by legitster on 7/18/23, 5:25 PM
US cities are going to be in a world of hurt here pretty soon.
Cities exist as job markets. And the primary force that keeps urban areas safe and friendly is the shoeleather of middle class workers coming in and out of work each day.
The vacuum left has been filled with homelessness and poverty. These people were always here, but there was enough critical mass that they were at the margins. Now they are at all of the bus stops and train platforms.
Cities often had their priorities backwards and became very dependent on unsustainably high property values. Even if you started rezoning office buildings into housing, SF would be taking a double hit - there is less reason to live in SF and more housing would bring down values everywhere. Forgetting that these business districts are pretty undesirable places to live anyway.
So we are looking at a potential "death spiral" as cities lose their appeal, and lose the funding to solve the problems. Until they button up and find a new stable equilibrium.
SF is especially weird because it had/has somewhat of a vibrant tourism scene, and was always pretty hostile to its own business community. And now you have a hollowed-out downtown that is now not nearly as desirable for business and not particularly tourist friendly either.
by atleastoptimal on 7/18/23, 5:11 PM
Given that Salesforce towers can be a measure of unutilized space, could the amount of total internal non-productive bullshit in a company be measured in Salesforces?
by craigkerstiens on 7/18/23, 5:17 PM
At the moment some of even the salesforce tower space is being sublet and used by weworks. At the moment it's really a great time to take advantage of some of the wework setups if you want to be in SF. The rates haven't changed much, yet the general space and quality of amenities to me seems not far off from some of the posh setups of Heroku or GitHub (maybe not quite that level but not far off).
by Thoeu388 on 7/18/23, 5:22 PM
I would love to have my own habitable storage unit in downtown SF. 200sqf, air vents, no windows, shared bathroom with shower.
It would be great as a base while traveling. I could visit between changing flights, and swap some of my gear. Occasionally I would sleep there.
by Mountain_Skies on 7/18/23, 5:49 PM
One interesting job market change I've seen in the past two months has been the return of the private office. After a couple of decades of moving everyone they could into bullpens and other open areas, it appears that some managers see private offices, while not as good as open floorplans, better than having their workers at home completely out of view. Longterm leases and reduced headcount physically in the office makes these private offices, with floor to ceiling walls and doors that close, viable, at least for now. It's still only a single digit percentage of job postings mentioning private offices and it'll be interesting to see if the trend of offering them grows.
It's an new type of carrot, but I doubt it is going to work on very many. Open floorplans were an abomination but the gap between them and a private office is much smaller than the gap between a private office and a home office. For those who don't have a good workspace at home or just prefer to be in the office, private offices might be a nice change. There probably will be a small percentage of extreme extraverts who miss the bullpen type workspace.
by pasttense01 on 7/18/23, 5:03 PM
If the owners would substantially cut the rent the empty office space would rapidly fill up.
by gochi on 7/18/23, 5:43 PM
What I don't understand is why we're still stuck with this idea that entire buildings need to be dedicated to one thing and one thing only. "Hybrid" spaces are still so rare and they wind up being not all that hybrid, more like 2 giant sections one for retail and one for office.
by renewiltord on 7/18/23, 6:24 PM
Ultimately, all this is not leading to lower commercial rents. So if we can wait until borrowers default, maybe it will. But for now, I'd like a cooled office where I can put a few racks of servers downtown and plug some fiber. I do want access for the moment. Let me know if interested.
by dexwiz on 7/18/23, 5:11 PM
For comparison, it looks like it was hovering around 6 million square feet before the pandemic, or ~4.5 Salesforce Towers. I wonder how much of the still occupied space is functionally empty now, or only used a few times a week.
by kneebonian on 7/18/23, 5:56 PM
SF was a one trick town, software, that software wealth in the later stages was built on low interest rates and cheap money. That is no longer the case, and SF will end up going the way of Detroit.
by passwordoops on 7/18/23, 5:02 PM
I wonder how this compares to other cities globally
by Apocryphon on 7/18/23, 5:14 PM
I wonder how much of that office space is viable for converting into residential housing, both physically-speaking and zoning-wise.
Yeah, yeah, office buildings are often built completely different from housing and need to be vastly retooled, but it is possible, and Boston is attempting it. When it comes to SF it feels like the regulatory issues are more difficult.