack London Square Farmers Market has held down Water Street for more than three decades and now runs under the Golden State Farmers Market Association.

None of these require a signup. All of them are free. If you moved into a Jack London loft in the last two years and have not built them into your weekend, you are missing the district's cheapest and most consistent amenity.

The anchors still holding the corners

For a neighborhood in flux, the durable tenants matter more than usual. Yoshi's is still doing jazz and Japanese from its longtime spot. Scott's Seafood still occupies its bayfront perch. Rosenblum Cellars keeps its waterfront tasting room open. Everett & Jones Barbeque continues to serve its Broadway location, and Merchants' Saloon opens weekdays at 7 a.m. for the dockworkers and postal-sorting crews who have kept it in business longer than most of the flashier tenants have existed.

Add the new arrivals to that list, subtract Plank, and you can see the shape of the district by August: heavier on food, still light on daily-errand retail, waiting on the first grocery or services lease that the January law will make possible. The Port's real estate team has signaled that smaller tenants will land first and that a full grocery could take longer. That is a fair expectation; leasing timelines on Tidelands parcels have never been fast.

What this means if you already live here

The honest read on Jack London Square this summer is that the neighborhood is in the middle of a controlled experiment, and the results are legible in real time on the storefronts you pass on your walk to the ferry. You do not need to move to a different part of Oakland to get a different neighborhood; the one you already live in is remaking itself around you. The best way to influence what lands next is to be a regular at the places that just opened and to show up at the community feedback sessions the Oakland Department of Transportation has been running at the farmers market on the Embarcadero Rail and Safety Improvements project.

If you own a home or condo here and you are curious how this tenant-mix shift is filtering into resale conversations, a walk through the district with someone who tracks it week by week is more useful than any spreadsheet. That is the work East Bay Digs does across Jack London Square and the surrounding Oakland waterfront, and a free neighborhood consultation is the fastest way to turn what you are noticing on your Sunday walks into an informed take on where the district is heading. Reach out when you are ready to compare notes.