Tornado Alley (PROG)

[sortagreen]

"All of those could be helped if the office space was converted to residential space."

Residents and office workers are different. You'd also have to completely re-imagine the cities. Not a bad idea, but that's generational, not short term by any stretch.

Residents aren't going to have the consumer habits of office workers. When Covid hit, my company's office out in Rhode Island basically emptied out, and we never went back there. I'm retired since then, but the last time I went in, you could have shot a cannon off in there and not hit anyone. There were 400 people in that office. We had others in Hartford, Boston, Dallas and a few other places.

There was a little bar/restaurant down the street, a pizza/grinder place, a Dunkin', a Chinese restaurant... Subway, etc... all within a mile. I'm not saying all those places depended on just us, but we were a factor. Now think of Manhattan, or Houston or Chicago, and the tens of millions of square feet of vacant offices there. And let's face it. That was far more valuable real estate than anything you're going to use as residences. One way or another, someone's getting hurt and hurt badly here.

As an aside. I called this more than a year ago.