Chevron Selling Headquarters In San Ramon

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Alpha8472
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Chevron Selling Headquarters In San Ramon

Post by Alpha8472 »

Chevron is selling their headquarters in San Ramon, California. I drive by the huge headquarters very often.

It could hold about 6,000 workers, but only has about 3,000. Around 1990, the headquarters moved from San Francisco to San Ramon. There was a huge Chevron office complex in Concord, California that held many workers, but it was turned into an outdoor shopping center a few years ago.

Chevron is encouraging employees to move to the office in Houston, Texas.

The movement of workers to Texas has been going on for years, but COVID accelerated it.

The restaurants in San Ramon have been hit hard. Many restaurants have closed. Many people are working from home. The outdoor mall complex called The Lot across the street from Chevron's corporate office opened up just before COVID and is only busy on weekends.

Downsizing at this Chevron office complex has affected all retail in the area. The stores are emptier, restaurants are emptier, and supermarkets have closed including Nob Hill Foods. Buffalo Wild Wings closed. The lunch time crowds of thousands from Chevron are gone.

The city seems depressed. Sprouts was once crowded, but now it is very empty and sad looking. Whole Foods across from Chevron is not crowded. Target is very empty.

Chevron gas stations in the city are overpriced. The quality at the convenience stores have slipped. The stores are dirtier, unstocked, and messy. The corporate office people who once kept these stores on their toes are probably working from home. It really affects operations.

Many office buildings in this city have been demolished to build expensive houses. That is where the money is being made these days. San Ramon was once all about attracting businesses to the abundant office space. Now it is all about demolishing office parks and turning supermarkets into housing subdivisions. Retail and restaurants are disappearing as office workers move out of state.
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Re: Chevron Selling Headquarters In San Ramon

Post by HCal »

Houston has historically been the corporate headquarters of the domestic oil industry. Chevron was a bit of an outlier being headquartered in California. We will see if they officially move to Houston, or keep a downsized headquarters in San Ramon.

But honestly, this is the new post-COVID reality in many places. Companies have realized that work-from-home isn't as bad as they thought, and employees love it. Large crowds walking from office buildings to local lunch spots each day is just not happening like it used to.

California definitely has a housing crisis, so office buildings becoming housing may not be such a bad thing. Time marches on...
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Re: Chevron Selling Headquarters In San Ramon

Post by storewanderer »

HCal wrote: June 28th, 2022, 8:08 pm Houston has historically been the corporate headquarters of the domestic oil industry. Chevron was a bit of an outlier being headquartered in California. We will see if they officially move to Houston, or keep a downsized headquarters in San Ramon.

But honestly, this is the new post-COVID reality in many places. Companies have realized that work-from-home isn't as bad as they thought, and employees love it. Large crowds walking from office buildings to local lunch spots each day is just not happening like it used to.

California definitely has a housing crisis, so office buildings becoming housing may not be such a bad thing. Time marches on...
Housing crisis until nobody can afford to live there anymore, or nobody who does live there can afford what these new housing developments were hoping to get people to pay. There is a real disconnect with these current housing projects on what rents they hope to get, and what rents people in the areas can actually afford... I think the housing crisis is more of an affordability crisis than anything else. $2k a month apartments in Reno, Nevada (thousands of which are currently under development- city council will approve anything after they let a developer buy and demolish all of the old run down $400 a month motels that a lot of people were living in) are a joke and not going to fly- unaffordable, and a poor value at that.

I thought I read somewhere that Chevron is going to retain its head office in California, but maybe not.

There were rumors after Chevron dumped its Hawaii refinery that they were going to do the same with their NorCal refinery but the rumor on Richmond was to close it, disassemble it, and ship its components off to be re-used elsewhere. I didn't believe that for a second but it is funny what rumors come out.
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Re: Chevron Selling Headquarters In San Ramon

Post by storewanderer »

Alpha8472 wrote: June 28th, 2022, 4:37 am

The restaurants in San Ramon have been hit hard. Many restaurants have closed. Many people are working from home. The outdoor mall complex called The Lot across the street from Chevron's corporate office opened up just before COVID and is only busy on weekends.

Downsizing at this Chevron office complex has affected all retail in the area. The stores are emptier, restaurants are emptier, and supermarkets have closed including Nob Hill Foods. Buffalo Wild Wings closed. The lunch time crowds of thousands from Chevron are gone.

The city seems depressed. Sprouts was once crowded, but now it is very empty and sad looking. Whole Foods across from Chevron is not crowded. Target is very empty.

Chevron gas stations in the city are overpriced. The quality at the convenience stores have slipped. The stores are dirtier, unstocked, and messy. The corporate office people who once kept these stores on their toes are probably working from home. It really affects operations.
Do you notice the corporate operated Chevrons are any better? There is a mix of corporate and dealer Chevrons in San Ramon.

The convenience stores are having a really hard time with staffing. The corporate Chevrons pay one of the highest wages and will hire full time and provide a good benefit program (relative to other c-stores) and I have found them to still be in pretty good shape lately in other areas I've been (SoCal, Sacramento). Extra Mile is quite inconsistent and I liked it better when only the corporate Chevrons had Extra Mile, it was easier to identify the best stations.
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Re: Chevron Selling Headquarters In San Ramon

Post by Alpha8472 »

How can you tell if a Chevron is corporate or not? I saw a really ugly Texaco across from a Chevron that has the signs cheaply covered up regarding the auto shop there. I saw another with a gigantic American flag and flagpole visible for miles. Perhaps that was corporate run.
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Re: Chevron Selling Headquarters In San Ramon

Post by buckguy »

HCal wrote: June 28th, 2022, 8:08 pm Houston has historically been the corporate headquarters of the domestic oil industry. Chevron was a bit of an outlier being headquartered in California. We will see if they officially move to Houston, or keep a downsized headquarters in San Ramon.

But honestly, this is the new post-COVID reality in many places. Companies have realized that work-from-home isn't as bad as they thought, and employees love it. Large crowds walking from office buildings to local lunch spots each day is just not happening like it used to.

California definitely has a housing crisis, so office buildings becoming housing may not be such a bad thing. Time marches on...
Pre-merger, Texaco, despite the name, was based in New York---the Chrysler building for many years and then White Plains. But you're right that the long term drift has been to Houston. BP moved there from Ohio, although they've kept an Amoco base in Chicago. Exxon moved from NYC and Mobil had been in Virginia after having been in New York.

Converting office buildings to housing is complicated depending on layouts and can be expensive because of the need to greatly upgrade plumbing and deal with HVAC. Suburban buildings and post-WWII urban buildings often are the most difficult because of the layouts. Rehabbing office buildings as housing in the DC area has had its advocates but developers haven't been interested. Instead, they have taken low density, low rise suburban office complexes from 60s-80s, demolished them and built high rise housing. This is happening in Tysons Corner and to a lesser extent in what's now called "North Bethesda", although replacement of old strip retail with mixed use also is very common there.
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Re: Chevron Selling Headquarters In San Ramon

Post by Alpha8472 »

Chevron is paying relocation costs for employees who move to Texas. The company may keep a small token headquarters here, but operationally the company is based in Texas. Perhaps some executives live in San Ramon and want to work from home while also having a nearby office for a teleconference.
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Re: Chevron Selling Headquarters In San Ramon

Post by storewanderer »

Alpha8472 wrote: June 29th, 2022, 12:04 am How can you tell if a Chevron is corporate or not? I saw a really ugly Texaco across from a Chevron that has the signs cheaply covered up regarding the auto shop there. I saw another with a gigantic American flag and flagpole visible for miles. Perhaps that was corporate run.
Usually the stations with no cash price/credit price combined with Extra Mile is how I can tell it is a corporate operated site. They are only around the larger cities (bay area, Sacramento, Los Angeles, San Diego). They aren't corporate in places like Redding, Fresno, or rural areas.

These stations are strategically placed to be high fuel volume and high fuel price.

They also sometimes take locations over and run them as Corporate then move them to franchisees. That is currently in the process of happening in Baker. I've seen it happen with some lower performing locations around Sacramento too.

But this is the closest thing they have to a locator:
https://apply.jobappnetwork.com/csi/en? ... California
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