Big City Office Buildings Going The Way Of DoDo?

Is the office building in Manhattan & DC’s Foggy Bottom a dying specie as workers resist returning to their 9-5 jobs forcing gov’t & corporate landlords to “imagine the unthinkable”, e.g., converting at least some empty space to residential?

The WSJ, for one, reports how “New York officials are facing the reality that the district’s economy might never be the same” while in the nation’s capital, the downtown streets, once overrun with government workers from Monday through Friday, are more like empty than not. “In New York and other cities across the country,” the newspaper noted, “it’s becoming clear … most people don’t want to return to their daily commutes” as vacancy rates are reportedly as high as 50%. “Why should the government bring back workers to all its office buildings in DC,” opined one Washingtonian, “when they [and their workers] are saving so much money” by continuing to do business via telecommuting?

So, the WSJ reports, city planners and landlords are increasingly considering they “reinvent” themselves, e.g., by converting parts of their office inventory to residential since “people still very much WANT to live in the big city,” just not work there. Even if the conversion rate is as low as 25%, imagine the impact on infrastructure, transportation, small businesses and political gamesmanship …

Davd Soul