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The old suburban office park is the new American ghost town

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

#211

Post by cylinder »

rayiner wrote: post #205
Tiktaalik wrote: post #63

I'm curious amongst urbanite hackers here: How many would turn down a job at Facebook, Google, Apple or any other company primarily due to their suburban office park nature? Could you see yourself choosing a poorer quality job from an urban company over a better suburban company? Right now I'm a 15 minute bike ride away from my downtown employer. It'd be pretty hard to convince me to give that up. I've done a 30 minu…

Your question highlights one thing I've always found bizarre about the tech industry. In most professional industries, having an office in the suburbs is a mark of being second-rate. Can you imagine Goldman or McKinsey trading their midtown Manhattan digs for an office park in New Jersey?

Goldman does have an office in Jersey City, they put "backoffice" functions there and have a water taxi between the two. Anyhow, context is key. I think if I lived on the west coast I'd like an office campus nestled amongst nature with lots of open space between buildings. SF is not a great "big city" compared to NY. In NY I want to be in the urban core. People want the best of wherever they are.

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

#212

Post by drzaiusapelord »

pmorici wrote: post #30

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…

>old factory and turn it into trendy office space with exposed brick and vintage architectural details

That's not why we renovate factories. We renovate them because they are in a location we desire (big city centers). The suburbs are a cultural and transportation wasteland for the most part and have nothing but cheap land. Its just unpleasant real estate. Sadly, a lot of smaller companies migrated out to the suburbs because the CEO could simply make a call to move the business closer to his house. This land just makes more sense as residential, or at best retail, and really should have never been turned into offices in the first place.

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

#213

Post by hnal943 »

will_work4tears wrote: post #193
bunderbunder wrote: post #156

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Head up to Milwaukee and you'll see plenty of old Kohl's supermarkets that have all been sitting vacant ever since the chain shut down over a decade ago.

Oh wow, did all of your Milwaukee's Kohl's shut down? We have them here (Puget Sound area) still, and when we left Missouri in 2008 they were still there doing fine.

Kohl's Grocery Stores (defunct) is different than the department store chain, which incidentally is headquartered in the Milwaukee suburbs.

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

#214

Post by rayiner »

cylinder wrote: post #211
rayiner wrote: post #205

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your question highlights one thing I've always found bizarre about the tech industry. In most professional industries, having an office in the suburbs is a mark of being second-rate. Can you imagine Goldman or McKinsey trading their midtown Manhattan digs for an office park in New Jersey?

Goldman does have an office in Jersey City, they put "backoffice" functions there and have a water taxi between the two. Anyhow, context is key. I think if I lived on the west coast I'd like an office campus nestled amongst nature with lots of open space between buildings. SF is not a great "big city" compared to NY. In NY I want to be in the urban core. People want the best of wherever they are.

> Goldman does have an office in Jersey City, they put "backoffice" functions there

But they'd never put investment bankers and traders out there. I have always interpreted suburban tech office parks as a hold-over from the days of engineers being considered "back office" cost-center workers, rather than "front office" revenue-generating talent.

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

#215

Post by blueatlas »

s73v3r wrote: post #200
pappyo wrote: post #85

I see this as a buy low opportunity for those that could afford such a thing. Let me paint a picture of the future: - In five to ten years, 20 and 30 somethings of today who have mostly flocked to metropolitan areas don't leave when they are at the age of starting a family. The lack of space is still trumped by the a near zero commute and the cultural landscape that surrounds them. - Right around that time, self-driv…

The office parks are still out in the middle of nowhere with nothing around them for errand running or stuff to eat at lunch besides a McDonalds.

But that will change too. Within miles - actually within about 1500 feet (http://www.pikeandrose.com/) of the property mentioned in the article, trendy new town centers are cropping up. Let's face it, those office parks are just recycle material. Some are in very good locations, particularly Executive Blvd, and they will be torn down or redeveloped for these new "life-style" communities.

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

#216

Post by nilkn »

tsotha wrote: post #207
ken-far wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think so. This quote is key: “I now say that brainy youngsters are trending urban and urbane, away from your grandfather’s office parks.” Real estate analysis is showing that for the first time since it's been measuring more people are looking for housing in denser, more urban environments than in the traditional suburbs. An enormous number of people, especially young people, are looking to avoid spending the…

>An enormous number of people, especially young people, are looking to avoid spending their lives in cars. Young people never wanted to spend their lives in cars. What's different with this generation is they don't seem to have much interest in forming families, so they move to the trendier areas and spend all their money instead of living in a cheaper area, commuting, and saving for a situation that would be good fo…

> What's different with this generation is they don't seem to have much interest in forming families, so they move to the trendier areas and spend all their money instead of living in a cheaper area, commuting, and saving for a situation that would be good for raising children.

I think it might be simpler than this. They just can't afford to raise a family as easily as their parents and grandparents could, so many choose not to, not because they legitimately have no interest but because they don't see the numbers adding up. On top of that, it's often no more expensive to rent a small apartment in the city vs. a large house in a suburb. And that large house with its tiring commute is just a burden to someone without kids.

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

#217

Post by shiggerino »

Shivetya wrote: post #71
pmorici wrote: post #30

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…

One common occurrence where I live is that county and cities are buying up the old office parks and even strip malls to convert them into government buildings. Most are ideally located as well as being offered up for sale cheaply. Seen even a few charitable organizations buy up parts of a strip mall for the cheap space by square foot. Besides the age a lot of REITs cashed out awhile ago and I am not sure the market i…

>dieing

Just curious, this is the second time I see this today. Is this a mistake, or is it a regional alternate form from somewhere?

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

#218

Post by VLM »

skolor wrote: post #37
bunderbunder wrote: post #26

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…

We've seen the reverse of this now. Everything I've seen has shown that newer generations are moving more into the cities, back to closer to their employers.

I've heard that my entire life. "The city is coming back". "Its not like ten years ago when the cities were dead" I'm in my 40s. Same message for the last four decades. Think about that, four times in a row, the city has always been dead a decade ago but now its returned, no really, this time its true.

I'm told by elders that sloganeering about urban renewal and return began around 1955, about 5 years after the burbs started getting built out.

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

#219

Post by jlarocco »

Apocryphon wrote: post #142
pmorici wrote: post #30

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…

Could they be converted into cheap housing?

The insides of most office buildings would need a lot of rework before they were acceptable housing. And the end result would be ugly on the outside , and it'd be located in a deserted office park.

It seems like in most cases it'd be cheaper to either tear them down before rebuilding, or to just start building from scratch in a more desirable location.

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

#220

Post by DominikPeters »

riskable wrote: post #187
Apocryphon wrote: post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Could they be converted into cheap housing?

This is not usually possible because of the cost to run plumbing. You have to gut the entire facility in order to put kitchens and bathrooms in every apartment and it just isn't (usually) cost effective.

True in practice, though shared bathrooms & kitchens are no impossibility.
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