The Rise And Fall Of The Office Park
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- Опубликовано: 13 дек 2023
- Suburban office parks are a ticking time bomb. Despite millennials doing everything to wipe them out, the suburban office park has endured thanks in part to leases signed before 2020. But once those deals expire, a potential economic disaster awaits, impacting pensions, retirement funds, and communities dependent on commercial property tax revenue. This is the rise and fall of the beloved (hated) suburban office park.
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Further reading:
Pastoral Capitalism by Louise A. Mozingo: mitpress.mit.edu/978026252614...
Brookings Institution:
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The Wall Street Journal: www.wsj.com/articles/SB100014...
www.wsj.com/real-estate/comme...
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The New York Times:
www.nytimes.com/2019/11/19/bu...
www.nytimes.com/2018/05/29/ny...
Business Insider:
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Bloomberg:
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The Atlantic:
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The Washington Post:
www.washingtonpost.com/lifest...
Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City: www.kansascityfed.org/documen...
Federal Reserve Bank of Richmond: www.richmondfed.org/-/media/R...
NJ.com: www.nj.com/news/2014/06/diamo...
The Centre for Economic Policy Research: cepr.org/voxeu/columns/work-h...
MinnPost: www.minnpost.com/cityscape/20... 
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When it comes to municipal finances, cities and towns get a lot more tax dollars per square foot from mixed-use and mid-to-high density buildings. They have all collectively shot themselves in the foot many years ago by having horrible zoning laws and city planning. If it takes a crisis for people to realize low-density single use zoning is not economically sustainable, so be it.
City taxes have been subsidizing single-family suburbia for decades. Time for the "free markets" to take care of that anomaly.
Yes, a crisis is apparently needed. Not so coincidentally, we have a massive housing crisis that is becoming more massive every day, and that comes from this same root cause.
“Let’s assume cheap gasoline and materials forever” - Boomers
I think it's going to take these office parks going bankrupt to begin a true realignment of priorities away from wasteful land use, back towards more efficient ones. Beyond the grassroots efforts underway in many places.
@@elbowstrikeThe fracking revolution does give us all the gasoline we want.
If they were nice and walking distance from people's homes, people would probably use them. Instead they're in the middle of no where for cheap rent and employees are sick of long commutes for work that could be done at home.
You are right! And if the company does not provide lunch and there are no restaurant nearby, you have to cook food everyday to prepare for lunch next day. It is just taking so much time to shop grocery(which is also bad beacuse you have to sit in the traffic) and cook.
two questions: 1). Do you have a single family house?. 2) If yes - do you want a commercial development next to it?. If one of your answers is "no" - then don't talk about things you have no idea about.
I think you hit the nail on the head with one thing: they were a tax shelter. Office parks are a terrible way to use land. When actually occupied, they are only used 40 hours per week, meaning that the majority of the time, they sit empty. Not only that, but since everyone in the suburbs drives, they’re surrounded by massive parking lots that make the buildings look tiny in comparison. They don’t exactly have the best carbon footprint, since the majority of the “vegetation” is lawn which requires watering
I'm fine with the office space itself only getting used 40 hours a week, but Jesus! All that parking just to sit empty 128 hours of the week 😞
And my house is sitting empty 40 hours per week. Also a waste.
Life long New Jersey guy here. Back in the bad old days when the world was new and I still had hair, many of us wondered just why the ×+$$# we were building so much office space. Someone calculated that there was enough office space for everyone in the State to have their own desk and shuffle paper.
As a scientist it was sickening to watch what happened to Bell Labs.
As an environmental scientist it was sickening to see so much open space dissappear under yet another office park and supporting strip malls.
@@lu544 Building with purpose and intensity. You can build high quality low-rise cities with plenty of office, working, and entertainment space in a small to medium sized city. Allow missing middle housing, retrofits of property not specifically zoned for that use, and lax enough building and tax laws to make it worthwhile for someone to invest in a mixed-use building in the core part of the community. The buildings need as much flexibility as the businesses that come and go due to the creative destruction of business.
@@lu544 What a strange question. The alternative is to just build things the way we used to. Zoning laws have only been around for about 100 years, and have only been used as they have for about 60 years. If we just revert to traditional city planning, we'll get out of this mess and work out way back to sensible financing for cities.
Sounds like The Mall all over again.
First time I've seen Bell labs mentioned outside a documentary about it. 😮
@@pace1195 missing middle housing. Yeah I just love hearing my neighbors music at all hours of the day.
Office parks are a symbol of an economy totally dependent on the private car.
Yep, folks get to use their car and generally don't have to pay to park while enjoying the freedom of movement that a car brings! And with the office park so close to where folks live, they may have to drive the car, but their commute will be far, far shorter than the urban dweller stuck waiting on an unreliable and crowded bus/train. (Try buying groceries for a family of four and using public transportation. No, I don't want to go grocery shopping every two days; that isn't a solution!)
@@commentinglife6175 THANK YOU! All these urbanist idiots really don't understand the level of personal utility a car brings to a person's life. They can't see any distance travel beyond daily work commutes and really think nobody ever uses more than a back-pack's worth of cargo volume. Their stupidity is exhausting.
@@commentinglife6175You can just walk to the grocery store in most cities
@commentinglife6175 maybe flip it around. People working in office parks are all dependent on roads and highways that always get backed up and have terrible transit, due to being in the middle of nowhere. Downtown has all the rapid transit infrastructure, express routes, and optimized/dedicated lane bus infrastructure.
Just because an office park is in the suburbs, doesn't mean it's nearby to YOUR suburb. This just results in everyone driving everywhere else.
@@TomPVideo Having lived near DC with their metro system AND their awful traffic, I'd say your initial assumption is wrong. Yes, some people might have to commute to an office park elsewhere, but provided the company didn't move (granted, COVID changed this dynamic for sure), people would target suburbs near their office. That's what my family did when we bought a home back in the Midwest. As for inner-city transit, I've waited on trains that either didn't show up on time or were too full to fit more people all trying to commute. A public transit system is worthless if you can't use it! I'll risk a bad commute living in the 'Burbs and using my car cause at least suburban homes are similar so finding one I like near my office isn't difficult; try to find the similar living situation near a downtown office for the same price - ain't happening!
I’m kind of unsympathetic about the governments that are going to lose money on this. They can change their tax, zoning and building codes. They can liberalize building and implement land taxes to deal with this. If there was housing and other businesses around the offices, the offices would have some demand rather than nothing. Boomer style suburbanization is economically unsustainable financially, we knew this was going to happen at some point.
Less so the governments, more so the people that elect the government. If they're not going to accept that suburbia isn't very viable without seeing their tax bill climb sharply, well, too bad, reality has a way of making itself known
Bingo.
The Boomers didn't do this. They were born into it and never knew any different. The reason we have fallen out with suburbia is that we grew up in a more connected world and could see how proper cities are better in the US and especially abroad.
@@beback_thanks for the reasonable answer. I swear people on the internet literally want a generational war or some shit😂
@@gh0s1wav Yeah it's really dumb. Like, try and be more than just your birth year. It's only flattering for about 10 years anyway.
Cities got economically destroyed by suburbs. It’s only fitting for the suburbs to get economically destroyed by those recovering cities.
I don't think we ever needed so much office space to begin with. 2020 kind of proves this. Office workers were sent home and nothing happened. How can a society need so many people consuming so many resources a not contributing? The only thing that made this possible was currency printing.
This might have more to do with investments in the economy, and not the amount of currency in circulation.
Agree. Our company is in an office park and could get a smoking deal on a bigger space from a company that went to 100% remote work during COVID. It worked so well they never came back. But the lease had not expired so they were looking for someone else to foot the bill. I said don't do it. Where's the money? We just spend a bunch of money on an office space for what? Spend the money on better equipment, people, supplies, whatever. But a giant office building is just a financial ball and chain you have to drag around.
@@castirondudeIt was just a way to get money off of companies. Pretty much like buying a house for a family, these offices spaces mark up the price and cost a LOT. And were not even needed in the first place.
So we're just going to over look the part that these towns have invested heavily into car centric and now it's going to drain their pockets. We need a new approach. A strong towns approach and build places people actually want to live, play and work in.
👆this man is correct. We’ve rebuilt our entire society infrastructure around inherently unsustainable practices. Time to adapt and move back to cities, the way humans have lived for millennia. I don’t care what a slave owner from the 1700s thought, he thought it was just A-OK to own other human beings.
As a millenial with graduate degrees (and who is "on paper" a supposed "brainy youngster"), the thing I hate the most about my current, otherwise pretty great, job is that it's based out of a soulless office park. The commute from the more central part of the city to the suburbs sucks. The lack of amenities while at work sucks. The lack of pleasantly walkable areas for break sucks (unless you like the idea of strolling past half-filled parking lot after half-filled parking lot). It just overall sucks to work in an office park. And I feel like the company has its head in the sand about it while simultaneously trying to attract "brainy youngsters".
Your company isn’t listening because it’s still being run by Boomers, who still think suburbia is a utopia. But there’s good news: and that is, time (death) eventually solves all problems.
In addition to office parks being sterile and soul sucking, most of them in my part of the country are just far enough removed from public transportation routes that it makes it mandatory to drive. In some cases, they are literally a stone's throw away from the train station, but no sidewalks or means of crossing multiple lanes of traffic.
Can you (with a graduate degree) not express yourself in better, more defined terms than saying it "sucks"?
nope. the city center is just get too expensive. companies have to sprawl out ward or rent for housing shoot up 3,000 like New York. in fact the bay area housing crisis is due too many want to live in a super city. if they spread out to medium to small cities than we could build more houses. In Canada the problem is even worst. they even more hyperurbanizatied that usa. They have plenty of land just that jobs have to more to other areas.
@@answerman9933-OP did specify. You were just too busy trying to language-police to notice.
Video:
1. The world is changing (as it always does)
2. in the past most businesses chose office buildings and asked builders to build office buildings
3. now businesses are trying out new ways of working and because of that less office buildings are needed
4. this is a big problem because now we have buildings that can't do the exact thing they have done for a few years. Things might have to change! This is horrible.
5. cities and towns have to find new ways of taxing people that earn a lot
Cities and towns have to realize NOT to waste money on illegal immigrants and welfare for those who does not want to work.
@arney444 Moron
@arney444 i get what ur saying but illegal immigrants work hard as f*ck. In my experience, they work almost as much as 2 american citizens can. We should probably take advantage of that...
@@KP-sg9fm Yes, the majority of illegal immigrants are hardworking people, who would take any kind of odd jobs to make a living. But the real problem is not easily visible. We - the entire world - are at a huge turning point with regard to availability of non-skilled jobs. In 5-8 years from today, there will be huge extinction of those jobs, those jobs will be disappearing with the speed of millions a year. What we - as a country - are going to do with tens of millions of people, who do NOT have ANY skills whatsoever? we as a country will face a huge crisis
@@KP-sg9fm No matter how this people are eager to work, there will be NO work for them. In the democratic States like NY and Illinois there is already an UNPRECENDENTED rise of crime, because these illegal immigrants are desperate to get ANY money to live on. But they have NO skills whatsoever to be employed in a modern country. McDonalds and Burger Kings are already maxed out. Janitor and earth-digging jobs are maxed out. How many more loan moaners do we need?
The real reason for the rise and fall of the suburban office park is the history of IT and telecommunications. When all companies had was their own LAN server network, it was easier to build a suburban office around it than retro fit city office space. And this is where the company's datacentres were securely located. The suburban office was essentially a shell for an 80's and 90's computer network. But with the rise of high speed internet connections and cloud computing data storage services, the requirement for a private centralised network faded. Computing power became smaller, mobile and distributed. Telecoms in cities got upgraded to handle higher and faster data traffic. Hence, all the roadworks to install this infrastructure and coffee shops to provide laptop wifi connections. But there is a future for suburban office space with the rise of robotics. Robots will need somewhere to be stored and serviced. These office shells might be easily convertible into homes for robots. It had nothing to do with Millennial's lifestyle choices. It was all down to technology.
As someone who worked in IT in the early 2000s I think you are right about that.
I think you're partially right, but there are some other factors like it being s tax shelter and America's over dependence on cars and the refusal to use public transportation.
They are facing the same problem as urban malls.
e-Commerce? Why?
They will be converted to giant serverhalls for e-commerce and people working at there laptops from home.
Having videomeetings online are far more easy than spending time and money for travels and in some cases hotelnights.
the fact that the finance industry controls the fate of pension funds is so fucked.
"Agricultural" is completely different from a Corporate Campus/Office. I don't think Jefferson was referring to the survival of America through the labor of Mid Level Executives. Nice try though.
It would be great to see these office buildings repurposed into condos & apartments to help address the shortage of affordable housing.
Not easy to do. With exception of medical office space. Most have central plumbing in the middle near elevators, they also have a central AC system. Converting that to housing wont be as easy or cost effective as tearing down the buildings and building purpose built buildings in their place. Remember these office parks were often built cheap and by the lowest bidder. Not like many of the downtown buildings. As an Mechanical engineer that does this for a living I know.
The buildings themselves aren't worth converting, but the land is and could be used to make more walkable neghbourhoods
wtf? I can't speak with dense places like NYC etc. but most places have plenty of housing. The other side of the coin is we are about to have a population shrinkage. Why make a bunch of housing for folks that aren't real. Too many people you just repeat the narrative without using your brain.
there's plenty of affordable housing in this country, you can get a house in Detroit nearly for free. it's just not affordable in places where there are good jobs. putting apartments in an empty office park, where there are no more jobs, seems to perpetuate the problem.
@@charlesgoin8217 An even bigger issue than the plumbing or AC is the typical floorplate size of these buildings. Take a look at one on google maps (especially the lower rise 1-2 story product) and these buildings can be 30-75,000 SF on a single floor, which means a very small portion of the area is within an acceptable distance to a window.
Have seen instances where they cut a circle out of the middle of the building to make it donut-shaped and have interior courtyard facing units, but that's not financially feasible for 99.9% of properties.
When these are no longer used as office parks, they will probably be repurposed into housing, the same way that old city factories were turned into lofts. .
Not with high interest rates. While every building is different it's generally very expensive to convert office space to residential space so most contractors will need loans. High interest rates means no loans.
The other option would be large capital firms, who wouldn't need loans, doing it. Unfortunately profit margins on anything other than very high end property means they have better options.
Nimby......sigh....it was ever thus
@@kevinolsen8779 I don't know what you mean by NIMBY. Converting offices into apartments is more difficult and expensive than it might seem. For starters, all the wiring and plumbing has to be re-done. Other changes must be made to accommodate local building codes. You essentially have to rebuild the entire structure.
I can't be that hard to convert them offices. Maybe just sell them off floor-by-floor like flats. Let the new owners build the home
@MatthewEng2593
You will need to somehow convince the banks and the local municipality to accept the lower valuation if they're ever going to be sold first
The solution to High prices is High Prices. The solution to Low Prices is Low Prices. As so many of the parks empty out; If the rents are allowed to fall then they will attract smaller businesses and other uses that will repurpose them. Also some may be suitable to be converted to residential use. It varies by use case. Here in New England they will fall into disrepair and be seized for the taxes rinse and repeat.....
Except too many smaller cities have come to depend on that property tax bill. If the large company packs up, that can be 10% of the tax revenue right there.
Most office space is unfit for use as apartment space. Residential space requires far more plumbing and drainage capacity, as well as the installation of gas lines. That would mean boring out far larger drainage and water supply lines, which can cost as much as bulldozing and new construction would.
@@AaronCMounts It depends on locality and other factors. In high seismic areas for example. If the building was up to snuff. No it would be cheaper to retrofit. Also in warmer climates. Of course market conditions are the most important factor. But I agree often a "bulldozer remodel" is the best option for obsolete structures. And I can speak from experience it's very satisfying stuffing old concrete in a dumptruck a yard an half at a time.😎
99% of all the commercial properties in the US are built on borrowed money. The Owner has to pay interest and then make a profit. If the owner cannot make a profit, it will declare bankruptcy and abandon the building. Bottom line: it is not going to help lower the price, it is going to add an abandoned building and add all the problems with it.
@@thomaslthomas1506 Warmer climates aren't always the boon folks think it is. An improperly remodeled property in a warm climate is going to have mold problems within weeks, as the building resettles around the new holes it didn't have before and breaks any sealant involved. A lot of office buildings already have mold problems because, as many folks have already pointed out, they're built and maintained (or not maintained, as I can testify for most offices I've ever worked in) on the cheap. It really does come down to just bulldozing the thing and starting over. Most offices are held together with plywood, hopes and dreams anyway, the noise from having actual households in them would be atrocious.
I think they should have their zoning changed so that they can be remodeled into apartments and condos/stratas
Better yet, abolish zoning so people can just do what makes sense.
@@castirondude You'll have sawmills and cattle feedlots setting up next to peoples' houses.
@@AaronCMounts That's fine , we have that here and it's no big deal.
They've already started doing that where I live. Saw the listing's on Zillow and only words that came to mind: Dystopian housing. No human should have to live in that.
@castirondude Lmao no. Spend an hour navigating around the atlanta metro area and you'll soon be begging for zoning
Really enjoyed this presenter's style of humour and how she engages the audience! Plus the script was very well suited to her presentation skills. Great job guys! Would come back to see her present other topics in the future 😊
Found the bot.
They are usually called, "Mixed-Use" properties. apartments, shopping, etc.
It should be possible to make apartments in this buildings, or even better a mix of apartments, small businesses and shops. And please, reverse at least 50% of the parking to grass and trees. And cover the last 50% with solar panels. It may not save funds but at least people will have a home and will be able to live without needing a car for basic needs. And the more homes the less expensive it is to have a home, including for retired people.
You can setup all the small business space and shop space you want, but good luck enticing anyone to actually move into them. A 3-floor apartment complex of over 150 doors wouldn't be enough to entice even a small coffee house to move in, let alone any type of clinic, bar, retail shop or supermarket.
Do you personally agree to increase in your taxation to pay for the Chinese-propagaded BS and waste a.k.a. "solar panels"? If not a secret - what is exactly your educational level? I am doing a research about this demagogues shouting and crying about "solar panels", and so far did not find a single one who knows what he/she talks about.
Go,d I hated those. Hate those. I lived near some that were built in the 90s and never filled up. They were 2020 well before 2020. But I worked for Sprint which did the multi-billion dollar stupid campus. Every floor a cube farm. Just awful. And all my friends were so excited -- a dry cleaner, a daycare, a gym -- all on campus! I was thinking "most of you could evaporate right in front of me and I wouldn't care, so why would I want to spend even more time with you?" Plus, the campus looked like something out of Logan's Run.
"most of you could evaporate right in front of me and I wouldn't care, so why would I want to spend even more time with you?" 🤣😂😅 Never change, @chipcook5346... never change.
"Bell labs" building was abandoned for years. Some investors bought it and now lease out sections to other businesses.
Working in the burbs is soul-sucking. Car -> freeway -> fast food -> office with bad architecture -> home -> repeat, blah!!! Love working in the city lol! 🙂
i don't think the architecture is bad, the urban planning is but most office parks have more architectural worth than the sea of bland millenial buildings
Child of the 80s here (class of '87). I'm from New Orleans and was a kid when everyone was getting' the hell outta Dodge and heading for the 'burbs, so I wound up in both Metairie and Kenner, two of NOLA's main suburbs. I remember when those office parks were going up and how modern everyone thought they were. As a result, much of Metairie Kenner are now one extended agglomeration of strip malls and office parks, could be Anywhere, USA. Which is a shame considering how unique New Orleans proper is.
I bought a condo in a 1970s office/retail/residential complex. After 80% of the office space sat vacant for the better part of a decade, most of it is being converted into spaces zoned for commercial or residential. I would live in a loft in a former office building in a heartbeat. I’m hoping GenZ feels the same way. If this revitalization goes as planned then my community will be every bit the place I hoped it would be.
Depending on location, some former office space might be able to survive through rezoning. I doubt there will many that would pass up a mini penthouse overlooking a lake if the price is right.
as long as the original 1970s architecture is preserved, as a zoomer i dont want our entire cityscape to either be 1800s historical or millenial modernist architecture
in NYC and other cities, office buildings are being converted into mixed-use buildings: apartments, grocery, gym, daycare, retail, etc., mixed in at the ground level, with apartments above. in these office parks, landlords are going to have to re-configure and re-invent uses for these buildings. Knocking them down just fills garbage dumps
also knocking them down would be a massive architectural waste, these office parks have nice looking buildings
The suburbs will definitely be the ones to face the worst effects of… suburban office parks, not sure how this could blow back on cities, which have their own sets of struggles with commercial real estate but a much more sustainable tax base.
We’re almost 25 years from Office Space’s perfect depiction of the misery of doing a 9-5 job in a suburban office park. There’s no way younger generations, knowing the ubiquity of remote work, are going to move back en masse to this style of working.
The majority of suburbs near office parks make any kind of transformative housing project a nearly impossible battle, so until that changes, this kind of decay will continue as suburban towns feel the effects of this stagnation and decay.
Because cities collect revenue off property taxes of those offices lol
This was a really cool video, I have lived and worked my entire life around office parks and never thought of it like this. The collapse of them could really have a great economic impact across North America. Thank you for making this video!
came from youtube recommend
man, morning brew makes great newsletter and content!
I started a job recently that involves a fair bit of travel to customer sites. Honestly the hard part isn't the travel it's the fact I'll be semi excited to go to a city i haven't yet only to realize the customer is in an office part 45 minutes from the city ☠️
I have been so much more content and productive working from home. Also not having to deal with a useless commute each day has been wonderful.
Same
Working from home is the best!
This is a great video. Slightly contradicts companies push for employees return to office. There is a big lack of mindset change from people in leadership positions.
Office parks are the perfect opportunity to create new dense, mixed use neighborhoods where people can live within walking distance of their job. They have a lot of prime, unused real estate in their parking lots just sitting, waiting to be redeveloped. The parking lots are almost never full, and have a lot of empty, extra space. If they redeveloped a small part of their land into a more compact multi-level parkade, it would fulfill both current and future parking requirements, allowing for the development of new offices, industrial warehouses, retail spaces, public pedestrian areas, and even mixed use residential buildings in a pleasant, walkable neighborhood. Given that these office parks are almost always near major highways are traffic arteries, they're in the perfect location to become transit oriented developments for a future BRT or Light Rail system. What may be stagnation and decay right now, could be an important tool to help solve the housing crisis, provide economic opportunities, and curb carbon emissions.
In the 80's I worked in many of those office parks in Bergen County NJ. So Here's a thought, turn them into housing. NY, NJ and CT are in housing crisis, low inventory, high prices, unaffordable for young families if they can find a suitable place.
weve literally used cities for millenia and the fact that some people thought: 'actually cities bad' is HILARIOUS. especially thinking suburbs are the answer even though we know theyre ecologically destructive and a tax drain
The cities were wrecked after civil rights era and the introduction of the welfare state from the later 1960s. By the 1970s, people were fed up. We're seeing this right now on the West coast, just takes a few years to catch up
I work in one of these in North Bethesda (but let's be real and call it Rockville). The office isn't that close to much, but there is a mixed use development planned about a block or two away. I think it's about 2000 residential units plus retail. The area is reasonably transit accessible, so it can work pretty well. In some cases, urbanization and mixed use near office parks can be a solution.
Pike and Rose 🌹😊
Assuming you're working off 355, that's because the area is dense enough that it's basically a city by US standards. This video is more about those office parks you'd see in Clarksburg or Poolesville.
This article also skips the inner city gentrification that was starting in the eighties and picking up speed in the 90's and 2000's . Gen X and retiring Boomers, tired of their power going out every time it rained, started realizing that property in the city could be bought cheap, improved upon, and bought with the proceeds of selling their suburban homes to those arriving in the 80's and 90's. The Millennials may have accelerated the trend for sure, but it was already WELL underway by the time they were adults.
As a millennial, I really don't understand the push back to city centers.
Quite literally crime ridden, trashy, expensive, and cramped.
@wayward03 You are a wise millennial imo. I agree with your outlook. I grew up in the suburbs and loved them as a kid and still love them. Matter of fact, I am planning to relocate to a rural area in the near future. I find city centers unfriendly, claustrophobic, expensive, loud and dangerous. The push for re-urbanization is simple. City governments can harvest a lot more tax dollars from the tax paying "sheep" in high density areas; however, imo, the quality of life in high density areas is much lower than lower density areas. In addition, those high tax receipts are mis-managed and squandered in urban areas.
Dating prospects are better in the city. Millennials are about the age where they are considering starting a family.
Also, with cities, you can ditch the car and save ~10k a year, of which half would go to rent but eh
Also depends on the city. Japan has the complete opposite problem of everyone moving into Tokyo and maybe Osaka, in many cases, leaving the rural areas to quite literally rot. Can't blame them, the job prospects outside of the few cities outside of farming is quite nil. Not to mention the lack of modern infrastructure out in the countryside
yeah, all the major cities in the US have been driven into 3rd world dumpster fire status by the Democrats that run them. San Fransisco, Chicago, et al - these are the poster children of this Marxist suicide pact
Most of America views these places as the insanely stupidest locales on the planet
@Demopans5990 Fair point on jobs. I'd argue about dating prospects at least in America. About 90 fruit cakes at least in the 30 and below crowd.
Also millennials are kinda late to be starting a family, most should have grown kids by now. Or at least close.
@WTFoxtrot2023 Where I live, even though it's in the burbs, it's normal to have lots under 5000sqft. Pretty ridiculous coming from the country side.
Gotta pay the bills though.
So we have businesses surrounding office parks worried about not having a revenue stream, we have a low-income housing crisis that's rippling ALL the way upwards, and we have a lot of impending vacancies in these multi-storied buildings...this feels like an easy pivot that we will fuck up royally.
I don't think anyone predicted that technology would make them partially obsolete
Great video! Appreciate your hard work and hope you get more views. Appreciate the Eagan callout!
they can probably transformed into homes that have some stores in the firs flores
Unfortunately office to residential conversions are very difficult….and expensive!
@@Kainae yeah i can imagine. But if financed correctly it could be a solution.
@Kainae
In fact, it's easier to do them the older the office building is, in general. If the building dates to a time before the open office, conversion can be a matter of running plumbing in the walls as everything else is probably already there.
Enjoyed this video. Nice work !
Strange, the very last thing I want to do for a commute is drive into the city where I have to deal with all the city problems, like dramatically inflated prices, no parking but no shortage of traffic, and all the noise pollution.
In the exurbs, I might get road noise twice/day during rush hours. In the city, I couldn't get away from packs of motorcycles cruising the streets, drunks being rowdy all night, people crowding up behind you at an ATM, trash and broken glass in the streets. Absolutely no regrets about leaving.
Hence places like NYC implementing congestion tolling to combat the city traffic and noise
NYC was very strangely quiet during 2020, which probably had something to do with the lack of cars anywhere
Agree, my previous company was downtown. Everything super expensive, parking expensive. When we went to remote work all the projects went faster than ever before. But hey they got millions upon millions invested in the buildings so that's the main reason they went back to office. So they don't look stupid for having an empty building.
These could go the way of malls. For big examples, the Great Mall of the Great Plains rose up and was removed, parking lot included, in less than twenty years. Or the Mall of Memphis, which was truly special, from opening to close, just over twenty-two years.
I'm so glad you mentioned Eagan, MN. When I lived just to the south of there, it seemed that Eagan & Rochester would someday end up bumping 'office parks."
This video was good! 💪 Thanks for that intro. It was pretty catchy
Very informative. Great video!
9:08 "😔 they couldn't have known" I feel sorry for them too, terrible timing for that article. 😂
I live in Eagan in Minnesota and was glad to see we made it into your video. To expand on that point, there are 3 large facilities within a block of each other that have been vacant since at least 2020. Once I think was vacated in 2019 but the lease didn't get renewed likely becausw if 2020. You know it's a problem when you see this happening to multiple office buildings.
There are several routes these proerties can go:
1) Occupancy bu 1 or many business tenants.
2) Destroy and sell to developers for commercial or to convert to resdiential
3) Conversion into residential apartments or condominiums.
Conversion to apartments/condos is expensive as plumbing as to be reconstructed throughout the building. You also need a new layout and sound proofing. Redevelopement is a huge investment for C&D. Occupying only comes back if the economy starts to pick up. Working from isn't the complete answer: a lot of companies have consolidated roles into their corporate offices.
Whats most interesting is that this topic was largerly insider knowledge to the retirement finance world in 2022 & now the cracks are showing as more awareness trickles out of this disaster
i can see the problem BUT this problem can be a solution. There's always been a problem with mult family housing in the suburbs. retrofit the closed office parks into apartments. I understand that it would be very expensive to do but you wouldn't have to build the entire building. The parking is already there Probably a bus stop is already there. They don't have to be five star apartments. I know that a lot of them would not pass certain criteria for windows that open or what have you. The apartments don't necessarily need their own washer and dryer You can install a laundry mat.. basically make them like college style apartments. with the prices the way they are People will not care . Those restrictions are simply laws that people have created and people can create exemptions for. Yes it may be a crisis to lose the office parks but we're in a housing crisis too. We may not always need office parks . We are talking about where office workers want to be like We are always going to have office workers.. 20 years from now we probably not need many office workers AI is going to do it. of the few office workers that will require a human very very few will require an office they will work from home. One thing that's not really debatable is everyone needs a place to live.
Great video! Loved the Bell Labs plug
Ah i used to love your videos back on Cheddar Karin! Glad you found a new place here
Not sure I agree with the conclusion (or suggestion), but definitely an interesting video nevertheless. It _required_ a jolt like the pandemic to show people that, in modern times with desk/computer based jobs that working from home (along with maybe quarterly in-person get togethers) is often more than enough. It can boost productivity (more time, less commuting, safer) and overall quality of life. However, as your video outlines, given how society has acclimated to this infrastructure, it is putting serious pressure on the things that rely on that tax base. America’s sprawling “stroad” and strip mall riddled suburbia is rife with issues, not least of which are these increasingly empty corporate office complexes.
I live near Eagan - there's about 100k sq ft of office park less than a mile from me that's just wrapping up build out.... Can't help but question why they're building that right now
I believe it is something that this video did not touch on. Big cities with crime explosions - such as Minneapolis. The companies that cannot get employees back to work in their city offices, because of crime, are moving to suburbs, again. They are finding bargain rate rents/leases (due to the reasons outlined in the vid) and low crime rates.
No thank you I will never work in an office park ever again. I worked in one of those hellholes for 4 years. The only palatable coffee shop was an 8-minute drive away. The two restaurants on the ground floor were too expensive to be considered a backup when I didn't feel like packing a lunch. Meeting friends after work was a logistical nightmare as most of them worked in the downtown core. Accessibility by public transportation was challenging even during rush hour. A one-way drive to work was 25 km. I liked my job but the inconvenience of the location eventually prompted me to look for a new job.
Well, suburban office parks were better than forcing employees to commute from their homes in the suburbs to office buildings downtown. I was forced to do that right before covid and thank gawd covid ended that stupidity and now I work 100% from home. But, if there was an office park near where I live I wouldn’t have a problem commuting to it. Anything is better than forcing people to drive all the way into downtown. Anything.
As a caveat, New Jerseys real problem is nobody wants to live in or move to New Jersey. The Sun belt is still where people are migrating to. Particularly places like Texas, Florida, South Carolina, and Tennessee. New Jersey simply has a bad reputation for being dirty, polluted, crime ridden, and cold nasty weather.
Yep. My wife’s company signed a 5 year lease (with an option to extend another 5 or 10)for 12 floors in an office park in 2018. Occupied in mid 2019. 2023 they declined the option for all but 4 floors. That’s all they need with a hybrid working model.
“I am no longer fit to exist in polite society.” Girl, same.
I want to work downtown not in some far flung suburban office park. I actually turned down a job because the company was located in a suburban office park.
I've successfully worked from my home office for > 30 years. Never going back to that ill-conceived construct of "down town," or suburbian "office park." NOR AM I willing to grind myself to death, so the boss can afford to by himself another new car next year. Not from my blood, sweat, and tears. Thank goodness for the internet.
The death of office parks won’t be the undoing of suburbia. The low density single family zoning is the real killer. Suburbs cannot raise enough revenue via property taxes with such low density.
Instead of propping up outdated business models, repurpose those office parks as housing or commerce, or mixed use of both.
Very good video. I think it is a stretch to link Thomas Jefferson to the generation of Office Parks, but interesting theory anyway. The issue for cities is that they seem intent on generating a chaotic environment, which is not going to increase their economic viability. The Generation after millennials is decidely anti-social, so that is going to be interesting to watch! No offices at all! Thanks for the video.
I definitely worked the majority of my time in either these office parks or purpose built Corporate Offices. Not as dystopian an experience as some seem to think. But, hey, times and tastes change. The Millennials, with fewer or no kids, have outsourced the production of future taxpayers to foreign producers, which is certainly cheaper…. 😂
I agree that singling out Jefferson is probably not correct, however it is true that there has been an "anti-urban" strain of thought in the English speaking world since the 19th century. See for example the Garden City movement.
Only in America are vast empty parking lots seen as "bucolic". The problem is the stupid insistence on promoting car storage over housing. And whiule we'Re at it, Jefferson was talking about individual farmers not corporate headquarters.
Another aspect not discussed in this video is the costs associated with working in a suburban office park. Housing costs around these parks have creeped up overtime due to bad civic planning, traffic is horrible due to everyone needing to drive in the same 2 hour blocks of the day, and overall these buildings are bland, poorly connected to the surrounding communities, and expensive to maintain as they age. Not to mention how much transportation costs have shot up for the average young household.
Many WW2 veterans grew up in poor conditions in big cities. They welcomed a yard and home to call their own. Still today, many parts of cities aren’t great.
Working in a freaking skyscraper is no better than these office parks.
I'm more and more convinced that the suburbs themselves are a failed experiment. Propping up business parks seems like rearranging deck chairs on the Titanic. Suburban towns are already subsidized by the nearby urban areas they seem to hate so much, with utilities, services, and amenities that cost more than the taxes single family homes, drive-throughs, and strip malls bring in.
Don't get me wrong, with the lack of housing, especially housing appropriate for larger families, most American cities as they stand right now, can't bring those suburbanites back into the urban fold. But with some effort, some zoning changes, and some new thinking (and some really old thinking), I'm a firm believer that cities are, for most people, the future, and not a bad one. The whole, "I'll move to the suburbs when I start a family" thing will, hopefully, die a much needed death. Along with the myth of moving to the country to live with nature. If you love nature...don't build a home on it.
Office parks could be the perfect place to start building new dense mixed-use suburbs. They're better suited to this kind of redevelopment than power centers which are often located around intersections with buildings that have footprints and which do require a lot of parking and visibility from the street to be effective.
Both my former and current companies downsized their office park space and switched to the flex-desk model: no permanent desks as employees work a hybrid of remote and in-office, so not all employees are in the office on the same days. That seems to be the office park trend post-pandemic, which should downsize the sq. ft. leased in the overall economy.
The obvious answer is to repurpose the office parks into affordable housing and ground level shops and serviced. The projects would create plenty of job save the real estate companies and investment funds, and combat an unbelievably bad homelessness crisis for a developed country. Win-win-win.
And while at it, turn these ridiculously huge parking lots into bus stops and train stations. Couple of extra dollars to make it nice as well as profitable.
@4:56 if you're going to try to mask a current San Francisco skyline under a "70s vintage" filter, try to make sure the gigantic Salesforce tower isn't part of it.
Covid hit cities and suburbs alike, but it didn't hit rural areas like that. I moved out of Chicago in 2021, once I saw that Covid was about to ruin my life. I moved to the middle of Tennessee, where not a flying fuck was given about Covid, and my life drastically improved overnight.
and the people that live in these dense urban 3rd world cess pools are just mentally bonkers - as they elected into office a bunch of corrupt, criminal, totally incompetent, sociopath Marxist that are bent on the intentional self destruction of the cities they run (if it can be called that)
It was not that so much that covid hit per se, but the non-scientific policies of pocketed politicians as you intimated lol.
So much of the work is remote now, even when you are sitting in an office.
The business that embrace remote work will be saving bundles of cash and be much more competitive vs those that do not.
Jefferson would have hated office parks as great wastes of once rural land -- farmland, woodlands, just as I do.
I watched the TikTok of this thinking it was going to be a proposal for what else we could do with the office park in a future where suburbia is going to continue to die.
I didn’t realize it was just going to be shilling for the continued survival of the office park in spite of everything about it making 0 sense.
Let's replace them with flats. Even if they can't be refit, land is still land, especially with existing basic infrastructure: road access, electricity, water supply, sewage system, fiber, ... Not only will the local self-governemnt get its real-estate tax, but new residents/taxpayers too. I like idea of remote work rejuvenating small cities which often offer nice quality of life and access to many facilities (schools, shops, malls, sport) within small relatively small radius, no need for long, wasteful commutes.
Excellent, informative report.
Shows how America is not Europe and likely never will be.
Even as it is it's already way too European. And I'm saying that as a European who lives in the USA.
Cleveland just claimed a major victim in the "office park" decline; TRW Lyndhurst, a famous large office park about 12 miles east of Cleveland that served as the headquarters for major parts manufacturer TRW till the late 2000s before it was used for other purposes till 2019 where after 4 years of being for sale, was decided to be torn down. It was a beautiful building with great post modern acretecture built in 1982 but it's use had ran it's course and it is now in the process of being demolished.
Welp, guess those office park owners should pull themselves up by their bootstraps and get to converting them to housing ASAP, huh?
I don’t see a problem, thats an opportunity for more housing in north jersey, that is much needed. Most of those buildings are empty because most people rather work from home. 😅 outside from those people who feel like going to the office is a part of their social life.
i think they should do something to atleast preserve the architecture of the office park, even if they are outdated its unfair to wipe our architecture because the parking lot around it and not everyone is going to want the cityscape to boring millenial minimalist buildings
It seems like there’s no real acknowledgment here about the lack of sustainability surrounding suburban environments in general. Car-centric low-density developments neither provide good quality of life for residents (no walkability, unsustainable for public transit) and provide a poor service to tax-base infrastructure ratio.
"They couldn't have known" 🤣- best line
You’re missing one HUGE contributing factor… the expansion of the US highway system.
I am 100% remote, I don't need to commute, I have a view of San Francisco Bay, my dog, a couch, a TV and a quiet place to concentrate. WE ARE NOT GOING BACK!
Office Parks are quickly giving way to sprawling warehouses.
Half of my friends worked at bell labs murryhill nj and a few at the office space shown with slab concrete wall in Holmdel nj.
Murryhill is being torn down. The scientists that worked at storied bell labs are retired .
My aunt and uncle met at the softball team at Bell Labs Holmdel. Apparently 4 marriages came out of the early-mid 1980s Bell Labs softball team.
I'm from Holmdel, but by the time I had been born, Bell Labs had already been spun off into Lucent and then things just went downhill from there. Most of my childhood, that place was a ghost town. Holmdel almost tore it down too. I'm glad they were able to at least save the building and repurpose it into a community center.
Offices in the city center have the entire region's workforce at it's tap. A suburb office park can't get workers that live in the opposite side of the region. For a big city like New York that'd be over 2 hours one way!
Tax incentives for developers to redevelop low value urban properties was a factor in drawing millennial back. This against the backdrop of low urban crime rates that occurred because of policies in the 90's. Now, 2020s bring rising crime rates. And yes, office space value got blowed up by COVID response policies, urban and suburban.
I've seen many planning related articles over the past few years where this situation is referred to by the writer as being 'the suburban growth Ponzi scheme'. Vwery sage, IMHO, including my observation of malls being 'soooo last century'.
I live downtown in a major city, the homeless situation has gotten out of control and crime has gotten worse. I think this video fails to recognize how much urban crime improved in the late 90s, which made moving back to urban centers appealing again. Even if violent crime doesn't get close to 1980s levels, the perception is things are trending in the wrong direction and that will help keep these office parks alive.
Finally, the ONLY sober voice among infantile idiots....
Who else works in a soulless office building in northern NJ?
I'm in favor of letting the market work. If the companies which own these office parks want their buildings occupied they have plenty of options. The municipalities affected by office building closures can either cut their budgets or raise taxes.
Level them and turn them into green spaces. It’s cheaper for everyone to work from home.
zoning laws were absolutely made a mockery of. Why even have zoning law if you are just going to adjust the zoning to give your buddies a convenient tax break?
as long as the original architecture is preserved, as gen z i don't want to live in a millenial designed hellscape where every building has the same gray and white 2020s era design inside and out, that would be vastly more soul sucking than any office park
So much this... People are advocating against this... In favor of what? Mixed used buildings that all look exactly the same? Lemme guess, fake brick facade with hanging glass/steel, coffee shop on first floor, etc