Uber to use Sears building in Oakland as East Bay office

A rendering of what Uber’s new Oakland headquarters will look like.

The San Francisco Business Times is reporting that the ridesharing app company Uber has plans to occupy the iconic Sears building in downtown Oakland.

The office of Uber in Oakland will become a co-headquarter, since the company will retain and continue to operate its facilities in San Francisco.

In a report by bizjournals.com, Uber’s new office will be the city’s “largest employer that is not a government agency or a medical center”.

Read the complete story at KQED News Fix.

Sears had sold the property to Lane Partners in 2014 for $24.25 million. She said, “Uber is absolutely ready to sit down and forge a partnership because they chose Oakland for its magic – for its soul – and so we are going to be working to get them to commit to make sure that we preserve that soul… and that’s affordability, that’s equity, that’s fighting against displacement and it’s also preserving the cultural vitality of that neighborhood”.

Oakland Mayor Libby Schaaf said, “Uber is a game changer for Oakland that will turn the city into the hottest new center of innovation”.

Oakland leaders and developers of Uptown Station have been seeking for months to attract a tech company from San Francisco or other locations to the historic building, with is in the Uptown district, a dining, entertainment, arts and retail district that has emerged as a cornerstone of a remarkable revival of downtown Oakland.

So yes, wow. Uber is enormous, and only getting more enormous by the day.

The company has envisaged restoring its seven storeys building in Oakland by hiring over a thousand employees within two years from now. The 370,000-square-foot building first opened in 1927 and for decades housed the H.C. Capwell department store. The company now has about 2,000 full-time Bay Area employees. It was severely damaged in the 1989 Loma Prieta quake and Sears took it over in 1994.

But first, more office development would have to occur, because the Uber deal removes from the market a major empty office complex. Schaaf said there were no tax incentives offered to the company for moving in and so far no particular charitable outreach has been arranged.

Oakland might be facing an increase and uprise in their real estate market as one multi- billion dollar company such as Uber decidesto make one of their homes.

Uber’s massive expansion into Oakland could prove controversial in a city historically noted for political activism and union organizing. But with the company now owning a large building in downtown Oakland, it seems certain it will remain a staple of the city for years to come.