The old suburban office park is the new American ghost town • Hacker News Board

Re: The old suburban office park is the new American ghost town

#21

Post by sageabilly » Tue, Jul 21, 2015, 4:19 PM UTC

stephengillie wrote: post #2

> There are 71.5 million square feet of vacant office space in the Washington region, much of it piled in office parks. > Last year, federal agencies vacated 7,315 buildings, abandoning 47 million square feet of office and warehouse space, Federal News Radio says. So the amount of vacant space in the area tripled last year, going from 24 million SQFT to 71.5 million SQFT? --- > Another 1 million square feet of office…

Where are these companies moving to? In some cases, shiny new office buildings that are going up in more "hip" and metro-accessible areas like Tyson's Corner. Commuting in DC is absolute hell so companies combat it by either moving to luxe new office buildings close to public transportation or moving out of the area entirely.

Re: The old suburban office park is the new American ghost town

#22

Post by monknomo » Tue, Jul 21, 2015, 4:24 PM UTC

stephengillie wrote: post #9

jobu wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The article doesn't have any concrete numbers for where companies are moving, but it does offer this: "People telecommute. People move into the city or into faux-urban areas that are friendlier to pedestrians, that aren’t barnacled on a highway. Younger generations don’t want to be stranded in a “Dilbert” cartoon. They want cozy nooks and nap spaces, walkable commutes, the tastes and conveniences of the city."

The article does suggest that more people are telecommuting, but given the amount of resistance that all employers have to telecommuting, I'm hesitant to believe. I really doubt that, all of a sudden, tens of thousands of federal employees are working from home.

Actually, teleworking is definitely pushed as an option in the federal government. Not least of which through the "Telework Enhancement Act of 2010"

The current administration is big on it, partly for office space savings, partly to apologize for the paycut most government workers take over the private sector (I suspect, anyhow).

In practice, it looks a lot like hot desking, because you have to show up in the office once a week, and teleworkers usually end up sharing a desk amongst themselves. It allows workers in the DC area to live in affordable West Virginia :D or Fredricksburg or wherever and not kill themselves commuting

Re: The old suburban office park is the new American ghost town

#23

Post by macNchz » Tue, Jul 21, 2015, 4:31 PM UTC

My girlfriend worked for a 'beltway bandit' in Rockville Maryland for a while after college, exactly in the midst of the office parks described in this article. Everything about the environment of metro-DC suburban Maryland was absolutely repellent to me. Miles and miles of office parks, housing developments and strip malls, over and over and over.

I couldn't stand the idea of having a daily routine of sitting in 8 lanes of traffic, finding a spot in a sea of parked cars and spending the day in a faceless office building, surrounded by other faceless office buildings yet entirely isolated in a corporate campus. I definitely see the appeal of suburbs for certain lifestyles, but I think that a suburban home with a commute into an urban office would be very preferable to working in an office park.

The only redeeming feature of my girlfriend's office park workplace was that she, as a very junior employee, had a private office to herself. I've dealt with the frustration of a number of loud open offices at NYC tech companies, but I'd never give up a downtown office space explicitly for a private space in a giant soulless office building in the suburbs.

Re: The old suburban office park is the new American ghost town

#24

Post by davidw » Tue, Jul 21, 2015, 4:31 PM UTC

toomuchtodo wrote: post #19

api wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can also blame subsidies and zoning laws. Free highway and road construction counted as a massive subsidy for sprawl, and zoning laws force sprawl in many cases by outright prohibiting the location of any place of business where people live or any mixed-use development. Excessive sprawl is not a result of pure free market activity. The 'burbs are heavily subsidized, legally encouraged, and heavily regulated. My p…

I agree with part of your post, but not all of it. Subsidies and zoning laws? Definitely. Suburban land was cheap, automobiles and fuel were cheap, hence Suburbia. The post-war US economy was booming, so you had families with higher-than-now purchasing power. Are people moving to cities because fuel and automobiles are more expensive compared to stagnant incomes? In some cases. It probably also helps that people valu…

I think api's post is pretty accurate. This book has a lot more detail:

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0078XGJXO/ref=as_li_tl?ie=...

Re: The old suburban office park is the new American ghost town

#25

Post by Semiapies » Tue, Jul 21, 2015, 4:32 PM UTC

api wrote: post #10

dade_ wrote: post #5

Thomas Jefferson is to blame and not one mention of taxes? I would be really surprised that some research wouldn't find that many of these office parks are built outside of the borders of major cities to avoid paying taxes, or were provided incentives by neighbouring municipalities to build further out and pay lower tax. The lower cost is attractive and allows the company to operate in a big shiny building that immed…

You can also blame subsidies and zoning laws. Free highway and road construction counted as a massive subsidy for sprawl, and zoning laws force sprawl in many cases by outright prohibiting the location of any place of business where people live or any mixed-use development. Excessive sprawl is not a result of pure free market activity. The 'burbs are heavily subsidized, legally encouraged, and heavily regulated. My p…

This concurs with the arguments a very liberal city planner once convinced me with. His preference for a solution, of course, was different government pressure on where people live and work, rather than my preference of less pressure, but he was convincing on the nature of the problem.

Re: The old suburban office park is the new American ghost town

#26

Post by bunderbunder » Tue, Jul 21, 2015, 4:33 PM UTC

I think suburbia might be a victim of its own success.

As people moved out to more widely-dispersed communities, that caused commuting all the way downtown for work to be increasingly problematic. So of course that encouraged demand for business to also move out to the suburbs.

Eventually things got so dispersed that people had to start driving everywhere. Roads got congested. It became increasingly common for people to spend 1/5 or more of their free time behind the wheel. Attempts to relieve the congestion inevitably require frequent road construction projects, which only increases everyone's sense of frustration.

I think it's pretty plain to see that nobody actually likes this state of affairs, and also that continuing the suburbanization trend would only continue to make it worse. Maybe there was a period back during the baby boom when the suburban lifestyle worked out really well (from a happiness perspective; let's forget about the economic and environmental cost for the sake of argument) for the first people to adopt it, but it's a lot harder to see the attraction now that the wide open spaces have become crowded with cars and parking lots.

Re: The old suburban office park is the new American ghost town

#27

Post by toomuchtodo » Tue, Jul 21, 2015, 4:33 PM UTC

davidw wrote: post #24

toomuchtodo wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree with part of your post, but not all of it. Subsidies and zoning laws? Definitely. Suburban land was cheap, automobiles and fuel were cheap, hence Suburbia. The post-war US economy was booming, so you had families with higher-than-now purchasing power. Are people moving to cities because fuel and automobiles are more expensive compared to stagnant incomes? In some cases. It probably also helps that people valu…

I think api's post is pretty accurate. This book has a lot more detail: http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0078XGJXO/ref=as_li_tl?ie=...

I wish Hacker News would strip out affiliate codes.

Re: The old suburban office park is the new American ghost town

#28

Post by Semiapies » Tue, Jul 21, 2015, 4:35 PM UTC

toomuchtodo wrote: post #19

api wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can also blame subsidies and zoning laws. Free highway and road construction counted as a massive subsidy for sprawl, and zoning laws force sprawl in many cases by outright prohibiting the location of any place of business where people live or any mixed-use development. Excessive sprawl is not a result of pure free market activity. The 'burbs are heavily subsidized, legally encouraged, and heavily regulated. My p…

I agree with part of your post, but not all of it. Subsidies and zoning laws? Definitely. Suburban land was cheap, automobiles and fuel were cheap, hence Suburbia. The post-war US economy was booming, so you had families with higher-than-now purchasing power. Are people moving to cities because fuel and automobiles are more expensive compared to stagnant incomes? In some cases. It probably also helps that people valu…

I look forward to this industry realizing everything doesn't have to happen in SF.

Re: The old suburban office park is the new American ghost town

#29

Post by cestes » Tue, Jul 21, 2015, 4:35 PM UTC

Hah! I had a gig in that building (6116 Executive) when I was a consultant... writing billing systems for a phone company right after the Bell breakup.

Re: The old suburban office park is the new American ghost town

#30

Post by pmorici » Tue, Jul 21, 2015, 4:36 PM UTC

I think this article perhaps misses the real story. That being, office parks first built in 25+ years ago are reaching an age where their long term leases are expiring and they need to be renovated for the first time since being constructed to attract new tenants.

While it makes sense to renovate an old factory and turn it into trendy office space with exposed brick and vintage architectural details from decades past you have to wonder what the fate of more recently constructed buildings will be. It's hard to see any situation where the 90's office park building will ever be valued for it's structural appeal to the extent that people will want to gut and remodel it instead of bulldozing.