The ADRR

Introduction. As the economic trauma of the Covid pandemic, and the data dust up it sparked have eased, there seems to have been a growing agreement that a paraphrase of Mark Twain was in order: the death of our major downtowns was much exaggerated. Thus reassured, the time has now come for leaders and stakeholders to get beyond that realization and to start forging realistic, viable strategies and programs for the recovery and future growth of their downtowns. However, the formulation of effective strategies depends on properly scoping out the challenges and opportunities our larger downtowns now face.  In a milieu filled with fear, uncertainty and inadequate information it was tough to properly scope out these challenges. That was compounded by the needs of wounded interests to make exaggerated claims of doom to spark wanted governmental assistance. By now, though, the data dust up has settled enough for such assessments to be done usefully. To illustrate what should be done, presented below is a look at some of the needed reassessments. Their presence in each downtown may vary, but the need to properly scope out each downtown’s challenges remains pervasive.

Is It the Office Building Problem or the Outmoded Office Building Problem? In many instances the actual situation of downtown office buildings has not been put into much needed perspective. In NYC, for example, few were noting that office vacancies while undesirably high, were still well below national levels. Nationally, office space vacancies were 18% in Q4 of 2021 according to Cushman and Wakefield, but CoStar found that in that quarter the office vacancy rate in Manhattan was 12.3%. That was a definite jump from 7.8% in 2019, but still below the national average.[1] Most importantly, not enough attention has been paid to the fact that the office vacancy problem in NYC has mainly correlated with buildings that are now outmoded, mostly smaller and older buildings having 20% to 30% vacancy rates. That results from their having uncompetitive sizes, floor plans and amenities. Consequently, they are ill-suited for firms adopting hybrid models of organizing work and/or wanting better protections against future viruses. Hybrid models combine days working remotely with days working in corporate offices. Given that an April 2022 survey found that in Manhattan “…78% of employers (indicate a) hybrid office model will be their predominant post- pandemic policy, up from just 6% pre-pandemic,” its appears that the pressures on these outmoded buildings are widespread and long-term.[2]

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