Real talk about the city’s economy, federal buildings leases, and telework impacts

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:This isn't an issue unique to DC. Every city now has more teleworking folks than before. The issue is that DC has terrible traffic, terrible crime, terrible public transportation, and a terrible homeless problem, so lots of people have no desire to come into DC unless forced to do so for work reasons.

Then stay the fukk out

We will. Happily & while laughing at your crime ridden existence.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:DC has been pushing Federal agencies out of the city center into NE and SE, to areas where there are no restaurants or retail shops (and often, no transit nearby). While this was intended to gentrify those areas, in fact it just encouraged Feds to brown bag their lunch and to telework as much as possible even pre-covid.

Office space has also been massively overbuilt in the larger DMV area, for probably 10 years pre-covid. (Not converting those to in-person school spaces in 2020 was a huge missed opportunity.)

Feds may be a convenient scapegoat, but even if you could bring every DC-based Federal employee into the city every day it would not reverse these long-term issues.

I would only disagree with the statement that moving the Feds out into NE and SE was primarily to promote economic development. I think it was first and foremost about promoting developers, because these were the areas where large tracts of developable land could be acquired (although it does create a community benefit of putting an office building where a parking lot and tire shop used to be) and secondarily I believe they thought moving the dowdy Feds to the peripheral areas would free up downtown for more upscale development, like CityCenterDC.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I feel pretty resentful about the federal shift to telework without any plan in place for how this will impact DC's economy. The federal properties in downtown DC have always been a liability because they don't pay taxes to the city, but the flip side was that it was a steady and reliably workforce that came into the city daily and spent money, creating an entire support economy around them.

But if those office buildings are empty, it's a massive burden. I support Bowser's initiative to try and force the feds to convert those buildings because just leaving them empty indefinitely will strangle the city. It's not a real option, but the federal government is going to move as slowly as possible to do anything about it because that's their whole deal.

I also think it's shortsighted because while I'm a huge supporter of flexible and remote work, I think some agencies and departments are going to discover that they need more face time than they are currently mandating. But the city can't sit around waiting for them to figure that out. Ideally I think each office would reconceive their office structure in a way that requires a certain amount of face time but allows workers a lot of freedom in arranging it. But again, it's the feds, they are terrible at this kind of pivot, it won't happen quickly enough to save downtown. So I support Bowser and anyone else who wants to force the feds to either put those buildings to use or sell/convert them. We can't have half the commercial district sitting empty and still have a function retail/restaurant economy. It will not work.

It's odd that the DC council and bowser don't take on private landlords as well who hike rent so that commercial property sits empty as tax write offs. This is such blight up and down Wisconsin and Connecticut avenues (and other places). Why just go after 'the Feds'?

I would agree that it’s odd from a substantive perspective, but it is certainly not odd from a political economy situation. Those landlords are big donors. The expected order is for the Feds to bailout first, then DC and only then will it be considered that a private landlord have to lose some profit.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:A bunch of GS 12s getting lunch a few times a week wasn't propping up the economy. DC needs big law and lobbyists working in the office and spending money in the city

This. Most Feds brown bag their lunch. Get real.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:A bunch of GS 12s getting lunch a few times a week wasn't propping up the economy. DC needs big law and lobbyists working in the office and spending money in the city

This. Most Feds brown bag their lunch. Get real.

Not really.

[Anonymous]

Who would live downtown if they converted office buildings to housing? There is nothing open in some areas, it is empty at night and there are homeless people camping all over the place. I work downtown and it sucks now.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Who would live downtown if they converted office buildings to housing? There is nothing open in some areas, it is empty at night and there are homeless people camping all over the place. I work downtown and it sucks now.

I would guess the idea would be that amenities for living downtown would be provided if people lived there. The problem with that assumption is thinking, for example, that people living downtown would eat at restaurants more often than office workers? That doesn’t make sense.

[Anonymous]

Bowser and council need a plan for city center to K street. like others have said my Fed friends are all working in NE, SW. All firms that I know of are doing hybrid work as are Feds. While the city is struggling, I see close-in suburbs thriving. Getting lunch during work from home days - you can see how busy it is with Uber drivers and people picking up salads or sitting down to a quick meal before going back to home offices. The revenue from food and services has shifted partially to these areas.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Bowser and council need a plan for city center to K street. like others have said my Fed friends are all working in NE, SW. All firms that I know of are doing hybrid work as are Feds. While the city is struggling, I see close-in suburbs thriving. Getting lunch during work from home days - you can see how busy it is with Uber drivers and people picking up salads or sitting down to a quick meal before going back to home offices. The revenue from food and services has shifted partially to these areas.

What is interesting to me is that they knew this was coming before COVID and did not only did nothing about it but aggressively pursued policies to exacerbate the problem.

In 2019 the city published a report on office to residential conversation, noting that there was a rise in commercial office vacancies starting in 2018 and that two-thirds of office vacancies across the region were in the downtown core. While COVID and WFH may have exacerbated the problem, it is an issue that well predates COVID and they know it but no one wants to talk about that.

Instead of concern about the rising commercial vacancies in downtown DC, they aggressively pursued planning decisions that would further exacerbate the problem in downtown DC. They keep approving more and more new commercial office space across the city in new neighborhoods, despite the over-supply. And furthermore, they aggressively pursued upzoning and residential construction through the Comp Plan. Remember, all of these things were going on at the same time.

I would really like to understand how DC planned to attract new residents downtown, if downtown had to compete against new residential construction in Ward 3, which was specifically targeted for additional residential construction in the Comp Plan. But more challenging than that, what developer is going to invest in downtown DC if they have to be concerned that their investment could be undermined at any time by new construction in Upper NW.

Allowing downtown DC to become like this were all deliberate choices by this mayor. It is not the Federal government or COVIDs fault.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Who would live downtown if they converted office buildings to housing? There is nothing open in some areas, it is empty at night and there are homeless people camping all over the place. I work downtown and it sucks now.

That's what Penn Quarter used to be like.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Who would live downtown if they converted office buildings to housing? There is nothing open in some areas, it is empty at night and there are homeless people camping all over the place. I work downtown and it sucks now.

That's what Penn Quarter used to be like.

Penn Quarter is part of the area that needs to be revitalized. I think you could say that it needs to be re-revitalized. The main thing going for it right now is massive bar scene which benefits from Caps and Wizard games. But it is also very much so part of the unfortunate street scene that PP refers.

[Anonymous]

Hard to attract people to live downtown with fewer and fewer amenities and commute much less of a consideration now. It feels like the area is reverting back to when I worked on weekends at my firm and you couldn’t even get a coffee bc nothing was open outside of M-F business hours. No one wants to live like that.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Hard to attract people to live downtown with fewer and fewer amenities and commute much less of a consideration now. It feels like the area is reverting back to when I worked on weekends at my firm and you couldn’t even get a coffee bc nothing was open outside of M-F business hours. No one wants to live like that.

I am not sure what people are talking about. Downtown is just fine. The empty storefronts have just opened up a new frontier of “experience” exhibits which have been fantastic. While more neighbors are always welcome, especially neighbors who appreciate the dense, walkable living the downtown has to offer (which is unfortunately not enough of DC’s current residents who don’t want to live there), you fortunately don’t need to live downtown to enjoy the “Banksy Experience”, the “Friends Experience” or the “Office Experience”. Just need to install more bike lanes to make it easier for people to frequent these establishments to improve business and the economy.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Who would live downtown if they converted office buildings to housing? There is nothing open in some areas, it is empty at night and there are homeless people camping all over the place. I work downtown and it sucks now.

You're correct..the whole vision of revitalizing downtown by Tony Williams was a mixture of offerings - work, entertainment, shopping, dining. I don't know who in earth would just go there to live if things are crime ridden and it's closed again like the late 80s and early to mid 90s..so cart before the horse.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:As a federal employee- what has DC done for me?! Made it easy to get to work? Nope, metro is bad, parking is bad, traffic is bad. Made it nice to eat lunch outside? No, the park next to my federal office has needles, homeless people sleeping on benches and pee everywhere.

Even before telework was a thing, people were begging to work in our suburban offices instead of DC.

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