Is Oakland a Costco City?

Oakland leadership is considering bringing Costco to Oakland. Oakland has already demonstrated the consumer demand. The question is whether residents will organize to bring the ownership benefits home.

In 2026, the Oakland City Council approved a 24-month exclusive negotiation agreement with Costco Wholesale Corporation for city property at 101 Admiral Robert Toney Way and 2308 Wake Avenue. Costco’s exclusivity is conditioned on a $300,000 payment, and the agreement allows two additional six-month extensions at $25,000 each. The approval begins a negotiation. It does not approve construction, guarantee a warehouse or establish an opening date.

Oakland does not need to be persuaded to shop at Costco. Oakland is already doing it.

According to figures cited from a city report, roughly 90,000 Oakland residents hold Costco memberships and spend an estimated $270 million at the retailer each year. Because Oakland has no warehouse, much of that spending crosses municipal lines into San Leandro, Richmond and San Francisco.

That makes the proposed Costco at the former Oakland Army Base unusually easy to understand from a consumer’s perspective. The harder question to answer is why Oakland deserves a Costco when its residents have been willing to travel and spend their dollars in ways that improve other communities with Costcos.

The answer cannot be that Oakland is entitled to another company’s investment. Cities earn major investment by demonstrating demand, creating workable development conditions, protecting customers and employees, and organizing residents behind a clear public-benefit vision. Oakland has already proved the demand. It must now prove that it is prepared to convert demand into durable local value.

The strongest case for Costco is already visible: Oakland residents shop there. Now residents must organize around a clear public-benefit vision.

A serious pro-Costco case should describe the opportunity with confidence while insisting that the final agreement converts scale into measurable public benefit. Jobs must be accessible to Oakland residents. Revenue assumptions must survive scrutiny. Environmental remediation and traffic mitigation must be enforceable. Neighborhood businesses must have a way to participate in the new commercial activity.

The opportunity already in motion

Demand is not the missing ingredient

Consumers versus owners

Oakland residents currently participate in Costco’s economy as consumers. They buy memberships, fill carts and purchase fuel. But communities containing the warehouses participate in a second capacity: they host the jobs, capture applicable local tax revenue, attract linked trips and gain leverage for surrounding development.

That is the consumer-versus-owner distinction. It does not mean the city would own Costco. It means Oakland would host and negotiate around the productive asset instead of merely consuming what that asset produces elsewhere.

When residents travel to San Leandro, Richmond or San Francisco for Costco, the products return to Oakland. Most of the place-based economic benefits do not. Employees report to workplaces in those communities. Taxable transactions are recorded there. Nearby restaurants and businesses receive some of the secondary visits. Public agencies there gain revenue and commercial data supporting future investment.

Oakland should want more than access. It should want proximity to production, employment and investment.

The spillover benefits and why they are not automatic

Large warehouses and factories can improve the economic trajectory of struggling communities. A new facility creates a primary layer of jobs, construction activity and taxable commerce. Those gains can then produce secondary effects: employees spend locally, suppliers serve the facility, nearby parcels become more attractive and governments gain additional resources for services and infrastructure.

Economists call these multiplier or spillover effects. They are often described politically as trickle-down benefits. The important point for Oakland is that the benefits become stronger when local policy deliberately connects the new anchor to residents and surrounding neighborhoods.

Without local hiring, safe transportation, infrastructure planning and community-business participation, a warehouse can become an island: busy inside its property line but weakly connected to the people living around it. Oakland’s job is to prevent that outcome.

Four reasons to bring the spending home

What a local Costco could change

From paychecks to neighborhoods

How the benefits could travel beyond the warehouse

When Oakland residents gain stable jobs close to home, they spend less time and money commuting. Their paychecks circulate through rent, mortgages, childcare, food, transportation, personal services and local entertainment. Developers see stronger evidence of demand, and local businesses gain customers who are present in the neighborhood before and after work.

No single warehouse can repair Oakland’s housing market or guarantee neighborhood prosperity. New development can also create displacement pressure if housing production and tenant protections do not keep pace. The city should connect Costco’s employment opportunity to broader housing, transportation and small-business strategies rather than treating the warehouse as a self-contained victory.

A warehouse is an anchor, not a complete economic strategy. The public value comes from what Oakland builds around it.

The cost of exporting Oakland loyalty

Oakland keeps consuming. Other cities receive the spending.

Oakland residents understand the consumer-versus-owner divide because they have already lived through it in professional sports. The Warriors moved from Oakland to San Francisco. The Raiders moved to Las Vegas. The Athletics left Oakland after the 2024 season and began playing temporarily in West Sacramento while pursuing a permanent Las Vegas stadium.

Those moves did not erase Oakland residents’ emotional interest in the teams. What changed was where the economic activity occurred. Tickets, parking, food, hospitality and surrounding entertainment spending increasingly flowed to San Francisco, Sacramento and Las Vegas. Oakland retained much of the cultural loyalty while losing the physical venues that concentrated commerce.

Oakland also lost its only In-N-Out Burger in 2024. The restaurant closed despite being busy and reportedly profitable after the company cited repeated crime and safety problems affecting customers and employees. Consumer demand alone does not guarantee that a business will remain in a city. A city must also provide conditions in which major employers believe they can invest, operate safely and grow.

Modernization is not abandoning Oakland

Oakland residents should become more vocal in supporting the modernization of their city. Modernization does not require erasing Oakland’s identity, handing public land to private interests without accountability or accepting every proposed development. It means refusing to let nostalgia become a substitute for investment.

A modern Oakland can protect longtime residents while welcoming employers. It can preserve culture while building new infrastructure. It can demand environmental repair while supporting commercially viable uses. It can insist on community benefits without making development practically impossible.

California comparison

The public agreement determines who captures the value

The California communities discussed earlier establish that Costco can generate substantial recurring revenue and help activate difficult development areas. Oakland should study them for more than proof that the opportunity is valuable. Each also reveals how the structure of a public agreement determines who ultimately receives that value.

The comparison below converts those examples into negotiating lessons. San Dimas demonstrates the durability of the revenue. Roseville shows how a warehouse can support infrastructure and unlock a growth area. Brea warns that impressive revenue can still leave the public questioning how proceeds are divided. Oakland enters negotiations with the strongest advantage of all: a large customer base that already exists.

These cases do not prove Oakland’s exact return. They show that Costco can materially affect a city’s revenue base and that the negotiated agreement determines how much of the benefit reaches the public.

Support the project. Negotiate the proof.

Supporting Costco does not require Oakland to accept a blank check. It means moving the project forward while insisting that the final agreement translates consumer demand into enforceable commitments. Six priorities should define what residents and city leaders expect before the deal is complete.

From support to civic power

How residents can help make Costco happen

The exclusive negotiation agreement is an opening, not a finish line. Residents who support the project should organize around a specific message: complete the negotiation, protect West Oakland and make the public benefits enforceable.

The residents most likely to shape the final agreement are not merely the loudest. They are the ones who remain organized through every technical stage.

The larger lesson

Oakland can keep its identity and build its future

Cities often treat economic-development decisions as a contest between optimism and opposition. That is too crude. Oakland can be ambitious about attracting investment and exacting about public value at the same time.

The proposed Costco offers four aligned benefits. It could bring high-quality jobs closer to residents, retain a portion of spending currently leaving the city, improve access to household and business essentials, and activate a difficult former military parcel. Few developments begin with such visible proof of demand.

The responsible pro-Costco position is not a blank check. It is a mandate to complete the negotiation, verify the economics, protect West Oakland and make every important community commitment enforceable.

Oakland residents have already voted with their membership cards. They now have to participate as something more powerful than consumers. They have to act like stakeholders in the future of their city.