Bay Area carpet and flooring company Conklin Bros. has existed in one form or another for nearly a century and a half, starting with a mule-drawn wagon and weathering the 1906 earthquake and a constant cycle of economic booms and busts.
Posted on 07/23/2024 10:03:40 AM PDT by Vendome
From furniture installers to plant whisperers, businesses are reeling from record-high office vacancy rates.
Bay Area carpet and flooring company Conklin Bros. has existed in one form or another for nearly a century and a half, starting with a mule-drawn wagon and weathering the 1906 earthquake and a constant cycle of economic booms and busts.
An employee for the past 35 years, JoAnn Edson, can’t remember business ever being as slow as it is now.
“We’re struggling,” she said. “We’re just trying to stay open and stay afloat.”
Before Covid, Conklin Bros. bustled with flooring orders for local offices, hotels and hospital systems. Now, the firm has “very few salespeople and very few calls,” she said.
A major culprit is remote work and the growing proportion of empty or nearly empty office buildings that dot downtown. That stagnation — measured in record-high vacancy rates north of 36% — is not just a drag on the city budget but has rippled out like shockwaves, imperiling the once-thriving network of businesses that serve and support office workers.
Bigger build-outs have plummeted in the city, where the value of permitted work for office alterations and repairs sank to $432.9 million in 2023 from a peak of $1.5 billion in 2019, according to the Examiner.
That has burned construction businesses, heavy equipment providers and installers like Conklin Bros., whose business has slowed to a trickle.
“We’re just sitting here waiting for it to pick up,” Edson said. “I pray to God it does.”
(Excerpt) Read more at sfstandard.com ...
I used to visit San Francisco at least 3 times a year from 1985 to 2017. The last time I was there in 2017 it was a bun-infested dump. I can only imagine it is much worse now.
This one is purely a political bust.
Some people never learn that political Marxism with its gov't command and control economics is the road to poverty and serfdom. EVERY TIME!
FREEDOM is what makes America great!!
Thank you for your Democrat votes. You work at our dependable drone department. We could not destroy you without your complicity.
Exactly. who did JoAnn Edson quoted in the article vote for?
I hope she doesn’t move to a civilized place
More socialism can fix the problems of too much socialism.
lol!
The Agriculture Business net will be down 25% gross due to increased interest rates and input costs.
There is a significant ripple effect from that loss.
36% vacancy rate is the current number. It will go up. Meta is vacating 400,000 sq ft, Alphabet 200,000 sq ft, and X is going to TX.
Not to mention Macy’s at Union Square is vacating, as is Williams Sonoma
To cap it off Saks Fifth Avenue has gone appointment only.
If Neiman Marcus goes appointment only, it’s over
Recall that Kamala was DA of SF when the death spiral began. This is what we can expect for America if she ever gets the top job.
I hate X moving to TX. We already have too many companies coming here bringing their wacky leftists to ruin the state. They are determined turn the whole state blue. All the major cities and the border are blue. There is no housing and property taxes that used to be 2 weeks of income are now 5 months.
Austin used to be a nice day trip to shop, eat out and go somewhere exciting but we refuse to go anymore. It has the feel of depression and nazi. You have to call ahead to an office so they know you’re coming but then you have to wait outside so they can verify it is you, call whomever you’re trying to see and let you inside as they’re giving you the side eye. Don’t even think of riding the elevator on your own. You have to have an escort every step but the door automatically locks so the escort has to have someone let them back in their own department. Then it is zombie heads turning to watch as you’re verified again at reception and a second escort takes you to where you were trying to get. The process is the reverse on your way out. Don’t forget to wave at the 3 dozen known cameras along the way. Are liberals that scared?
Certain people don’t need to or want to work these days. We spent the past 3 weeks trying to get someone out to pump out the septic. The company we had used forever had sold out to another company which had gone out of business. Ok, so we go down the list but I refuse to do business with a couple. One company, the owner’s son hollered and lunged almost punching me for merely asking if we needed to move our cars out of the way when they were working next door. Excuse me? NO! So, left messages with 3 others but never got a call back. Down the list some more and got one to schedule a date but never showed up. That one promised and promised to get us rescheduled but 10 days later nothing. Finally, got someone out for a job that took maybe 40 minutes.
Bought a dryer from Lowe’s along a new vent and cord but did the guy connect the vent? No. Funny how deliveries never seem to arrive but they claim they were delivered despite someone waiting for it and the dog would have alerted. These are just few of the dozen places we’ve been pulling our hair out over. No one wants to work or do the jobs they were hired to do.
I think X moving to TX is more about Elon creating efficiencies. He will have all his engineers from SpaceX, X, and Tesla basically co-located. They can be called upon to pick up critical tasks or co-work on various projects. I’m pretty sure when he bought Twitter he came in with a team from Tesla to strip the code out - they even literally yanked out entire server racks.
He is developing Grok AI too, in Nashville or Memphis I think, but the software could come from TX.
Grok is the chat bot developed by Elon-owned xAI (which is headquartered in Burlingame, CA with offices in Palo Alto and London).
He just did an interview with Jordan Peterson, he mentioned Memphis I think. Maybe where the servers are?
I know Grok is deployed on X.
...or for wages that only unskilled illegal aliens packed like lemmings into illegal apartments can afford to work for.
I have two business-owning associates that I don't talk to anymore due to their delusions about paying minimum wage but continually griping about not getting rocket scientist performance.
One in particular lost his ____ when I asked him why he didn't solve his problems by hiring his sons to work for him. He lost it, because he couldn't stand getting called out on the fact he he wasn't going to pay more than illegal alien wages. "Good for thee but not for me."
It's not just about wages. I know several people who turned down job offers because they wouldn't have any authority to fire certain people who needed to be fired.
"We want to bring you on board to turn this around."
~"No problem. I intend to let these three go."
"Um, no. We don't want that."
~"Then you're not serious about turning this around."
Granted, it's television, but watch an episode of "Bar Rescue" with Jon Taffer.
If you haven't seen the Gordon Ramsay "Amy's Baking Company" episode, it's 42 minutes of unbelievable delusion.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FlYPkLRHeD4
Musk truly is a stranger in a strange land.
-PJ
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