When we interviewed companies for our book and researched the changes in corporate worklife in general, we became aware of the huge shift to non-office office workers. Many large companies such as IBM and Sun boast that currently 33% of their workforce has no corporate ‘office space’ any longer, possibly heading toward 50% or higher. While not all companies can operate successfully without in-office office workers, a great many can, and this is likely to lead to a significant decline for the office-space real-estate market.
When spent much time thinking about “what will happen with
all this unused office space”? A recent
article in the Boston Globe caught my eye:
http://www.boston.com/realestate/news/2005/june/0615_condos.html
In many
desirable urban locations (such as Boston or Chicago) office space is being
converted into luxury condo’s or apartments. Makes sense. While it is probably
extremely expensive to convert a typical open-floor-space office into a fully
equipped condo (plumbing, kitchens, etc), the value of the real-estate/location
makes it worthwhile.
But what
about in suburbia? Here are some ideas:
- if old and amortized enough, bull-doze for
tennis courts
- athletic club (good use of open floor
space designs)
- office-parks could be strip-mall-ized
- possible "affordable income"
housing (condo-flats, apartments, etc)
- schools – a great use of a more ‘hardened’ type of building and
perfect timing for many of our town’s aging schools.
Or...it
could be that they are retained as office-space and that the remaining
"downtown city" locations all move out to the burbs leaving "The City" as pure destination for
arts, entertainment, and urban living but
without the twice-per-day commuting crush.
Learn more: Inescapable Data
That's interesting. I think that the reason office space is declining now is because so many companies are going out of business. Once the economy rebounds I would expect it to rise again.
Posted by: Aurora Colorado Office Space | July 20, 2009 at 02:38 PM