Downtowns are Not Dead and the Rise of Hybrid Work Has Not Killed Them
NO, DOWNTOWNS ARE NOT DEAD, and THE RISE OF HYBRID WORK HAS NOT KILLED THEM. Case in point: Center City Philadelphia. Paul Levy, the venerated leader of the Center City District BID, invited me there in January to speak to an assemblage of local property owners and leasing professionals, which afforded me an opportunity to check in on how it has been going in that Downtown. And while only 60% of its non-resident workers have returned to the office, most everything else is fully recovered or close to it. Street-level retail, in particular, has been firing on all cylinders. Overall storefront vacancy, at 19%, remains somewhat elevated in comparison to the before times (when it was 12%), yet more than 200 new businesses have opened in the last 2 1/2 years, and Rittenhouse Square has amidst the pandemic vaulted into the top tier of urban shopping districts nationwide, alongside the likes of the Seaport District (Boston), Georgetown (D.C.), Abbot Kinney (Los Angeles), etc. – a must-have location for today’s digitally-native and other on-trend brands – even though it sits just a block or two away from the traditional office quarter. Now, the reasons for this are many and nuanced – Center City’s large and affluent residential base, the relative absence of legitimate nearby alternatives for these retailers, an abundance of the smaller floor-plates that many of them favor, etc. – and of course, Center City has had Paul Levy, a giant in the field of place management (who recently announced his semi-retirement), along with a sophisticated cadre of landlords and brokers. Yet it goes to show, hyperbolic and in some cases politically-motivated narratives notwithstanding, that there is often a very different, indeed inspiring story to be found if one’s primed to see it.