Posted on 12/11/2022 7:03:48 AM PST by Tolerance Sucks Rocks
The beating heart of the Pittsburgh region is the Golden Triangle, and people are its lifeblood. For the sake of the social and economic health of Downtown, and of the entire city and region, employers in the urban core should encourage as many workers as possible to return to the office, at least a few days each week.
It’s not just about maximizing the number of warm bodies in office chairs: More workers mean more lunches and happy hours, more shopping and catering, more cycling and transit riding, more haircuts and shoe shines. In other words, more people mean more of the social and economic activity that makes an urban core neighborhood vibrant and attractive, as opposed to sparse and gloomy.
Due to the city’s unique geography, Pittsburgh has always had an uncommonly dense central business district, which means it has traditionally depended on the social and financial energy generated Downtown to power the rest of the region. While the national trend is for jobs to move to the suburbs, more than 50% of Pittsburgh’s office square footage remains in the Golden Triangle and nearby neighborhoods. And according to a New York Times analysis, Pittsburgh ranks fifth in the country for the percent of downtown real estate dedicated to office space. That made the city especially vulnerable to a widespread shift to working from home.
The recovery of Downtown activity levels from the COVID collapse in spring of 2020 has been discouraging. The Pittsburgh Downtown Partnership recorded a daily average of 87,117 people in the Golden Triangle — including residents, employees and other visitors — for the month of November. That’s a decline of more than one-third from the same month in 2019. And the trendline has flattened to a plateau.
(Excerpt) Read more at post-gazette.com ...
Yeah. I see what’s in it for downtowns. I see what’s in it for city politicians.
What the hell is in it for office workers?
Ultimately what’s in it for companies?
The latter two groups both lose - especially office workers who have to shell out a lot more money (Gas, parking, daycare, doggy daycare, dry cleaning, lunches, drinks, etc) and who have to waste all that commute time often in stressful heavy traffic. PLUS they are under HR’s thumb while in the office.
Companies get workers who aren’t as happy as they are working from home and they get stuck with their 2nd highest expense after wages which is rent and real estate costs when they could slash that expense dramatically.
No deal.
Or Philly
Precisely, I’m 100% remote.
I’m in electrical distribution design and we’re undermanned.
They have to hire remote to get enough qualified people.
I’ve got work until beyond death…
...yeah I don’t know. On Amtrak a week ago going through Pittsburgh and I thought the station was abandoned. Looked Like a lost civilization.
Exactly!
I just thought of yet another benefit of people working from home. Companies can fire a lot of their HR staff. There won’t be nearly as much of a need for them if people are working from home.
Day late, dollar short!
Ex nihilo nihil fit
I like hybrid. The best of both worlds. And junior employees (all 3 of my young adult sons work and LONG to be in an office) really need a little office time to learn the work and the culture, and they are the future.
One or two days a week in an office is enough.
HR should do paperwork and set up interviews only.
Managers should be in charge of who they hire.
Should be banners everywhere in the city extolling these virtues of being in downtown Philly......
Screw downtown Pittsburgh and every other democrat big city downtown.
Remember Petula Clark’s song, ‘Downtown?’
They need to pipe that in 24/7 in all major metro downtown areas and people will come flocking back!
*SMIRK*
One of the best business decisions I made in that time was to transition my company to a 100% work-from-home model. It has saved me a ton of money even though that was not my original goal. What really drove this decision for me was the idiocy of doing business in any jurisdiction where a governor or mayor could simply declare my business "non-essential" and tell me I had to shut it down for an indefinite period of time.
Cry me a river.
The next real advantage of concentrating large office in downtown areas is the quarantine of the negative elements of big city life.
The subject has been talked about in many cities, that office workers in downtown office building support of lot of small businesses in the downtown area.
I’ve heard that many companies are anticipating a hybrid model in the years ahead where people will come into the office sometimes , but work off site much of the time. And this will have a huge impact on Commercial Real Estate because companies will not need to rent nearly as much Office Space in Office Buildings or office parks anymore.
We will see how this plays out in the next few years. Companies which are seeing their office leases expire in the next few years are not going to renew their leases,either for the same amount of office space ,or at the same rental rates.
I think the finance people in these companies are compiling some spreadsheets, and they are seeing some huge potential savings, by not having to rent so much office space that they no longer need, because so many employees are working off site.
Productivity goes down if you work at home, as simple as that. Employees want to take advantage of that, of course. But it's bad for the employers.
Amen. I can’t quite get to tears over this idiocy that Ds brought upon themselves.
They deserve every inch of it because none of it would have happened if sanity ruled and peeps realized COVID was a new flu adversely affecting old and infirm. Then, actions to care for those susceptible could have been accomplished without putting people out of work, losing jobs, ruining downtown business centers, ruining lives.
All to prove what ? Obedience to government ? WTF. ESAD.
What’s to happen to these mega metros ? Knocked down ? Tax base evaporated. City services unaffordable for any remaining. Dystopia.
more...
We married a bit too late for kids and now I thank God. I wouldn’t want to be responsible for leaving my family with such a mess.
Working people have been fleeing downtown offices even in the few good and safe cities for at least 2-3 years.
We live on a cul de sac with 30 homes, and last night on Sunday night the Comcast Office van was at the last home to get a home office on a cul de sac.
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