Posted on 11/06/2023 8:17:43 AM PST by george76
Foot traffic in New York City’s business districts is still down 33% from what it was before the COVID-19 pandemic — one of the lowest recovery rates in the country, a new survey reveals.
The University of Toronto’s analysis measured the number of visitors, including shoppers and tourists, plus residents and workers in the so-called “downtown” or business/tourist districts in major cities in the United States and Canada.
Lower Manhattan, including the Wall Street financial district, and Midtown, featuring Times Square, were considered the Big Apple’s “downtown” district for the study.
Researchers measured foot traffic through mobile phone presence, comparing March to mid-June in 2023 to the same period in 2019.
New York’s 66% recovery rate ranked 54th out of 66 cities surveyed.
Supermarket magnate and radio host John Catsimatidis told The Post on Sunday that workers need to return to the office.
“I’m very concerned about New York City,” he said. “Right now, Manhattan has one nail in the coffin.
If you impose congestion pricing to enter the business district, you’ll put two nails in the coffin,” he said, referring to the transit plan to charge drivers in certain city zones to try to discourage vehicles.
“You see nobody walking after dark.”
...
Chicago’s foot traffic was just 61% of what it was before the pandemic.
The recovery rate for Seattle and Minneapolis was under 60%.
San Francisco’s recovery rate was nearly identical to New York City’s — or 67%.
(Excerpt) Read more at nypost.com ...
Relatively few people live there, so remote work is taking a toll on restaurants and retail stores. Solution, convert office space to residential space, where feasible.
“convert office space to residential space”
The “toilet test” will give you an idea how difficult that is....
How many toilets in a thirty story commercial high rise?
How many toilets in a thirty story residential high rise?
The other problem with urban conversions of commercial to residential is that even when they start out as gentrified the buildings gradually turn into housing for Section 8 tenants—and then the market rate people start fleeing.
In some cases it takes ten years or so, but sometimes it starts “turning” a lot sooner than that.
A few muggings in the elevator or lobby or hallways and the market rate tenants start running for the hills...
No, they don’t.
The government and business leaders should have thought of this exact scenario — LIKE I DID — before they ever imposed those stupid COVID lockdowns and restrictions in the first place.
Geez....whatever could be causing this ‘downturn’???
Hmmmm.....right there, something so obvious....
Not to mention completely revamping the HVAC system, from commercial to residential....which, most times, they do not.
These systems aren’t designed for residential situations.
Not that they care.
I was there last week- hoping to annoy the pro jihadists amongst other things. Easy-peasy getting through Times Square
How did those lockdowns work out?
It’s worse than they’re letting on. They’re measuring “foot traffic” as though illegal aliens count as citizens, tourists, or employees.
Denver is better than ..
They can add plumbing—a lot cheaper than building from scratch.
A 33% drop in foot traffic is still a 33% drop in foot traffic!
Illegal aliens are presumably also not simply going for a stroll for the hell of it. Rather, one can assume that they, too, are legitimate tokens / stand-ins for the actual, underlying parameter the statisticians are trying to measure.
And in any case: The illegals still don't represent such a sizable minority that including them in the measurement significantly distorts the sought-after parameter.
Regards,
The issue is not what is “cheaper”.
The issue is whether the numbers will work for a residential building after all the capital costs are included.
In the vast majority of cases the answer is “no”—that is exactly why the feds and localities have to subsidize these conversions to make them feasible at all.
These days the “new” problem is that the cost of capital has exploded in the past few years as interest rates have risen—conversion numbers that might have worked pre-covid often will not work today.
Ah, jeez—apologies, I’ve got the wrong thread.
They could covert some space but they have a regulation - I may have this inverted but regulations require that housing in a high rise has to be above business floors. They cannot mix floors. They cannot lease the premium top floors for business if any of the floors beneath have housing. So they need to either move their tenants, or, change the regulations. I think they could change the regulations. I’m not exactly sure what the rational is, probably to do with safety and burglary and privacy. Maybe fire.
With key card technology (or phones or fobs etc) and cameras they could make elevators and floors safe from predators and burglars. If you don’t belong on a certain floor you cannot get to it without permission very easily. But you’re right they could put dozens of housing units on each of these high rise floors.
I think SanFran went after Elon Musk after learning that some employees had set up sleeping rooms in their building.
It's like comparing foot traffic in Yuma Arizona today to foot traffic there in 2019.
They're not tourists. They're not employees. They're not residents as shown by the Democrats in City Hall trying to move them out of temporary hotels and shelters.
These illegal aliens are not earning income and spending their own money like tourists, employees, or residents do.
But they are subsidizing them. Look at Boston.
Cheapest option the feds have.
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