NYC's empty and unused office space could fill up 30 Empire State Buildings

16 January 2024 , 07:09

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New York City has more office space than any city in the world - and much of it is currently empty (Image: CBS)

New York City, the city with the most office space in the world, has a whopping 95 million square feet of it empty - which equates to about 30 Empire State Building's worth of nothingness.

For a hundred years, these skyscrapers have been supported by two things: workers filling them up every week and lots of money being lent to buy and build more. But those days are gone. With more people working from home, fewer people are going into offices, and less companies are investing in office space.

As of May 2023, there were enough empty offices in New York City to fill more than 26 Empire State Buildings. There were 74,582,671 square feet of empty space, to be exact. That's according to Edward Glaeser and Carlo Ratti, two experts on cities from Harvard and MIT. And that number has only gotten bigger since then.

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The Manhattan skyline is seen at sunrise from the 86th floor observatory of the Empire State Building (AFP via Getty Images)

At the same time, interest rates have gone up significantly. Now, there's $1.5 trillion in loans for commercial real estate that need to be paid back in the next two years.

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People aren't going back to the office like they used to, no matter how much certain higher-ups and firms want to. Fridays are quiet, and Mondays aren't much busier. As companies use less office space, landlords are realizing that some of their buildings might not be needed anymore.

But it's not just New York that's having this problem, say the experts. Big cities and industrial hubs, especially those with high property prices, have seen a similar departure of office workers.

Chicago has nearly 60 million square feet of empty office space, while Los Angeles has over 44 million. San Francisco has 18.4 million square feet of vacant offices, and Seattle's office vacancies at the end of 2022 were five times higher than in 2019.

Some folks in these cities suggest turning unused office spaces into new homes. Mr Glaeser and Carlo Ratti proposed in a New York Times article that this mix of booming tourism and empty offices should signal a new "Playground City," era. They envision a city where work, play, and housing all mix together.

They wrote: "To create a city vibrant enough to compete with the convenience of the internet, we need to end the era of single-use zoning and create mixed-use, mixed-income neighborhoods that bring libraries, offices, movie theaters, grocery stores, schools, parks, restaurants and bars closer together,"

They added: "We must reconfigure the city into an experience worth leaving the house for. Streets once filled by commuting crowds can be reinvigorated by those who really want to be there."

Yelena Mandenberg