Downtown DC is a storefront ghost
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Anonymous
| Just driving down L street and 50% or more of the storefronts are gone?! Holy moly that's bad. |
Anonymous
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I'm not downtown super often (and when I say "downtown," to me that's roughly 12th-20th NW, loosely around K), but there are an awful lot of vacant storefronts.
It's not great. |
Anonymous
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Was in a meeting today near the Capitol on a higher floor and the entire glass-box modern office building across the street was dead empty.
3 of the floors were empty shells ready for construction, but no activity. Of the floors that had finished office space, I saw exactly ONE PERSON in the office on that side of the building (a receptionist at the front desk for a larger office space). It's grim. |
Anonymous
| The vagrant-urinating-scene in MacPherson Sq is pretty vibrant. |
Anonymous
| Things are shifting, much of it as a result of cultural change driven by the pandemic, and there will be ramifications that aren't good. Urban spaces are going to see decline, the question is how much and how bad is it going to get; I think it might get really bad. |
Anonymous
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Out: storefronts and bricks and mortar stores
In: high density urban living and restaurants / eateries |
Anonymous
| The tax situation in DC is going to become dire. CRE is the foundation of the services we have come to expect. |
Anonymous
| I've never understood why landlords do this; presumably there is benefit they get from letting these storefronts sit empty than from lowering the rent to at least get something, but I'm not sure what it is (maybe a tax loss thing?). Seems like something the city should take action to combat. |
Anonymous
Yes! They need to turn this vacant office space into housing ASAP. People would gladly live downtown and then some of the shops/restaurants/life will come back. |
Anonymous
There is no "ASAP" with what you propose. Any meaningful residential conversions will take decades. In the case of most office buildings, it would be more cost-effective to tear them down and build residential in its place. You can't just snap your fingers and convert an office building into apartments. |
Anonymous
| I'm glad I own a modest row house in DC because I need to know that I'll always be able to afford the property taxes. I think a decade from now the people who own the Milion+ homes are going to feel the pain of property taxes like NY and NJ. |
Anonymous
Let's assume that there are actually retail tenants who would be willing to lease space downtown right now. And that's a big assumption, because the office foot traffic that supported the renaissance of a lot of the nicer retailers who came to downtown 7-10 years ago has dried up, the homeless problem is significant, and the crime is crazy. But let's just assume for the sake of argument that there was actually some interest from tenants. "Credit" tenants---the national/regional retailers that owners of Class A office want as ground floor tenants---demand that the landlord invest a certain amount of tenant improvement dollars/abated rent in order to support the tenant's buildout of the space. Typically the more term the tenant is willing to commit to, the higher the TI dollars. Office owners who are sucking wind on the office tenants whose revenue is supposed to constitute 90% of the buildings' revenues do not have the available cash to offer much in the way of tenant improvement allowance to the credit retailers. That means that the only tenants who are going to be willing to take the space "as is" and make minimal improvements are mom and pops with marginal credit, so they are higher risk. In addition, the office owner (and, more importantly, the office buliding owner's lender) are not willing to "firesale" the ground floor retail to some pot dispensary, dollar general, second hand clothing store, etc. because then you are diminishing the quality of the building and its appeal to office tenants. No one wants to be first to go down that path, because the marginal increase in revenue isn't worth the impact of junking up the entrance to your building for the next 10 years and driving away the few office tenants that everyone is competing over. But this will change gradually as the office buildings continue their steady march downhill --but for the Class A office that delivered in Penn Quarter/Chinatown over the last 15 years, that will be a slow decline. I remember what the unrenovated older office buildings along 14th and 15th were like in the 90s---there were plenty of cut-rate retail mom & pops there then. Anyone remember "The Bikini Shop"? |
Anonymous
It reminds me of the main streets of little rural towns after the local mill or factory closed down and then the Walmart SuperCenter opened on the edge of town, out by the interstate. Gutted, empty and hopeless. |
Anonymous
Yeah, no thanks. I like my quiet yard and my trees and my front porch swing and my fishpond in the backyard. You can keep the living downtown, with the teenage carjackers, free range crazy homeless, tent encampments and urine and fecal stench. That’s all you. |
Anonymous
Out: high density urban living where the last pandemic spread like crazy and the next one will too. In: living exurban or rural on a big piece of property and working from home. |