Reem's California opened its doors at 85 Webster Street on June 26, in the same square where three other restaurants have closed their doors this year. Both things are true. Neither cancels the other out.
That's the part the "what's new at Jack London Square" roundups tend to flatten. A new bakery opens and it reads as a comeback story. A restaurant closes and it reads as a warning sign. Put them on the same three blocks in the same six months and you get something more accurate: a waterfront district that isn't rising or falling so much as being actively rebuilt, tenant by tenant, while its long-running anchors keep the lights on underneath the churn.
The Same Block, Two Signs
Left Bank Brasserie, Forge Pizza, and Ginza Sushi have all closed at Jack London Square this year, with operators citing rising costs and declining customer counts. That's a real stretch of storefronts sitting empty or in transition. At the same time, Reem's California picked the former Timeless Coffee space to open its first worker-owned location, a 3,000-square-foot cafe and production bakery. Kitsch Coffee opened in June. Hysteria Sports Bar, billed as Oakland's first women's sports bar, celebrated its launch this summer with an event at Xingones that drew more than 200 supporters. Dave & Buster's is preparing to open at the Square as well, according to the Port of Oakland.
None of that reads as a district in decline. It also doesn't read as one in a straightforward boom. It reads as a place where the churn is the story, not a footnote to it.
What Actually Landed This Year
Here's what's opened at Jack London Square in 2026, by name:
- Reem's California (85 Webster St.) opened June 26 as the brand's first worker-owned outpost, run day to day by three longtime Reem's employees: Rebeca Cid Del Prado, Diana Aguirre, and Angela Santos Lima. The space functions mostly as a production bakery and commissary, with a takeout counter selling mana'eesh, dips, and coffee.
- Kitsch Coffee opened at the Square in June.
- Hysteria Sports Bar launched this summer as Oakland's first women's sports bar.
- Dave & Buster's is set to join the Square's tenant lineup, joining existing anchors Plank, Scott's Seafood, Yoshi's, and Rosenblum Cellars.
- New hopscotch murals now run along the sidewalks, turning stretches of pavement into public art.
Reem's return carries more weight than a typical bakery opening. Founder Reem Assil first opened Reem's in Oakland's Fruitvale district in 2017, and later ran the Arab fine-dining restaurant Dyafa a few steps from where the new location now sits, before Dyafa closed in 2020. A Ferry Building outpost closed in 2024 after the facility chose not to renew Reem's lease. The Mission District flagship was ranked No. 81 in the San Francisco Chronicle's 2026 Top 100 Restaurants in the Bay Area. Co-founder Zaynah Hindi called the Jack London Square opening "a homecoming in every sense of the word."
"We have been waiting to come back to this community and we know many have been waiting for us." — Reem Assil, co-founder, Reem's California
That's not marketing copy written for a grand opening banner. It's a chef who ran two prior businesses within walking distance of the new one, describing a return to a neighborhood that already knew her food.
Why the Turnover Doesn't Mean What It Looks Like
The instinct when three restaurants close in the same year is to read it as a district losing its footing. The Port of Oakland's own framing points somewhere else. Starting in 2026, the Port gained new flexibility to fill waterfront spaces with local-serving businesses such as grocery stores, salons, gyms, and makerspaces, rather than being limited to the tourist-and-tenant mix that has defined the Square for decades. Dave & Buster's is part of that shift. So, in a smaller and more personal way, is Reem's choosing a production-and-commissary model over a full-service restaurant, and Hysteria choosing a sports bar built around a specific, previously unfilled niche in Oakland.
Put plainly, some of what looks like the Square struggling to hold onto tenants is closer to the Square's ownership actively steering toward a different tenant mix. A closed brasserie and an opened bakery aren't opposite signals from the same market. They're two data points in the same leasing strategy, one where the answer to "what belongs in a working waterfront district" is being rewritten in real time rather than settled.
The Calendar Nobody Canceled
None of the turnover has touched the Square's event programming, which is still running at full pace this fall. Two free concert series are happening on overlapping schedules:
- Saturdays through October 3, 6 to 8 p.m., at the plaza near Scott's Seafood
- Sundays September 27 and October 11, 3 to 5 p.m., on the Ferry Lawn, with Oakland musician and educator Kev Choice featured at the October 11 show
Both are free. The Port of Oakland is also running free harbor tours through October, and the Oakland-Alameda water shuttle pilot, which connects the Square to Alameda by ferry, was extended earlier this year rather than allowed to lapse. None of that reads like a waterfront pulling back its public-facing programming to match a rockier retail year. If anything, the calendar is the one part of the Square that hasn't changed shape at all.
A Fall Weekend at the Square, As It Actually Stands
If you're mapping out a weekend around the Square before the concert series wraps, here's what that looks like with the current lineup in place. Grab coffee or a pastry from Kitsch Coffee or Reem's, which runs Tuesday through Saturday from 11 a.m. to 9 p.m. with shorter Sunday and Monday hours. Walk the estuary past the new hopscotch murals. Catch the Saturday 6 p.m. set at the Scott's Seafood plaza, or come back Sunday afternoon for the Ferry Lawn show, especially the October 11 date with Kev Choice on the bill. If you're coming from Alameda, the water shuttle is running and worth checking before you default to driving. Hysteria is a reasonable stop for anyone who wants a game on while they're at it, and Dave & Buster's will add another option once it opens.
That itinerary would have looked different a year ago, and it will likely look different again in another year. The restaurants that closed this year weren't replaced by nothing. They were replaced, in most cases, by something built for a slightly different version of who spends a Saturday at the water's edge. Reem's chose a takeout-and-wholesale model over Dyafa's sit-down format. Hysteria chose a category, women's sports viewing, that didn't previously exist at the Square. Dave & Buster's and the Port's shift toward grocery, salon, and gym-style local-serving tenants suggest a district trying to hold onto both the visitor traffic Yoshi's and Scott's Seafood have always brought in, and the kind of everyday foot traffic that keeps a place full on a Tuesday, not just a concert Saturday.
The version of Jack London Square that existed in early 2026 is not the version standing there now, and neither is the final one. What's actually there this fall, from the hopscotch murals to the Ferry Lawn shows, is worth seeing before it shifts again.
Anian Tunney and Adrienne Krumins live and work in the East Bay neighborhoods they write about. If you're curious how a changing corner like Jack London Square fits into the wider Oakland picture, reach out to Anian Tunney and Adrienne Krumins.