What would we do with a half-billion sq. toes of Manhattan office space if most of it stays empty? It’s the loaded query in regards to the metropolis’s future that not even our brightest, most optimistic minds wish to contact.
We’ve been advised that office buildings won’t be vacant forever. As soon as Omicron recedes, a trickling return to workplaces will swell right into a mighty wave. Buildings may not be as full as they have been pre-COVID however they’ll be full sufficient to maintain town’s nice business tax base and hold landlords from going broke.
So say actual property executives and enterprise leaders, and so have I written many instances in these pages.
However what if we’re all fallacious? What occurs if scary prognostications by the sensible Wall Road Journal columnist Peggy Noonan come to cross?
Noonan wrote last February that the pandemic caused “the collapse of the commuter mannequin … previously yr the house owners of nice companies discovered how a lot might be performed remotely. They hadn’t recognized that!”
She added that “they don’t need to pay that killer lease for workplace area anymore. Individuals suppose it should all snap again when the pandemic is absolutely over however no, a human behavior broke; a brand new means of working has begun.”
What if our workplace towers, the delight of our skyline, flip into towering white elephants?
I posed the difficulty to city analysts usually desirous to touch upon something from bike lanes to endangered manatees. However not even the oft-quoted Regional Plan Affiliation would contact it. Others whom I reached out to responded to questions I hadn’t requested or modified the topic altogether.
Solely the Actual Property Board of New York, the business commerce group, tackled the extra restricted concern of the way to speed up conversion of second-class, older workplace buildings — which REBNY estimated at 220 million sq. toes, or about 40 p.c of the full workplace inventory — to residential use.
The group famous that the phenomenon was lengthy underway in decrease Manhattan, the place tens of tens of millions of obsolescent workplace areas discovered new life as residences from the late Nineteen Nineties to the current day.
The whirlwind rescued magnificent however unused landmarks corresponding to 70 Pine St. and One Wall Road in addition to scores of lesser properties. It made downtown a extra cohesive and viable household neighborhood, which helped the world survive the results of 9/11 and Hurricane Sandy.
Noting the city’s profound housing shortage, REBNY produced a batch of proposals to facilitate large-scale office-to-residential conversions. However they’d require wholesale zoning modifications, state-city cooperation to supply tax subsidies, and cultural modifications at metropolis businesses such because the departments of Housing Preservation and Improvement, Buildings, Metropolis Planning and Finance.
REBNY needs the Metropolis Council to arrange a activity power to review the choices. However till then, we’ll humbly counsel just a few potential new future makes use of for some over-the-hill workplace properties. Landlords ought to roll up their sleeves now for a modified future — even when it means changing workplace staff with fantasy.
Take the Garment District, which as soon as manufactured most of America’s clothes and is now primarily residence to tech, media and smaller monetary companies that may’t afford fancier digs. Some buildings have been upgraded to contemporary use — however a surprisingly many dirty, prewar constructions stay caught within the Nineteen Fifties.
Let’s flip just a few of them into one thing town has lengthy deserved: a spectacular museum the place the as soon as closely unionized district’s function in New York historical past and nationwide politics are introduced again to life. Present how seamstresses lent the stitching energy to dress America’s girls — and why union backing was so vital to generations of Democratic candidates.
Another choice is bringing Hollywood right here. Why ought to Queens monopolize Large Apple movie manufacturing? The Steiner, Kaufman Astoria and Silvercup studios are fantastic. However a full-scale Manhattan film and TV advanced could be the crown jewel in “Hollywood on the Hudson.”
Such a facility might be retrofitted inside one in all Manhattan’s quite a few “horizontal skyscrapers” as soon as used as warehouses and transport terminals. Certain, a few of them at the moment are residence to firms like Google and Fb. However with their CEOs repeatedly delaying return-to-office plans, who is aware of what they’ll be good for in 5 years?
Whereas we’re at, let’s enhance our architectural gems. Quite a lot of Nineteen Fifties and Nineteen Sixties workplace buildings have been solely modestly spiffed up (e.g., new lobbies) and a few in no way. Sure properties on Third, Sixth and even Park avenues can’t compete with properties which landlords spent a whole lot of tens of millions of {dollars} on to deliver them into the twenty first century.
However their Worldwide Fashion curtain partitions powerfully evoke the company mystique of the Eisenhower and “Mad Males” years, when American energy and status have been unchallenged across the globe. They’d be superb repositories for the lore and tradition of their period in New York Metropolis — when CBS, NBC and ABC dominated the airwaves, the Brooklyn Dodgers struggled towards the Yankees and the Beatles took the nation by storm on “The Ed Sullivan Present.”
Lastly, we will all use some enjoyable. Wow, how we’d like enjoyable! How a few huge, indoor amusement park, just like the enclosed portion of Coney Island’s legendary Steeplechase Park.
In fact the youngsters’ carousels and different mild indoor rides would wish to offer technique to the heart-stopping, pulse-pounding thrills of right this moment’s Scream Zone and Phoenix curler coaster. And picture a Cyclone that may keep open year-round!
The expertise’s there and the demand won’t ever abate. All it takes is the imaginative and prescient to make it occur inside one in all our 100-year-old, hulking brick-and-mortar goliaths the place workplace tenants aren’t making landlords wealthy with $35-a-square-foot leases.
