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![]() “They prefer to be able to do an easy commute from their apartment building a couple blocks away, as opposed to jump in a car and drive,” Scott Davis, vice president and director of the mechanical department at consulting engineering firm Bala, said about young scientists. A significant amount of the vacant office space is also located in cities where, thanks to their proximity to universities and their ample talent pools, demand for lab space is on the rise. Offices and labs both command high rents, and they’re both places people go to work (labs just have a lot more cool stuff inside, like centrifuges and safety showers). Importantly, apartments rent for way less, making the move less financially attractive to building owners.įor the empty offices that can’t become housing, labs are increasingly their second life. Even if developers overcome all the issues with zoning and adding separate bathrooms and kitchens in every apartment, they still run up against the niggling realization that people need windows in their apartments, and that can be impossible to achieve in large buildings. The problem is, apartment conversions aren’t always possible given the sheer size of some office buildings. The most obvious conversion would be to affordable housing, since there’s a national shortage. What exactly these conversions will look like depends on the area, the structure of the building, and the needs of tenants. In dense cities, it’s often easier and faster to turn one type of real estate into another, rather than build it from scratch. That leaves a big open question as to what to do with office buildings that are idling amid what’s otherwise some of the most in-demand real estate in the country. People are flocking to live there, to hang out there, and even to work there - but not exactly to go to their old offices. Meanwhile, major cities where these offices are located are otherwise flourishing. “As long as there’s capital to spend on improving the human condition, there will be a place for labs” Just how much office space will go unused is so far unclear, but if that dollar figure is any indication, there could be a lot of empty offices. Extrapolating from New York City data, one recent study estimates that the value of offices around the country could decline about 40 percent, or $453 billion, as remote work lowers the demand for office space. When people’s offices are their living rooms, there’s simply less need for commercial office space. ![]() As a result, offices are experiencing their highest vacancy rates in three decades: nearly 17 percent, CBRE data shows. September was supposed to be the month people returned to the office, but office occupancy rates are still at less than 50 percent, according to Kastle, which makes keycard systems for workers to swipe in and out of the office. ![]() And experts say these rates should hold once the pandemic is over. Thirty percent are working hybrid, meaning they work both at home and in the office, while another 15 percent are fully remote. While these buildings still represent just a small share of office stock in the US, what happens with them could help guide what happens to unwanted office space for years to come.Ĭurrently, nearly half of Americans are doing at least some work from home. The number of office buildings that are being converted into something else in major markets like Boston, San Francisco, Raleigh/Durham, Denver, and New York is slated to grow 50 percent this year, according to data commercial real estate services firm CBRE shared with Recode. While people are considering a wide variety of new lives for office spaces - distribution centers, schools, data centers, hospitals, and, most prominently, apartments - labs might be the most promising reincarnation for struggling offices, thanks to tectonic shifts in the market since the start of the pandemic.Īnyone who’s seen a church become a retail store or a mall transform into an apartment block can attest that the built environment, though constant, is never stagnant. If the future of work is online, the future of the office is something else. ![]() Part of Back to the Future, from The Highlight, Vox’s home for ambitious stories that explain our world. ![]()
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