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The high price of empty office space

41 points| PaulHoule | 2 years ago |thecity.nyc | reply

80 comments

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[+] sgjohnson|2 years ago|reply
> In announcing M-CORE in May, Adams portrayed the new tax break as a step to protect the city’s budget and the services it funds. “Every office sitting empty means less funding for everything from schools and affordable housing to emergency food and police officers, and that’s why it’s vital we get workers back into offices,” he said.

Comedy gold. Nobody needs more overpriced office space in NYC. If people needed more overpriced office space, it most likely wouldn’t be sitting empty. Plenty of people need more housing.

[+] DiabloD3|2 years ago|reply
Is every NYC mayor an outright criminal, trying to transfer the wealth from Americans to their rich real estate buddies?

Adams is doing it right now. de Blasio did it. Bloomberg was a Bloomberg, and did it. Giuliani is so crooked that post-mayorship he lost his license to practice law while working for another well known long time thief and scammer in the NYC real estate scene (Trump, which they became criminal partners while Giuliani was mayor); I bet if I keep going back, I'll keep finding names associated with the real estate machine.

I'm surprised this Adams guy thinks there will be no repercussions. America is pissed and wants revenge: we, collectively, don't care who gets thrown under the bus as long as they're a politician or a businessman.

NYC made a bad bet on trying to maintain modern day slavery. The City should suffer, not the people who live there: force the real estate scammers to go bankrupt and take their skyscrapers, tear them down, replace them with something the city needs.

[+] jm20|2 years ago|reply
This is hilarious coming from a mayor that literally cut funding to schools and police to support all the illegal migrants coming to NYC
[+] api|2 years ago|reply
> for everything from schools and affordable housing

Affordable housing, eh? Maybe convert some of that CRE into housing then?

[+] otikik|2 years ago|reply
I would laugh if it wasn’t so sad.
[+] ummonk|2 years ago|reply
So if I understand the sequence of events right: 1) Developers are reluctant to build in a stagnant area because it would be a risky investment 2) The government provides property tax breaks for some anchor projects in the region 3) More development (including without tax breaks) follows and the area becomes successful, charging high rents 4) Anti-tax-break people point to the high rents and the profitability of the projects without tax breaks and argue that the tax breaks were never necessary in the first place
[+] sonotathrowaway|2 years ago|reply
Calling Hudson Yards and Times Square stagnant, risky investments is so ridiculous it becomes difficult to believe it’s being argued in good faith.
[+] Whoppertime|2 years ago|reply
The high cost of zoning restrictions and parking requirements making it difficult to convert Office Space into Living Space (Condos)
[+] throw0101b|2 years ago|reply
Bloomberg's Odd Lots podcast had an episode with someone who does conversions, "What It Really Takes to Convert an Office Building Into Apartments":

> Big cities like New York have two real estate problems. Housing is scarce and office buildings are empty (or at least under-utilized.) So there would seem to be an obvious solution: turn the offices into homes. And indeed there has been a lot of talk lately about "office-to-resi" conversions. But it's very hard, for a wide variety of reasons. Zoning, financing, and then, of course, the operational aspects of the construction all need to be in place. So what does it take? On this episode, we speak with Joey Chilelli, managing director at the Vanbarton Group, a firm that's been involved with these projects for a decade and long before the pandemic upended both real estate markets. We discuss the challenges involved in actually pulling off these complex projects.

* https://omny.fm/shows/odd-lots/what-it-really-takes-to-conve...

* https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HNkLcD3PKyk

[+] rightbyte|2 years ago|reply
Redoing piping, heating, ventilation, wiring and inner walls are what makes it difficult.
[+] mooreds|2 years ago|reply
Not just that. It's hard to make an office into someplace someone would want to live.
[+] randomgiy3142|2 years ago|reply
What else are you going to do with them? Subsidize businesses through tax breaks or pay to upkeep them through taxes are the only answer. It is incredibly expensive to turn office space into residential space. Ideally any new office space or residential would require a plan to convert to one or the other before being approved, but who saw WFH being so widespread 30 years ago?

The worst scenario is that businesses en masse begin breaking their leases and the buildings quickly fall into disrepair. I’m sure there’s people working on a solution to move all the plumbing and infrastructure out of a central core to make better use of these structures. It might be best to keep things as they are until that happens.

[+] baggy_trough|2 years ago|reply
> Ideally any new office space or residential would require a plan to convert to one or the other before being approved

That would be an excellent way of making new buildings too expensive to build.

[+] wolverine876|2 years ago|reply
Maybe we let failing businesses fail and be replaced by new, productive ones. Real estate is a risk; why do investors get the upside but now the down?
[+] nonethewiser|2 years ago|reply
Can’t blame them for trying to get people back, because it does cause legitimate problems, but it seems destined to fail.
[+] Lucasoato|2 years ago|reply
Oh my god, where could we end up with? Like dividing these properties into apartments and selling them to families?
[+] dgeiser13|2 years ago|reply
So they are giving tax breaks because they aren't making enough tax revenue?
[+] kkfx|2 years ago|reply
Hum...

Did I spotted an "Overton" PR operation? We all agree, I suppose, that WFH is here to stay, and similarly I suppose we all seen the RTO push by any means. So why keeping publishing news about the same points already well discussed and known?

Well it seems to me a tentative to made the obvious "debatable" so it will be debated and slowly some PR inject a bit of FUD making the unacceptable "acceptable in certain cases", than such case became slowly more and more common to the point that the new normal would be accepting RTO.

If you agree be attentive.

[+] xrd|2 years ago|reply
Every city, especially those on the west coast, has been attacked by a manipulative cabal of real estate developers. The tactic is to scream about the homeless and crime, in an effort to increase policing and find long term tax breaks. It's a cycle that plays out over and over, decade after decade.

In Portland, for example, where the shrieks have been amplified by right wing media and out of state lobbying, there has been a nationally reported attack that has sold many subscriptions to the NYT. Just five years ago Portland was used to sell a different subscription for post-Portlandia fans.

When policing returns to normal, and when there is enough public sentiment to spend more on police and create more prisons, the problem will be "solved." Meaning we can go back to keeping the poors away from the tourist and wealthy neighborhoods and in prison if they don't comply.

It works in all the southern states. Those states all have police that rule with an iron fist and prison rates at 2-3x or even 4x the "liberal" states. Just sprinkle in a bit of prayer on top and you've got the solution to all this. I'm in West Palm Beach now, where there are no homeless, just a bunch of people living in tents across the water from Mar-a-lago who have been docile enough to avoid the police here, keeping all the the snow birds safe.

[+] alexsereno|2 years ago|reply
What really surprises me in west palm are just how many of the housing communities post signage about being 55+, soooo much of the housing restricted by age. Sure, it’s famous for being a retirement community but I’m just so surprised it’s legal to limit the housing stock by age.
[+] nonethewiser|2 years ago|reply
People might disagree on what we should do about the Tenderloin but everyone agrees its a problem.
[+] Zigurd|2 years ago|reply
8 of 10 states with the highest crime are southern red states with thug cops and bad education. Pray it away?
[+] google234123|2 years ago|reply
Why does it matter that some people shriek? These places have been controlled for decades with supermajorities by people that share your beliefs. I think the results speak for themselves. We need rules for society and if you don’t follow them you should be punished. It’s really that simple.
[+] RobotToaster|2 years ago|reply
Yet more money being wasted on a deprecated mode of work.