I think this article perhaps misses the real story. That being, office parks first built in 25+ years ago are reaching an age where their long term leases are expiring and they need to be renovated for the first time since being constructed to attract new tenants.
While it makes sense to renovate an old factory and turn it into trendy office space with exposed brick and vintage architectural details from decades past you have to wonder what the fate of more recently constructed buildings will be. It's hard to see any situation where the 90's office park building will ever be valued for it's structural appeal to the extent that people will want to gut and remodel it instead of bulldozing.
One common occurrence where I live is that county and cities are buying up the old office parks and even strip malls to convert them into government buildings. Most are ideally located as well as being offered up for sale cheaply. Seen even a few charitable organizations buy up parts of a strip mall for the cheap space by square foot.
Besides the age a lot of REITs cashed out awhile ago and I am not sure the market is there. Plus people are even further out and those who tended to move had the means to do so and their spending went with them.
I don't think so. This quote is key:
“I now say that brainy youngsters are trending urban and urbane, away from your grandfather’s office parks.”
Real estate analysis is showing that for the first time since it's been measuring more people are looking for housing in denser, more urban environments than in the traditional suburbs.
An enormous number of people, especially young people, are looking to avoid spending their lives in cars. Comparing these quiet & dull campuses to a vibrant city really makes it hard to imagine working in them any more.
Exactly, I see this as the same situation as shopping centers and big box retailers. The cost of renovation etc, is not low enough compared to the cost of building a new building in a better location for the current times.
On top of that, the DC metro area is becoming very public transit oriented. Most employers consider good access via public transit an important feature when looking for office space.
Being in an outside suburb based upon the current design of the metro transit system means that someone from northern VA will have to travel all the way into DC then transfer back out the Maryland which makes for a significantly longer commute as opposed to an office more centrally located along the metro lines.
I've noticed that many buildings built during particularly faddish architectural trends tend to very quickly become maintenance nightmares, with repairs costing more than a tear-down and rebuild. It seems lots of these office buildings all over the country were built quickly, to low quality and now nobody wants to move into them. It's not just SV that has this problem.
The J. Edgar Hoover Building the FBI is currently HQ'd out of is 40 years old, and by all accounts should have been razed to the ground 10-15 years ago, only slow government processes keeping the Bureau in it at all.
It's expected to cost $850m-$1.1b to renovate and fix all the problems in the building and bring it up to Class A space (with inflation over time the total number would creep towards $2b). The government has decided that it would be cheaper to move the entire Bureau HQ to another site and build an entirely new building than fix this one.
Except there aren't tenants to renovate for which is why they are sitting empty and not being renovated. The long term tenants don't want new paint and carpeting, they want to be in the city.
Maybe it's hard to see, but these things have a way of coming back around. In 50-60 years the office parks that still exist might very well be where all the hip YC startups of 2066 want to be.
I think it is all about location. East German concrete slab highrisers[0] are being renovated into fashionable lofts, despite their unfashionable image and continuous deterioration - where they are placed in the city centers that is.
>old factory and turn it into trendy office space with exposed brick and vintage architectural details
That's not why we renovate factories. We renovate them because they are in a location we desire (big city centers). The suburbs are a cultural and transportation wasteland for the most part and have nothing but cheap land. Its just unpleasant real estate. Sadly, a lot of smaller companies migrated out to the suburbs because the CEO could simply make a call to move the business closer to his house. This land just makes more sense as residential, or at best retail, and really should have never been turned into offices in the first place.
I think suburbia might be a victim of its own success.
As people moved out to more widely-dispersed communities, that caused commuting all the way downtown for work to be increasingly problematic. So of course that encouraged demand for business to also move out to the suburbs.
Eventually things got so dispersed that people had to start driving everywhere. Roads got congested. It became increasingly common for people to spend 1/5 or more of their free time behind the wheel. Attempts to relieve the congestion inevitably require frequent road construction projects, which only increases everyone's sense of frustration.
I think it's pretty plain to see that nobody actually likes this state of affairs, and also that continuing the suburbanization trend would only continue to make it worse. Maybe there was a period back during the baby boom when the suburban lifestyle worked out really well (from a happiness perspective; let's forget about the economic and environmental cost for the sake of argument) for the first people to adopt it, but it's a lot harder to see the attraction now that the wide open spaces have become crowded with cars and parking lots.
I wonder how much of this is related to the increase of two-income households coupled with overall wage stagnation? I mean, if a family only has one breadwinner, and work is in the suburbs, it becomes trivial to find a location close to work. But it's harder for a family to live on one income now. If both spouses want to work or need to work to get by (and I'm not talking about a small part-time job on the side), it is plausibly more difficult for both to find substantial work in the same suburb, depending on their industry, demand, and so forth. Such people may only find work in distant suburbs, causing a long commute for one or to live in a place in between to share the commute time.
I'm not claiming this is the cause of frustration, or even a significant factor. Just a thought I had.
I live an hour outside of Chicago and mostly work from home; I'm in the city maybe 1 day per week. I fought moving out of the city for a while, but I have really come to love it, especially when it comes to raising kids. When I have to head into Chicago, I take the train. It is weird how quickly you can go from yuppie to suburbanite. My property taxes are high, but my overall cost (and quality) of living is better than if I was living in Chicago.
The housing market by me has been stable with small (tiny) growth and consistent demand. Turnover for new construction has been solid.
Retail & office space, however, is suffering. If you're close to small downtowns with character, the story is different, but strip malls and shopping centers are amazingly screwed. Great example is the Charlestowne Mall in St. Charles. Just the anchors and a movie theater remain.
That said, I look at that excess capacity and see opportunity more than peril. And, it is worth noting, that excess capacity for office/retail space is an issue in city centers as well. This phenomenon is as much a result of changes in consumer behavior as it is subprime aftershocks. It is reductionist to claim otherwise.
Only recently, with huge effort and many setbacks, are we starting to see cities break out of car oriented development and this endless suburban sprawl creating loop.
I'm a bit concerned that the advent of the self driving car could take us backward to more car oriented development and suburbia.
We've seen the reverse of this now. Everything I've seen has shown that newer generations are moving more into the cities, back to closer to their employers.
Perhaps the problem is less suburbia, more "hyperbia." Mid century planners focused heavily on recreating mini-cities to feed expansion from a central core. Everything you'd need (hospitals, schools, etc) should be within the city limits.
Reston, VA is a great example of this. Much of the workforce holds jobs elsewhere but the suburb is a community unto itself. One doesn't need to live in DC or make a long commute for a night on the town. Perhaps we can find in Reston a happy medium between distant exurbs and everybody on earth living in Manhattan.
I'll caution that the situation that we came out of in the 1950s and today are very different. There are many things that are driving the congestion of the roadways in the US. One is, for sure, the move to more urban environments. Why that is depends on a multitude of factors. I'll caution that we have significantly more people in the US than we did when the Levitt-towns were being made. In `950, ~150 million americans were alive, today there are ~320 million, a 110% increase [0]. I'll also say that anecdotally, people are congregating in urban areas because there is more flexibility and agility there. You used to be able to live in a small rural town and work there just fine. Now, if that steel mill or logging operation goes out, you have to move very far. In a city, you can find another job somewhere, and possible through referrals.
It used to be, the further you lived from the city, the better off you were. Mostly because the city had scary dark skinned people, little space, and pollution.
Now, while I'm definitely a suburbanite, I'd take the 15 minute commute any day over having extra lawn to mow.
Having vehicles that don't require human operation means that cars can spend less time in parking lots as depreciating assets and more time filling transportation demand. By reducing inefficiencies, it should free up traffic congestion and make it easier to commute to these office parks, right?
For a whole bunch of suburbanites of those early years (50's-70's) the "happiness" they derived came primarily from not having to send their children to integrated schools.
Rally? I always thought of large cities as victims of their own success. You get some good businesses going, they attract more people, they attract more businesses... and then you get overpopulation, air pollution, traffic jams and high prices. And difficulty of finding affordable housing.
The Car was supposed to kill The Landlord by increasing the supply of adequate housing and driving residential land prices near zero. It didn't work, for the reasons you described. First, driving itself is very expensive, especially if you include parking the damn thing. Second, the few suburbs that are desirable at all (near major cities, good public schools) are often similar in price to city housing-- and NIMBY laws keep housing scarce in them. Third, cars scale poorly (congestion). So none of that actually happened, and we're stuck with this ugly, polluting infrastructure.
My girlfriend worked for a 'beltway bandit' in Rockville Maryland for a while after college, exactly in the midst of the office parks described in this article. Everything about the environment of metro-DC suburban Maryland was absolutely repellent to me. Miles and miles of office parks, housing developments and strip malls, over and over and over.
I couldn't stand the idea of having a daily routine of sitting in 8 lanes of traffic, finding a spot in a sea of parked cars and spending the day in a faceless office building, surrounded by other faceless office buildings yet entirely isolated in a corporate campus. I definitely see the appeal of suburbs for certain lifestyles, but I think that a suburban home with a commute into an urban office would be very preferable to working in an office park.
The only redeeming feature of my girlfriend's office park workplace was that she, as a very junior employee, had a private office to herself. I've dealt with the frustration of a number of loud open offices at NYC tech companies, but I'd never give up a downtown office space explicitly for a private space in a giant soulless office building in the suburbs.
I'd argue that the "faceless office building" portion isn't really an issue. They're nice enough on the inside, and when you're deep in work you probably don't notice too often.
The worst part is probably the typical lack of anything around those office parks except for...more office parks. At least if you're downtown or in some more commercial-heavy area, there are places to go and eat! :)
> exactly in the midst of the office parks described in this article. Everything about the environment of metro-DC suburban Maryland was absolutely repellent to me. Miles and miles of office parks, housing developments and strip malls, over and over and over.
What boggles my mind is that the people here have money and choose to live this way.
> Everything about the environment of metro-DC suburban Maryland was absolutely repellent to me. Miles and miles of office parks, housing developments and strip malls, over and over and over.
I feel like you didn't actually explore much of the region, then... there are some fantastic natural areas here.
The problem in Maryland is that the urban office spaces in DC are essentially just big ass office parks. Just a bunch of ugly ass 12 story, monstrosities.
I guess you get better lunch options. But personally I'd rather live in a cool place and commute to some boring ass office park.
That said--the cool areas in DC are pretty small and expensive. The average worker can't afford that with a family.
Thomas Jefferson is to blame and not one mention of taxes? I would be really surprised that some research wouldn't find that many of these office parks are built outside of the borders of major cities to avoid paying taxes, or were provided incentives by neighbouring municipalities to build further out and pay lower tax. The lower cost is attractive and allows the company to operate in a big shiny building that immediately lends credibility to the company. Further, there is no mention of ample amounts of free parking. I think this article is very lacking, the for lease signs on suburban office parks across much of North America isn't really a mystery.
> There are 71.5 million square feet of vacant office space in the Washington region, much of it piled in office parks.
> Last year, federal agencies vacated 7,315 buildings, abandoning 47 million square feet of office and warehouse space, Federal News Radio says.
So the amount of vacant space in the area tripled last year, going from 24 million SQFT to 71.5 million SQFT?
---
> Another 1 million square feet of office space will flow onto the market over the next seven years, as Marriott International moves out of its Bethesda office park
Where are these companies moving to? Are they moving out of these office parks and into city centers? This article only tells half of the story.
---
> With its space-hungry bureaucracies and contractors, Washington became a colossal hive of office parks, especially during years of government expansion — most recently the post-Sept. 11, 2001 period, when the military ramped up and the national-security apparatus spread along the Dulles Corridor.
> The U.S. government hasn’t signed any major leases this year, ... but it maintains 98 million square feet in the District alone (411 million if you throw in Maryland and Virginia).
Is the government portion of this solely from governmental contraction and shrinking of programs?
Don't try and ascribe a single reason here. Architecture, urban planning, the rise of the creative class, high-speed internet, remote work and America's burgeoning reckoning with it's awful racial history are all at play here. The life and death of an American city can have no single story, because a city is only a composite of American stories
How many would turn down a job at Facebook, Google, Apple or any other company primarily due to their suburban office park nature?
Could you see yourself choosing a poorer quality job from an urban company over a better suburban company?
Right now I'm a 15 minute bike ride away from my downtown employer. It'd be pretty hard to convince me to give that up. I've done a 30 minute bus commute to the suburbs and that wasn't very fun. I can't imagine doing a 1 hour plus commute.
My ideal would be a house on a lake, it would have a sufficient space for my son to play outside, and It would also have a high speed internet connection, which I could use to work etc.
Before there was telecommuting, there was commuting. What people with families ultimately want is more space. Grilling out, kids in the sandbox, etc. It's all focused on spending time with kids.
Commuting enabled this "country like lifestyle", while keeping the "city benefits" of a good job, and easy access to decent restaurants. As traffic grew though, the definition of commuting changed. This is where office parts came from, and it's also where chain restaurants came from. Going downtown was not an option any more for shopping (parking!? argh). But there's this mall just a mile up the road. Of course with a limited audience of families (the single people still saw the benefit of living in a city), with limited time and money. Chains are great answers.
Nice article, but the jab at Jefferson is completely inane. Soooo many other nascent societal/cultural forces at work in the 1800s/early 1900s that coalesced into the suburban office park. Without knowing the context of the quote, it seems even Jefferson was off in directly equating corruption with the centerpiece of human civilization. It's also a seemingly colloquial letter to a friend. I'm also probably reading too much into this now.
I see lots of suburb-bashing on this thread. Lots of people like having their own yards, where they can garden, have a barbecue, put a swimming pool, or simply have some space of their own. When you have little kids it's a relief to have your own home and not have complaints from your neighbor downstairs that your kids are making too much noise.
I would love to see stats on where these companies are moving to. Are many of them transitioning into remote teams? Did some go out of business? Are they moving elsewhere?
Are these some of the reasons we are seeing vacant commercial buildings in a lot of areas?
"I think, as with many other things, our younger folks are more inclined to be Metro-accessible and more urban"
I do believe that to be true. I wonder if some of these can be turned into more modern co-working spaces that can be rented by the desk. Add a coffee shop, gym, etc into them and I think they would appeal to the younger generation, smaller service type businesses and start-ups. Just a thought.
Saw an article a while ago that about how one of the big retail/office buildings in St Louis has emptied out almost completely, and now there's just a tech incubator sitting on 12 abandoned floors:
U.S. office vacancy rate fell to 16.6 percent in the first quarter from 16.7 in the fourth, the lowest since the third quarter of 2009
Washington D.C. remained the tightest market, with a vacancy rate of 9.3 percent. New York followed at 9.6 percent.
What happened at 6116 Executive Blvd in Rockville, MD is that the big fat Federal client moved even farther outside the beltway to new digs in Gaithersburg, Maryland (to another, newer office complex.)
New place is one of those "faux green" buildings where everything like the light switches, blinds, faucets and toilets don't work intuitively if they even work at all. They have to mow the roof so at least you can feel Eco-conscious as you flush 3 times.
Old place was close to Whole Foods and walkable to the metro(subway). New place is close to Subway(sandwich shop).
If the Washington Press wants to bemoan the old office space situation at NIH (National Institutes of Health), then they should ask about having NIH tear down the fortified walls they built around their beautiful Bethesda campus because of "9-11 terrorist threats". The old NIH used to look like a friendly college campus. Now it looks like a gated community with TSA style security theater.
I see this as a buy low opportunity for those that could afford such a thing. Let me paint a picture of the future:
- In five to ten years, 20 and 30 somethings of today who have mostly flocked to metropolitan areas don't leave when they are at the age of starting a family. The lack of space is still trumped by the a near zero commute and the cultural landscape that surrounds them.
- Right around that time, self-driving car services (Uber sans drivers) have started making serious headway in metropolitan areas. Traffic within the cities have drastically reduced due to less cars on the road and less need for parking. (So that cab ride across town that once took 35 minutes, now takes nine).
- With the reduction in traffic, corporations never changing urn to save a buck, and the next crop of 20 and 30 somethings that want to create their own identity, businesses start snatching up these industrial park cemetaries. More space, less money, room to grow. They no longer have to worry about employee parking. The commute out to the building is only 15 minutes (where it used to be a full hour +). AND YOU GET YOUR OWN OFFICE!!!!
In a sea of community work spaces, "YOUR OWN OFFICE" is the shiney fish.
- And of course, once one business successfully implements this strategy, the rest of sure to follow.
Brass tacks, these office parks are dying because of increasing traffic and fuel costs...and that's really it. If we do wind up living in a world where people don't own cars and the self-driving car startups of today eliminate tomorrow's traffic, no doubt these cemeteries will see a second coming. If I had the funds, I'd wait for the industrial park real estate market to bottom and then start snatching up property.
Bit unrelated, but this website crashes Chrome on my Android phone, crashes the WebView inside my HN reader app, and brings my aged netbook to its knees. Oh, and my company MBP's fans blast on full until I close the page.
What the fucking fuck is this thing doing with the RAM/CPU of my system? For heaven's sake, it's a load of text with a couple of pictures.
I work at one. A nice one. Honestly it's all because of the drive and location.
- Office parks are usually built away from people and this creates a "long drive to work". Americans are tired of driving and traffic. Office parks are not usually built near busy residential areas, they're built farther out on empty or industrial or rezoned land. No one is going to pay $30-75 million dollars to buy up 120-300 homes (average going price is $250,000 offered per every $190,000 home to get the owners out), then pay millions to bulldoze the homes, then pay millions to build the office park. No. They will go out in the middle of no-where and offer $5-10 million to a farmer and build on his land instead. It's cheaper but this creates quite a drive.
I also used to work as a courier and I -> HATED <- industrial/office park runs. They used up a ton of gas, a lot of cul de sacs, endless stop signs, and made me drive out in the middle of no-where. Most industrial/office parks of them are like that. It can't be helped due to regulations and zoning. Office parks aren't as bad and usually closer to civilization.
- The cost, how does $7,000 a month sound for an office space smaller than a 2 bedroom house?
- The US recession shut down a lot of businesses in premium locations and this opens up opportunities for new tenants to replace them and start their business closer to their homes, instead of paying exuberant prices to rent space in an office park.
- They are soulless. Bland. Grey. Corporate. You will feel like a drone working in one. They do not allow the type of customization and construction that people take on when they own a building.
===== Office parks are great if... =====
- The city expands and engulfs the office park, surrounding it with residential areas, apartments, and hotels.
- They're located near a highway AND near a residential area. This makes them accessible to both local residents and distant workers..
All of this works in cycles.
There once was a time when people were flocking to the suburbs. Now, it is fashionable to live in the city. This too will pass when people (a generation maybe) comes to understand the little value obtained from all the chaos and activity.
What are people chasing? Technology has made it easier to be in touch and socialize w/ people beyond physical geography. Transportation is getting better. Yet, people are centered on cramming into cities. The concrete jungle... Living among all the action but having no time to enjoy it because you're too busy busting your ass to pay for the insane cost of the 'privilege'.
I used to live in Mountain View, CA and knew more about San Francisco and the cool things than most of my friends who lived in the city. Many times, I could get to places in the city faster than friends living in it.
What's the allure? When I think of California, I think of the beautiful outdoors and geography... Not cramming into a concrete jungle.
Hey look, I live in the city. I don't have a car. I pay a company to clean my place. I pay a company to do my laundry. There is no parking available for friends visiting me. I can't host anything at my place because its so small. I have to do all of my get together events 'out'.
The city generally provides the illusion that you are part of something that's bigger than you really are. Young people haven't formed a clear definition of this. So, they flock to the city which provides it in 'instant' form. This changes when a generation after realizes the cons of one thing and seeks out the pros in another. Or, when you get older and wiser.
As the saying goes, a smart investor is selling when everyone is buying and buying when everyone is selling. With all of the distractions of technology around me, I desire peace and quiet when i am at home. When I want noise and chaos, I go to the city. The big thing is, I have a choice in the matter and live by the beat of my own drum.
When you are young, you have no sense of this 'beat'. The city provides a steady one. Will the youth be able to maintain affordability of the city? How long will this cycle last?
These emptying office parks presents an opportunity. Certainly the larger ones contain infrastructure that can be repurposed, and the asking prices is decreasing. In the next downturn, the cost of purchasing a park will go down even more.
Perhaps the larger parks can be repurposed into something akin to a village. Reformat the buildings into something more traditional, apartments on the upper floors, offices and stores in the bottom, etc. Add more buildings to create more continuity. Let people be creative, let the fabric emerge.
Now in any given area, each of these potential villages is quite isolated from another. Still, pedestrian connections can be forged and inter-village transportation arranged.
The building featured here seems like a false example of blight, since it's in an area that's seeing major redevelopment. The same is true of the mall alongside it, which has been reckoned as a 'dead mall' in other articles, but only because it's being rebuilt into a urban neighborhood:
https://b256ec319b64095c3d1d-e19f06f73efdb5028989d1916204cd7...
I would guess that the owners of the office buildings in question here are warehousing it until the area becomes more desirable.
[+] [-] pmorici|10 years ago|reply
While it makes sense to renovate an old factory and turn it into trendy office space with exposed brick and vintage architectural details from decades past you have to wonder what the fate of more recently constructed buildings will be. It's hard to see any situation where the 90's office park building will ever be valued for it's structural appeal to the extent that people will want to gut and remodel it instead of bulldozing.
[+] [-] Shivetya|10 years ago|reply
Besides the age a lot of REITs cashed out awhile ago and I am not sure the market is there. Plus people are even further out and those who tended to move had the means to do so and their spending went with them.
Suburbia certainly isn't dieing.
[+] [-] ken-far|10 years ago|reply
Real estate analysis is showing that for the first time since it's been measuring more people are looking for housing in denser, more urban environments than in the traditional suburbs.
An enormous number of people, especially young people, are looking to avoid spending their lives in cars. Comparing these quiet & dull campuses to a vibrant city really makes it hard to imagine working in them any more.
[+] [-] hiou|10 years ago|reply
On top of that, the DC metro area is becoming very public transit oriented. Most employers consider good access via public transit an important feature when looking for office space.
Being in an outside suburb based upon the current design of the metro transit system means that someone from northern VA will have to travel all the way into DC then transfer back out the Maryland which makes for a significantly longer commute as opposed to an office more centrally located along the metro lines.
[+] [-] bane|10 years ago|reply
The J. Edgar Hoover Building the FBI is currently HQ'd out of is 40 years old, and by all accounts should have been razed to the ground 10-15 years ago, only slow government processes keeping the Bureau in it at all.
It's expected to cost $850m-$1.1b to renovate and fix all the problems in the building and bring it up to Class A space (with inflation over time the total number would creep towards $2b). The government has decided that it would be cheaper to move the entire Bureau HQ to another site and build an entirely new building than fix this one.
[+] [-] jonknee|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] enjo|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] relet|10 years ago|reply
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plattenbau
[+] [-] Apocryphon|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] joeldg|10 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] drzaiusapelord|10 years ago|reply
That's not why we renovate factories. We renovate them because they are in a location we desire (big city centers). The suburbs are a cultural and transportation wasteland for the most part and have nothing but cheap land. Its just unpleasant real estate. Sadly, a lot of smaller companies migrated out to the suburbs because the CEO could simply make a call to move the business closer to his house. This land just makes more sense as residential, or at best retail, and really should have never been turned into offices in the first place.
[+] [-] bunderbunder|10 years ago|reply
As people moved out to more widely-dispersed communities, that caused commuting all the way downtown for work to be increasingly problematic. So of course that encouraged demand for business to also move out to the suburbs.
Eventually things got so dispersed that people had to start driving everywhere. Roads got congested. It became increasingly common for people to spend 1/5 or more of their free time behind the wheel. Attempts to relieve the congestion inevitably require frequent road construction projects, which only increases everyone's sense of frustration.
I think it's pretty plain to see that nobody actually likes this state of affairs, and also that continuing the suburbanization trend would only continue to make it worse. Maybe there was a period back during the baby boom when the suburban lifestyle worked out really well (from a happiness perspective; let's forget about the economic and environmental cost for the sake of argument) for the first people to adopt it, but it's a lot harder to see the attraction now that the wide open spaces have become crowded with cars and parking lots.
[+] [-] anthony_romeo|10 years ago|reply
I'm not claiming this is the cause of frustration, or even a significant factor. Just a thought I had.
[+] [-] fixxer|10 years ago|reply
The housing market by me has been stable with small (tiny) growth and consistent demand. Turnover for new construction has been solid.
Retail & office space, however, is suffering. If you're close to small downtowns with character, the story is different, but strip malls and shopping centers are amazingly screwed. Great example is the Charlestowne Mall in St. Charles. Just the anchors and a movie theater remain.
That said, I look at that excess capacity and see opportunity more than peril. And, it is worth noting, that excess capacity for office/retail space is an issue in city centers as well. This phenomenon is as much a result of changes in consumer behavior as it is subprime aftershocks. It is reductionist to claim otherwise.
[+] [-] Tiktaalik|10 years ago|reply
This "Cycle of automobile dependency" image shows it pretty well. http://imgur.com/Y9vxbNN
Only recently, with huge effort and many setbacks, are we starting to see cities break out of car oriented development and this endless suburban sprawl creating loop.
I'm a bit concerned that the advent of the self driving car could take us backward to more car oriented development and suburbia.
[+] [-] skolor|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] rm_-rf_slash|10 years ago|reply
Reston, VA is a great example of this. Much of the workforce holds jobs elsewhere but the suburb is a community unto itself. One doesn't need to live in DC or make a long commute for a night on the town. Perhaps we can find in Reston a happy medium between distant exurbs and everybody on earth living in Manhattan.
[+] [-] Balgair|10 years ago|reply
[0]http://www.demographia.com/db-uspop1900.htm
[+] [-] debacle|10 years ago|reply
Now, while I'm definitely a suburbanite, I'd take the 15 minute commute any day over having extra lawn to mow.
[+] [-] jseliger|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] bduerst|10 years ago|reply
Having vehicles that don't require human operation means that cars can spend less time in parking lots as depreciating assets and more time filling transportation demand. By reducing inefficiencies, it should free up traffic congestion and make it easier to commute to these office parks, right?
[+] [-] enjo|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] unknown|10 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] femto113|10 years ago|reply
Car dealers.
[+] [-] romaniv|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] michaelochurch|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] unknown|10 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] macNchz|10 years ago|reply
I couldn't stand the idea of having a daily routine of sitting in 8 lanes of traffic, finding a spot in a sea of parked cars and spending the day in a faceless office building, surrounded by other faceless office buildings yet entirely isolated in a corporate campus. I definitely see the appeal of suburbs for certain lifestyles, but I think that a suburban home with a commute into an urban office would be very preferable to working in an office park.
The only redeeming feature of my girlfriend's office park workplace was that she, as a very junior employee, had a private office to herself. I've dealt with the frustration of a number of loud open offices at NYC tech companies, but I'd never give up a downtown office space explicitly for a private space in a giant soulless office building in the suburbs.
[+] [-] chucknelson|10 years ago|reply
The worst part is probably the typical lack of anything around those office parks except for...more office parks. At least if you're downtown or in some more commercial-heavy area, there are places to go and eat! :)
[+] [-] rayiner|10 years ago|reply
What boggles my mind is that the people here have money and choose to live this way.
[+] [-] Yhippa|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] knowaveragejoe|10 years ago|reply
I feel like you didn't actually explore much of the region, then... there are some fantastic natural areas here.
[+] [-] rhino369|10 years ago|reply
I guess you get better lunch options. But personally I'd rather live in a cool place and commute to some boring ass office park.
That said--the cool areas in DC are pretty small and expensive. The average worker can't afford that with a family.
[+] [-] dade_|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] stephengillie|10 years ago|reply
> Last year, federal agencies vacated 7,315 buildings, abandoning 47 million square feet of office and warehouse space, Federal News Radio says.
So the amount of vacant space in the area tripled last year, going from 24 million SQFT to 71.5 million SQFT?
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> Another 1 million square feet of office space will flow onto the market over the next seven years, as Marriott International moves out of its Bethesda office park
Where are these companies moving to? Are they moving out of these office parks and into city centers? This article only tells half of the story.
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> With its space-hungry bureaucracies and contractors, Washington became a colossal hive of office parks, especially during years of government expansion — most recently the post-Sept. 11, 2001 period, when the military ramped up and the national-security apparatus spread along the Dulles Corridor.
> The U.S. government hasn’t signed any major leases this year, ... but it maintains 98 million square feet in the District alone (411 million if you throw in Maryland and Virginia).
Is the government portion of this solely from governmental contraction and shrinking of programs?
[+] [-] roneesh|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Tiktaalik|10 years ago|reply
How many would turn down a job at Facebook, Google, Apple or any other company primarily due to their suburban office park nature?
Could you see yourself choosing a poorer quality job from an urban company over a better suburban company?
Right now I'm a 15 minute bike ride away from my downtown employer. It'd be pretty hard to convince me to give that up. I've done a 30 minute bus commute to the suburbs and that wasn't very fun. I can't imagine doing a 1 hour plus commute.
[+] [-] swalsh|10 years ago|reply
Before there was telecommuting, there was commuting. What people with families ultimately want is more space. Grilling out, kids in the sandbox, etc. It's all focused on spending time with kids.
Commuting enabled this "country like lifestyle", while keeping the "city benefits" of a good job, and easy access to decent restaurants. As traffic grew though, the definition of commuting changed. This is where office parts came from, and it's also where chain restaurants came from. Going downtown was not an option any more for shopping (parking!? argh). But there's this mall just a mile up the road. Of course with a limited audience of families (the single people still saw the benefit of living in a city), with limited time and money. Chains are great answers.
[+] [-] Dirlewanger|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Bostonian|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] 20years|10 years ago|reply
Does anyone have stats on this?
New business formations are on the decline (http://www.futurepundit.com/archives/009854.html) and more businesses are closing shop each year than are forming (http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/wp/2014/05/05/u...).
Are these some of the reasons we are seeing vacant commercial buildings in a lot of areas?
"I think, as with many other things, our younger folks are more inclined to be Metro-accessible and more urban"
I do believe that to be true. I wonder if some of these can be turned into more modern co-working spaces that can be rented by the desk. Add a coffee shop, gym, etc into them and I think they would appeal to the younger generation, smaller service type businesses and start-ups. Just a thought.
[+] [-] patmcguire|10 years ago|reply
http://www.urbanreviewstl.com/2013/07/lots-of-entrepreneursh...
Never can build where there's demand, though.
[+] [-] tosseraccount|10 years ago|reply
http://www.reuters.com/article/2015/04/01/property-usa-offic...
U.S. office vacancy rate fell to 16.6 percent in the first quarter from 16.7 in the fourth, the lowest since the third quarter of 2009
Washington D.C. remained the tightest market, with a vacancy rate of 9.3 percent. New York followed at 9.6 percent.
What happened at 6116 Executive Blvd in Rockville, MD is that the big fat Federal client moved even farther outside the beltway to new digs in Gaithersburg, Maryland (to another, newer office complex.)
New place is one of those "faux green" buildings where everything like the light switches, blinds, faucets and toilets don't work intuitively if they even work at all. They have to mow the roof so at least you can feel Eco-conscious as you flush 3 times.
Old place was close to Whole Foods and walkable to the metro(subway). New place is close to Subway(sandwich shop).
If the Washington Press wants to bemoan the old office space situation at NIH (National Institutes of Health), then they should ask about having NIH tear down the fortified walls they built around their beautiful Bethesda campus because of "9-11 terrorist threats". The old NIH used to look like a friendly college campus. Now it looks like a gated community with TSA style security theater.
[+] [-] pappyo|10 years ago|reply
- In five to ten years, 20 and 30 somethings of today who have mostly flocked to metropolitan areas don't leave when they are at the age of starting a family. The lack of space is still trumped by the a near zero commute and the cultural landscape that surrounds them.
- Right around that time, self-driving car services (Uber sans drivers) have started making serious headway in metropolitan areas. Traffic within the cities have drastically reduced due to less cars on the road and less need for parking. (So that cab ride across town that once took 35 minutes, now takes nine).
- With the reduction in traffic, corporations never changing urn to save a buck, and the next crop of 20 and 30 somethings that want to create their own identity, businesses start snatching up these industrial park cemetaries. More space, less money, room to grow. They no longer have to worry about employee parking. The commute out to the building is only 15 minutes (where it used to be a full hour +). AND YOU GET YOUR OWN OFFICE!!!!
In a sea of community work spaces, "YOUR OWN OFFICE" is the shiney fish.
- And of course, once one business successfully implements this strategy, the rest of sure to follow.
Brass tacks, these office parks are dying because of increasing traffic and fuel costs...and that's really it. If we do wind up living in a world where people don't own cars and the self-driving car startups of today eliminate tomorrow's traffic, no doubt these cemeteries will see a second coming. If I had the funds, I'd wait for the industrial park real estate market to bottom and then start snatching up property.
[+] [-] mschuster91|10 years ago|reply
What the fucking fuck is this thing doing with the RAM/CPU of my system? For heaven's sake, it's a load of text with a couple of pictures.
[+] [-] ChrisNorstrom|10 years ago|reply
- Office parks are usually built away from people and this creates a "long drive to work". Americans are tired of driving and traffic. Office parks are not usually built near busy residential areas, they're built farther out on empty or industrial or rezoned land. No one is going to pay $30-75 million dollars to buy up 120-300 homes (average going price is $250,000 offered per every $190,000 home to get the owners out), then pay millions to bulldoze the homes, then pay millions to build the office park. No. They will go out in the middle of no-where and offer $5-10 million to a farmer and build on his land instead. It's cheaper but this creates quite a drive.
I also used to work as a courier and I -> HATED <- industrial/office park runs. They used up a ton of gas, a lot of cul de sacs, endless stop signs, and made me drive out in the middle of no-where. Most industrial/office parks of them are like that. It can't be helped due to regulations and zoning. Office parks aren't as bad and usually closer to civilization.
- The cost, how does $7,000 a month sound for an office space smaller than a 2 bedroom house?
- The US recession shut down a lot of businesses in premium locations and this opens up opportunities for new tenants to replace them and start their business closer to their homes, instead of paying exuberant prices to rent space in an office park.
- They are soulless. Bland. Grey. Corporate. You will feel like a drone working in one. They do not allow the type of customization and construction that people take on when they own a building.
===== Office parks are great if... =====
- The city expands and engulfs the office park, surrounding it with residential areas, apartments, and hotels.
- They're located near a highway AND near a residential area. This makes them accessible to both local residents and distant workers..
[+] [-] astrocyte|10 years ago|reply
What are people chasing? Technology has made it easier to be in touch and socialize w/ people beyond physical geography. Transportation is getting better. Yet, people are centered on cramming into cities. The concrete jungle... Living among all the action but having no time to enjoy it because you're too busy busting your ass to pay for the insane cost of the 'privilege'.
I used to live in Mountain View, CA and knew more about San Francisco and the cool things than most of my friends who lived in the city. Many times, I could get to places in the city faster than friends living in it.
What's the allure? When I think of California, I think of the beautiful outdoors and geography... Not cramming into a concrete jungle.
Hey look, I live in the city. I don't have a car. I pay a company to clean my place. I pay a company to do my laundry. There is no parking available for friends visiting me. I can't host anything at my place because its so small. I have to do all of my get together events 'out'.
The city generally provides the illusion that you are part of something that's bigger than you really are. Young people haven't formed a clear definition of this. So, they flock to the city which provides it in 'instant' form. This changes when a generation after realizes the cons of one thing and seeks out the pros in another. Or, when you get older and wiser.
As the saying goes, a smart investor is selling when everyone is buying and buying when everyone is selling. With all of the distractions of technology around me, I desire peace and quiet when i am at home. When I want noise and chaos, I go to the city. The big thing is, I have a choice in the matter and live by the beat of my own drum.
When you are young, you have no sense of this 'beat'. The city provides a steady one. Will the youth be able to maintain affordability of the city? How long will this cycle last?
https://resilienceeconomics.files.wordpress.com/2013/03/40-y...
Arcade Fire - Album (The Suburbs) 2010
Choice song (Suburban war)
[+] [-] jamespitts|10 years ago|reply
Perhaps the larger parks can be repurposed into something akin to a village. Reformat the buildings into something more traditional, apartments on the upper floors, offices and stores in the bottom, etc. Add more buildings to create more continuity. Let people be creative, let the fabric emerge.
Now in any given area, each of these potential villages is quite isolated from another. Still, pedestrian connections can be forged and inter-village transportation arranged.
Over time, we can heal this anomaly.
[+] [-] akgerber|10 years ago|reply
I would guess that the owners of the office buildings in question here are warehousing it until the area becomes more desirable.
[+] [-] Scuds|10 years ago|reply
The only option is to get in your car and drive somewhere, just like everyone else does, which means the lunch rush is just more sitting in traffic.