Downtown Tulsa Has a Grocery Store Again. It Came Up North Peoria First.

"For an urban footprint store, you need walkable rooftops, so apartments, townhomes, condos that are in proximate location to it. Tulsa is more of a driving community." That's how Mike Dickerson, a controller at PartnerTulsa, explained to The Oklahoma Eagle in May why downtown had gone a generation without a grocer. Four months later, the store that finally answered him opened on the ground floor of an apartment building. It came from a grocer that got its start at 1725 N. Peoria Ave. in 2021.

Oasis Fresh Market soft-opened at 119 E. 6th St., inside the ARCO apartment building, on Monday, Sept. 21, 2026. The grand opening followed on Wednesday, Sept. 30, with more than 100 people there, according to the Tulsa Regional Chamber. The Chamber called it the first full-service grocery store downtown in more than a decade.

Twelve years, and one seven-month exception

The last downtown grocer was Folks Urban Market. It closed in 2014 after only seven months. Before that, Homeland closed its downtown store in 2002. Dickerson put it more starkly. He told The Oklahoma Eagle that Folks was the only exception in 25 years without a downtown grocer.

Grocery stores run on thin margins, so operators are picky about locations, and downtown has had three problems: weak walkability, limited transit access, and relatively few residential units. The city set up tax increment financing districts to pay for roads, sidewalks and lighting. Several projects got built under them, but none of those projects produced a grocery store.

Then the pandemic pulled weekday shoppers out of downtown. In May, Emily Scott, president of the Downtown Tulsa Partnership, told the Eagle that downtown sees about 30% less foot traffic on a typical day than it did in 2019. That's the setting for the ARCO store's opening. Fewer office workers walk by at lunch than before 2020, so the residents upstairs and nearby carry more of the load.

Until now, people living downtown who wanted a full grocery trip had to leave the area. In its opening-day coverage, Tulsa Flyer described downtown-area residents making the long walk to Warehouse Market at 301 S. Lewis Ave. for groceries. A downtown resident quoted by News On 6 said they used to drive outside the IDL for groceries.

The operator, not the subsidy, made the difference

What changed in 2026 is who took the risk. Oasis founder and CEO A.J. Johnson opened his first store on North Peoria in May 2021. At the ribbon cutting for the south Tulsa store in August, he told The Oklahoma Eagle, "Five years ago people thought we would never make it."

The downtown financing shows how the project came together. Oasis worked with Price Family Partnerships, the ARCO building's owner, and Oasis owns the store while leasing the space. TEDC Creative Capital put in seed money. At the grand opening, as reported by the Tulsa Regional Chamber, Mayor Monroe Nichols said that when he talks with other mayors, "In almost every case, the city is having to be an owner and investor in making that happen. We didn't have to do that here."

The store's design also came partly from the neighborhood. Oasis held a community gathering in February, and hundreds of attendees offered ideas for what they wanted to see in the store. The ARCO store is about 14,000 square feet, smaller than the 16,000-square-foot original on North Peoria. That's the "urban footprint" Dickerson described, set directly beneath the apartments it serves.

Four stores in roughly five years

The downtown opening makes more sense next to Oasis's other locations. It's the company's fourth Tulsa location, and three of the four opened in 2026.

The south Tulsa store took a different route. Oasis bought the former Cox Cash Saver near 61st and Peoria and kept it open during a two-month changeover to new signage and new suppliers. An Oasis spokesperson told The Oklahoma Eagle the store would start accepting food assistance programs such as Double Up Oklahoma, which Cash Saver hadn't accepted.

The Western Supply micro-market came first downtown. It's a smaller market inside an apartment building, and it opened in April, five months before the ARCO store. Coverage hasn't spelled out whether people who don't live in that building can shop there.

Why "June" turned into late September

The ARCO opening date moved several times. Each move points to the same costs that kept other grocers away from downtown.

1. March 2026. The Tulsa Flyer previewed the store with a June opening target.
2. May 2026. The Oklahoma Eagle updated its story to say the opening had been pushed to July.
3. August 2026. At the south Tulsa ribbon cutting, the downtown store was expected in late August.
4. Sept. 4, 2026. The Oklahoma Eagle traced the setbacks to code requirements for the historic building, extra Tulsa Health Department clearances, and shipping delays on equipment from Europe amid tariffs.
5. Sept. 21, 2026. Soft opening. Johnson told the Tulsa Flyer the downtown project had taken 21 months, "Amongst the shipping delays and the tariffs and all the craziness."

A suburban grocer building a new store on open land avoids most of that list. Putting a grocery into an older downtown building means meeting the codes that come with the building, and for downtown Tulsa, that's part of what a store costs.

What's on the shelves, and what's still coming

During the soft-opening week, the store kept limited hours, 11 a.m. to 6 p.m., Monday through Thursday. Regular hours of 6 a.m. to 9 p.m. were scheduled to start Sept. 28. None of the coverage since the grand opening has restated those hours. Check them directly with Oasis before a 6 a.m. coffee run or an 8:45 p.m. stop on the way home.

At the soft opening, a grab-and-go section was in the middle of the store. Oasis said a salad bar and an Oasis deli serving hot meals would arrive "in the coming weeks." In its Oct. 1 grand opening story, the Chamber said the store will offer daily lunch specials, a fresh food bar, and prepared meals including salads, sushi, salmon, hot entrées and Simple Simon's Pizza. The March preview also listed produce, deli and butcher departments, plus delivery through Instacart, Uber Eats and Oasis's own service.

The lunch menu matters as much as the shelves. A hot entrée counter on East 6th serves the office workers still coming downtown during the day. The produce and butcher counters serve the residents upstairs and on nearby blocks in the evening. With foot traffic still about 30% below 2019, a store that serves both groups has two chances each day to bring in customers.

Two changes on 6th Street to watch

The first is curbside. The Tulsa Flyer reported that the bike lanes in front of the store will be converted into parking spots. No later report has confirmed the work is finished. If you ride that stretch of 6th Street, expect the layout to change.

The second is what comes after the grocery store. PartnerTulsa told The Oklahoma Eagle its next goal is a downtown pharmacy. A pharmacy depends on the same "walkable rooftops" math that kept downtown without a grocer for so long. Oasis now has two downtown locations open, the ARCO store and the Western Supply micro-market. How well they do will show whether downtown has enough residents to support the next everyday business.

At Access Real Estate, we track openings like the ARCO store because they change what a downtown Tulsa address offers on an ordinary weekday. If you own a downtown condo or rental and want to talk about what a full grocery store within walking distance could mean for it, or if you'd like our property management team to keep watching the blocks around your building, we're glad to talk it through with you. Work With Us.