26 ms·

The old suburban office park is the new American ghost town

247 points by chwolfe 11y ago

stephengillie 11y ago
> There are 71.5 million square feet of vacant office space in the Washington region, much of it piled in office parks. > Last year, federal agencies vacated 7,315 buildings, abandoning 47 million square feet of office and warehouse space, Federal News Radio says. So the amount of vacant space in the area tripled last year, going from 24 million SQFT to 71.5 million SQFT? --- > Another 1 million square feet of office space will flow onto the market over the next seven years, as Marriott International moves out of its Bethesda office park Where are these companies moving to? Are they moving out of these office parks and into city centers? This article only tells half of the story. --- > With its space-hungry bureaucracies and contractors, Washington became a colossal hive of office parks, especially during years of government expansion — most recently the post-Sept. 11, 2001 period, when the military ramped up and the national-security apparatus spread along the Dulles Corridor. > The U.S. government hasn’t signed any major leases this year, ... but it maintains 98 million square feet in the District alone (411 million if you throw in Maryland and Virginia). Is the government portion of this solely from governmental contraction and shrinking of programs?
- smacktoward 11y ago
  > Is the government portion of this solely from governmental contraction and shrinking of programs? Not necessarily. The Department of Defense, for example, has been making a concerted push over the last few years to disperse a bunch of offices that used to all be clustered in the D.C. metro area out across the country at large. As a result, neighborhoods in Northern Virginia like Pentagon City and Crystal City that used to be nothing but endless blocks of government-leased office space have started shifting towards more high-end residential development and the lifestyle businesses that high-end residential development attracts -- trendy restaurants and bars and so forth. This has led to the somewhat bizarre sight of Crystal City, which was built in the '60s as a sort of dystopian Brutalist Disneyworld of giant, blank office towers connected by a warren of underground tunnels, suddenly looming down disapprovingly on outdoor concerts and tapas joints.
  - vonmoltke 11y ago
    The DOD also abandoned and tore down a couple buildings in Arlington in order to make space for an expansion of Arlington National Cemetery.
- jobu 11y ago
  The article doesn't have any concrete numbers for where companies are moving, but it does offer this: "People telecommute. People move into the city or into faux-urban areas that are friendlier to pedestrians, that aren’t barnacled on a highway. Younger generations don’t want to be stranded in a “Dilbert” cartoon. They want cozy nooks and nap spaces, walkable commutes, the tastes and conveniences of the city."
  - stephengillie 11y ago
    The article does suggest that more people are telecommuting, but given the amount of resistance that all employers have to telecommuting, I'm hesitant to believe. I really doubt that, all of a sudden, tens of thousands of federal employees are working from home.
    - norea-armozel 11y ago
      I'm betting they're using smaller offices closer to downtown or urban centers. Mainly because I can't imagine the same large scale offices being cheap for any company downtown.
    - monknomo 11y ago
      Actually, teleworking is definitely pushed as an option in the federal government. Not least of which through the "Telework Enhancement Act of 2010" The current administration is big on it, partly for office space savings, partly to apologize for the paycut most government workers take over the private sector (I suspect, anyhow). In practice, it looks a lot like hot desking, because you have to show up in the office once a week, and teleworkers usually end up sharing a desk amongst themselves. It allows workers in the DC area to live in affordable West Virginia :D or Fredricksburg or wherever and not kill themselves commuting
  - vonmoltke 11y ago
    I suspect it is driven partly (mostly?) by a reduction in square footage per employee, as a cost-cutting measure. Companies either downsize the space without downsizing their workforce, or do not upsize their space when hiring after they downsized both workforce and space during the recession.
- dogsGhost 11y ago
  Marriott International plans to relocate within the general area, though it seems the exact location is still up in the air, with a focus on somewhere more urban and accessible via public transit. http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/digger/wp/2015/03/01/marriott-ceo-we-will-move-our-headquarters/ http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/digger/wp/2015/03/01/marr...
- asmithmd1 11y ago
  The US Federal government is not shrinking and they are not moving into cities. If you were the newly confirmed head of the Fish and Wildlife Service would you want to stay in some dingy, 30 year old office building, or build a brand new office farther out from the city? http://www.bizjournals.com/washington/breaking_ground/2015/02/arlington-economic-officials-fight-to-keep-the-tsa.html http://www.bizjournals.com/washington/breaking_ground/2015/0... 5 of the 6 highest average income counties in the US are in the suburbs and exurbs around Washington DC: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_highest-income_counties_in_the_United_States https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_highest-income_countie...
  - stephengillie 11y ago
    So...they're moving from these office parks...to other, more distant office parks?
- euroclydon 11y ago
  Here in Raleigh/Durham, home of Research Triangle Park, a business park that historically housed IBM, GSK, and tons of other big companies, and which was founded to take advantage of the three major universities: NC State, UNC and Duke, by locating itself in the middle of all three (and next to none), we are seeing many companies build large downtown office buildings in Raleigh, rather than The Park. These include RedHat and Ipreo.
- sageabilly 11y ago
  Where are these companies moving to? In some cases, shiny new office buildings that are going up in more "hip" and metro-accessible areas like Tyson's Corner. Commuting in DC is absolute hell so companies combat it by either moving to luxe new office buildings close to public transportation or moving out of the area entirely.
patmcguire 11y ago
Saw an article a while ago that about how one of the big retail/office buildings in St Louis has emptied out almost completely, and now there's just a tech incubator sitting on 12 abandoned floors: http://www.urbanreviewstl.com/2013/07/lots-of-entrepreneurship-happening-in-st-louis-railway-exchange-building/ http://www.urbanreviewstl.com/2013/07/lots-of-entrepreneursh... Never can build where there's demand, though.
dade_ 11y ago
Thomas Jefferson is to blame and not one mention of taxes? I would be really surprised that some research wouldn't find that many of these office parks are built outside of the borders of major cities to avoid paying taxes, or were provided incentives by neighbouring municipalities to build further out and pay lower tax. The lower cost is attractive and allows the company to operate in a big shiny building that immediately lends credibility to the company. Further, there is no mention of ample amounts of free parking. I think this article is very lacking, the for lease signs on suburban office parks across much of North America isn't really a mystery.
- api 11y ago
  You can also blame subsidies and zoning laws. Free highway and road construction counted as a massive subsidy for sprawl, and zoning laws force sprawl in many cases by outright prohibiting the location of any place of business where people live or any mixed-use development. Excessive sprawl is not a result of pure free market activity. The 'burbs are heavily subsidized, legally encouraged, and heavily regulated. My personal hypothesis is that the 'burbs served (intentionally or not) as a massive post-WWII work project to employ vast numbers of people in construction and real estate. (Not necessarily a free market fundamentalist ideologue, but this is one thing you can't blame on them.) I do agree with the article to a point though. America certainly has a nostalgic preoccupation with agrarian and rural life that has been used to sell the faux-ruralism pastiche of suburbia. It's a contributing factor in that it makes these ridiculous wastelands marketable.
  - toomuchtodo 11y ago
    I agree with part of your post, but not all of it. Subsidies and zoning laws? Definitely. Suburban land was cheap, automobiles and fuel were cheap, hence Suburbia. The post-war US economy was booming, so you had families with higher-than-now purchasing power. Are people moving to cities because fuel and automobiles are more expensive compared to stagnant incomes? In some cases. It probably also helps that people value their time more (commute time/distance to services and social venues) and that there are more opportunities for work in cities than suburban and rural areas. I am curious to see what happens with remote work; I see a big push happening right now, at least in the tech sector. Not everything can be done remotely, but if the advantages are truly great enough, companies will compete against each other to hire quality remote workers (who can live anywhere its convenient for them).
michaelochurch 11y ago
On Silicon Valley: Yet Facebook, Apple and Google — companies that brag about their forward thinking — are trying to reinvent this template of the past. They have commissioned high-profile architects to design versions of the ultimate office park in Silicon Valley, an hour-plus shuttle ride from San Francisco. [...] They will be movable, lightweight structures instead of blocky concrete buildings. Anything to attract brilliant minds and assure employees that they’re living in the future, not a glorified version of the past.
Dirlewanger 11y ago
Nice article, but the jab at Jefferson is completely inane. Soooo many other nascent societal/cultural forces at work in the 1800s/early 1900s that coalesced into the suburban office park. Without knowing the context of the quote, it seems even Jefferson was off in directly equating corruption with the centerpiece of human civilization. It's also a seemingly colloquial letter to a friend. I'm also probably reading too much into this now.
- colkassad 11y ago
  It's just a framing device for the article. Office parks are a very American thing so why not work in a founding father somehow. You could swap out the whole bit with a quote and vignette from the life and work of Henry Ford. Perhaps it could have been related to the lingering notion of Manifest Destiny. I could go on and on.
forthwall 11y ago
Even Silicon Valley has these abandoned SOPs, just look at South San Jose. Most of these offices have been vacant for years.
- Apocryphon 11y ago
  After the IBM factory in south SJ closed down, the whole area just seems so sleepy, new shopping complex or not (http://preservation.org/projects/ibm25/ibm25_background.html http://preservation.org/projects/ibm25/ibm25_background.html).
20years 11y ago
I would love to see stats on where these companies are moving to. Are many of them transitioning into remote teams? Did some go out of business? Are they moving elsewhere? Does anyone have stats on this? New business formations are on the decline (http://www.futurepundit.com/archives/009854.html http://www.futurepundit.com/archives/009854.html) and more businesses are closing shop each year than are forming (http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/wp/2014/05/05/u-s-businesses-are-being-destroyed-faster-than-theyre-being-created http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/wp/2014/05/05/u...). Are these some of the reasons we are seeing vacant commercial buildings in a lot of areas? "I think, as with many other things, our younger folks are more inclined to be Metro-accessible and more urban" I do believe that to be true. I wonder if some of these can be turned into more modern co-working spaces that can be rented by the desk. Add a coffee shop, gym, etc into them and I think they would appeal to the younger generation, smaller service type businesses and start-ups. Just a thought.
- NathanKP 11y ago
  > I wonder if some of these can be turned into more modern co-working spaces that can be rented by the desk. It would depend on where the commercial building is. WeWork locations in the city are convenient and fantastic, but even a very, very cool WeWork location with all the bells and whistles wouldn't get me to commute out of the city to some suburban hell. It's just not worth it.
  - 20years 11y ago
    Great point! WeWork looks awesome.
- Tiktaalik 11y ago
  It's hinted at in the article: "This past quarter, Northern Virginia gained more leases than it lost for the first time since 2013, mostly because of the magnetic powers of Metro’s new Silver Line, according to realty company CBRE Group." There's much more demand for commercial properties in transit oriented developments.
  - 11y ago
macNchz 11y ago
My girlfriend worked for a 'beltway bandit' in Rockville Maryland for a while after college, exactly in the midst of the office parks described in this article. Everything about the environment of metro-DC suburban Maryland was absolutely repellent to me. Miles and miles of office parks, housing developments and strip malls, over and over and over. I couldn't stand the idea of having a daily routine of sitting in 8 lanes of traffic, finding a spot in a sea of parked cars and spending the day in a faceless office building, surrounded by other faceless office buildings yet entirely isolated in a corporate campus. I definitely see the appeal of suburbs for certain lifestyles, but I think that a suburban home with a commute into an urban office would be very preferable to working in an office park. The only redeeming feature of my girlfriend's office park workplace was that she, as a very junior employee, had a private office to herself. I've dealt with the frustration of a number of loud open offices at NYC tech companies, but I'd never give up a downtown office space explicitly for a private space in a giant soulless office building in the suburbs.
- rayiner 11y ago
  > exactly in the midst of the office parks described in this article. Everything about the environment of metro-DC suburban Maryland was absolutely repellent to me. Miles and miles of office parks, housing developments and strip malls, over and over and over. What boggles my mind is that the people here have money and choose to live this way.
  - rhino369 11y ago
    Because the parts of DC that you can safely, raise a family in are either: 1) Really expensive 2) Essentially suburban anyway. Most of NW is suburban. 3) both 1 & 2 Another cause is that until 10 years ago most of the city was considered to be too unsafe. Gentrification has gone into overdrive and has greatly expanded the area middle class and UMC people will live. But even then a lot of that area is still pretty crazy in terms of cultural stuff. And it isn't as safe as people claim. There has been a recently uptick in violence. People getting murdered on the metro. A home invasion that led to a family getting massacred. A guy got shot in a luxury high rise in NOMA.
bunderbunder 11y ago
I think suburbia might be a victim of its own success. As people moved out to more widely-dispersed communities, that caused commuting all the way downtown for work to be increasingly problematic. So of course that encouraged demand for business to also move out to the suburbs. Eventually things got so dispersed that people had to start driving everywhere. Roads got congested. It became increasingly common for people to spend 1/5 or more of their free time behind the wheel. Attempts to relieve the congestion inevitably require frequent road construction projects, which only increases everyone's sense of frustration. I think it's pretty plain to see that nobody actually likes this state of affairs, and also that continuing the suburbanization trend would only continue to make it worse. Maybe there was a period back during the baby boom when the suburban lifestyle worked out really well (from a happiness perspective; let's forget about the economic and environmental cost for the sake of argument) for the first people to adopt it, but it's a lot harder to see the attraction now that the wide open spaces have become crowded with cars and parking lots.
- skolor 11y ago
  We've seen the reverse of this now. Everything I've seen has shown that newer generations are moving more into the cities, back to closer to their employers.
  - erikj1321 11y ago
    Have to factor in population density and massive increases in the population overall. US pop in 1950 was less than half of what it is now. So I could see why it would work out back then.
  - exstudent2 11y ago
    I wonder if increased urban demand pushing up housing costs in metro areas will eventually cause a reverse migration back to the suburbs (facilitated by telecommuting).
    - johnward 11y ago
      Increase telecommuting would solve a lot of the transportation problems. I've been full-time remote for awhile now. I turned down an offer that was almost double my current salary because I don't want to commute.
cestes 11y ago
Hah! I had a gig in that building (6116 Executive) when I was a consultant... writing billing systems for a phone company right after the Bell breakup.
pmorici 11y ago
I think this article perhaps misses the real story. That being, office parks first built in 25+ years ago are reaching an age where their long term leases are expiring and they need to be renovated for the first time since being constructed to attract new tenants. While it makes sense to renovate an old factory and turn it into trendy office space with exposed brick and vintage architectural details from decades past you have to wonder what the fate of more recently constructed buildings will be. It's hard to see any situation where the 90's office park building will ever be valued for it's structural appeal to the extent that people will want to gut and remodel it instead of bulldozing.
- jonknee 11y ago
  Except there aren't tenants to renovate for which is why they are sitting empty and not being renovated. The long term tenants don't want new paint and carpeting, they want to be in the city.
  - deleted 11y ago
    [deleted]
- hiou 11y ago
  Exactly, I see this as the same situation as shopping centers and big box retailers. The cost of renovation etc, is not low enough compared to the cost of building a new building in a better location for the current times. On top of that, the DC metro area is becoming very public transit oriented. Most employers consider good access via public transit an important feature when looking for office space. Being in an outside suburb based upon the current design of the metro transit system means that someone from northern VA will have to travel all the way into DC then transfer back out the Maryland which makes for a significantly longer commute as opposed to an office more centrally located along the metro lines.
  - vonmoltke 11y ago
    > On top of that, the DC metro area is becoming very public transit oriented. Most employers consider good access via public transit an important feature when looking for office space. While at the same time the Metro is going to hell.
astrocyte 11y ago
All of this works in cycles. There once was a time when people were flocking to the suburbs. Now, it is fashionable to live in the city. This too will pass when people (a generation maybe) comes to understand the little value obtained from all the chaos and activity. What are people chasing? Technology has made it easier to be in touch and socialize w/ people beyond physical geography. Transportation is getting better. Yet, people are centered on cramming into cities. The concrete jungle... Living among all the action but having no time to enjoy it because you're too busy busting your ass to pay for the insane cost of the 'privilege'. I used to live in Mountain View, CA and knew more about San Francisco and the cool things than most of my friends who lived in the city. Many times, I could get to places in the city faster than friends living in it. What's the allure? When I think of California, I think of the beautiful outdoors and geography... Not cramming into a concrete jungle. Hey look, I live in the city. I don't have a car. I pay a company to clean my place. I pay a company to do my laundry. There is no parking available for friends visiting me. I can't host anything at my place because its so small. I have to do all of my get together events 'out'. The city generally provides the illusion that you are part of something that's bigger than you really are. Young people haven't formed a clear definition of this. So, they flock to the city which provides it in 'instant' form. This changes when a generation after realizes the cons of one thing and seeks out the pros in another. Or, when you get older and wiser. As the saying goes, a smart investor is selling when everyone is buying and buying when everyone is selling. With all of the distractions of technology around me, I desire peace and quiet when i am at home. When I want noise and chaos, I go to the city. The big thing is, I have a choice in the matter and live by the beat of my own drum. When you are young, you have no sense of this 'beat'. The city provides a steady one. Will the youth be able to maintain affordability of the city? How long will this cycle last? https://resilienceeconomics.files.wordpress.com/2013/03/40-year.gif https://resilienceeconomics.files.wordpress.com/2013/03/40-y... Arcade Fire - Album (The Suburbs) 2010 Choice song (Suburban war)
- untog 11y ago
  When I think of California, I think of the beautiful outdoors and geography... Which an office park isn't, either. Of course the outdoors and mountains are very attractive but they're not a viable workplace. While many of your city complaints are valid, it's not as if the suburbs solves all of them. "There is no parking available for friends visiting me." Sure, and if you live in the suburbs there is plenty of parking but nothing to do.
MindTooth 11y ago
Crashes Safari on my iPhone 6 Plus (iOS 9.0). But have experienced it on more site recently. Is it all the JavaScript libraries? Sad when I wanted to read it..
- mschuster91 11y ago
  Same for Chrome on Android and on an old-ish netbook. Doesn't anyone test their websites with hardware below $2K?!
  - keithpeter 11y ago
    Oddly enough, this page was gobbling up around 900Mb of RAM under Firefox 39.0 on Linux on a laptop with 1Gb. Firefox quit. Reloading with noscript active allowed the page to load but I was seeing something like 650Mb of RAM which is a record! What has the page got in it? (I resorted to elinks in a terminal to be able to read the text until I installed noscript). EDIT: Swapped another Gb of RAM in and still crashes Firefox with noscript disabled. Can read with noscript on.
jonknee 11y ago
A little more about Marriott's move: http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/digger/wp/2015/03/01/marriott-ceo-we-will-move-our-headquarters/ http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/digger/wp/2015/03/01/marr... > “I think it’s essential we be accessible to Metro and that limits the options. I think as with many other things our younger folks are more inclined to be Metro-accessible and more urban. That doesn’t necessarily mean we will move to downtown Washington, but we will move someplace.” Sounds like the trick is to try and get a sweetheart incentive package by a town that is close to the Metro.
Tiktaalik 11y ago
I'm curious amongst urbanite hackers here: How many would turn down a job at Facebook, Google, Apple or any other company primarily due to their suburban office park nature? Could you see yourself choosing a poorer quality job from an urban company over a better suburban company? Right now I'm a 15 minute bike ride away from my downtown employer. It'd be pretty hard to convince me to give that up. I've done a 30 minute bus commute to the suburbs and that wasn't very fun. I can't imagine doing a 1 hour plus commute.
- potatolicious 11y ago
  Urbanite here (Manhattan), Have turned down offers/interviews at many companies because of non-urban location. FB/GOOG at least have urban offices, Apple does not, as much as I admire their products and would like to work on them. Even when I lived in SF I'd routinely turn down interviews for peninsula/south bay companies because of the location. Fortunately there is no shortage of good quality jobs in my specialty in both SF proper and NYC, so I don't think I've ever been in the position of choosing a poor job in an urban area vs. a great job in a suburb. The fact that it's in a suburb is less of a factor than the commute. Even with fancy-schmancy shuttle buses delivering you from the city it's still a giant pain in the ass. Right now my commute is a 15-minute walk where I can pick up coffee along the way, or drop into the gym which is midway between work and home. Spending 1+ hrs cooped up on a bus, even a nice bus, sounds downright nightmarish. I already work full-time, I want the remainder of my time to be my own to do with as my please, as much as humanly possible, and long commutes are the antithesis of this (and yes, save the "but I'm productive on my laptop on the bus!" or "podcasts! audio books!" arguments, I've heard them all).
  - mlrtime 11y ago
    Forget the suburbs, people turn down jobs in Jersey City and Brooklyn to stay in Manhattan (avoiding reverse commute).
    - potatolicious 11y ago
      > "people turn down jobs in Jersey City and Brooklyn to stay in Manhattan (avoiding reverse commute)." Sometimes, but also sometimes to avoid a double-commute. I used to work in Brooklyn (Dumbo) while living in Manhattan, the reverse commute was actually really nice. The trains were mostly empty every single day, both going to work and leaving! But it was also very restrictive in terms of where you can live to get a decent commute - for Dumbo you had to live along the F train, otherwise it's multiple transfers to get where you need to go. Not fun. Coworkers from Queens had it worst - they had a regular old commute into Manhattan, and then a second commute out of it into Brooklyn. There is an unfortunately pretty good reason for companies to stay in Manhattan, the transit infrastructure just isn't set up well for anything else.
matt_s 11y ago
I wonder if any of the real estate owners have considered applying for a dual-zone - residential and commerical. Then rehab the building into part offices for smaller businesses and apartments of some kind. If you get enough of these clustered together then you start to have little urban-like communities instead of miles of office parks. Sprinkle in restaurants, dry cleaner, gym, etc. and you might attract enough tenants to turn it around. Better than being vacant.
swalsh 11y ago
My ideal would be a house on a lake, it would have a sufficient space for my son to play outside, and It would also have a high speed internet connection, which I could use to work etc. Before there was telecommuting, there was commuting. What people with families ultimately want is more space. Grilling out, kids in the sandbox, etc. It's all focused on spending time with kids. Commuting enabled this "country like lifestyle", while keeping the "city benefits" of a good job, and easy access to decent restaurants. As traffic grew though, the definition of commuting changed. This is where office parts came from, and it's also where chain restaurants came from. Going downtown was not an option any more for shopping (parking!? argh). But there's this mall just a mile up the road. Of course with a limited audience of families (the single people still saw the benefit of living in a city), with limited time and money. Chains are great answers.
tosseraccount 11y ago
Then how come office vacancy rates are way down and rents way up? http://www.reuters.com/article/2015/04/01/property-usa-office-idUSL3N0WX5AU20150401 http://www.reuters.com/article/2015/04/01/property-usa-offic... U.S. office vacancy rate fell to 16.6 percent in the first quarter from 16.7 in the fourth, the lowest since the third quarter of 2009 Washington D.C. remained the tightest market, with a vacancy rate of 9.3 percent. New York followed at 9.6 percent. What happened at 6116 Executive Blvd in Rockville, MD is that the big fat Federal client moved even farther outside the beltway to new digs in Gaithersburg, Maryland (to another, newer office complex.) New place is one of those "faux green" buildings where everything like the light switches, blinds, faucets and toilets don't work intuitively if they even work at all. They have to mow the roof so at least you can feel Eco-conscious as you flush 3 times. Old place was close to Whole Foods and walkable to the metro(subway). New place is close to Subway(sandwich shop). If the Washington Press wants to bemoan the old office space situation at NIH (National Institutes of Health), then they should ask about having NIH tear down the fortified walls they built around their beautiful Bethesda campus because of "9-11 terrorist threats". The old NIH used to look like a friendly college campus. Now it looks like a gated community with TSA style security theater.
pappyo 11y ago
I see this as a buy low opportunity for those that could afford such a thing. Let me paint a picture of the future: - In five to ten years, 20 and 30 somethings of today who have mostly flocked to metropolitan areas don't leave when they are at the age of starting a family. The lack of space is still trumped by the a near zero commute and the cultural landscape that surrounds them. - Right around that time, self-driving car services (Uber sans drivers) have started making serious headway in metropolitan areas. Traffic within the cities have drastically reduced due to less cars on the road and less need for parking. (So that cab ride across town that once took 35 minutes, now takes nine). - With the reduction in traffic, corporations never changing urn to save a buck, and the next crop of 20 and 30 somethings that want to create their own identity, businesses start snatching up these industrial park cemetaries. More space, less money, room to grow. They no longer have to worry about employee parking. The commute out to the building is only 15 minutes (where it used to be a full hour +). AND YOU GET YOUR OWN OFFICE!!!! In a sea of community work spaces, "YOUR OWN OFFICE" is the shiney fish. - And of course, once one business successfully implements this strategy, the rest of sure to follow. Brass tacks, these office parks are dying because of increasing traffic and fuel costs...and that's really it. If we do wind up living in a world where people don't own cars and the self-driving car startups of today eliminate tomorrow's traffic, no doubt these cemeteries will see a second coming. If I had the funds, I'd wait for the industrial park real estate market to bottom and then start snatching up property.
- s73v3r 11y ago
  The office parks are still out in the middle of nowhere with nothing around them for errand running or stuff to eat at lunch besides a McDonalds.
  - blueatlas 11y ago
    But that will change too. Within miles - actually within about 1500 feet (http://www.pikeandrose.com/ http://www.pikeandrose.com/) of the property mentioned in the article, trendy new town centers are cropping up. Let's face it, those office parks are just recycle material. Some are in very good locations, particularly Executive Blvd, and they will be torn down or redeveloped for these new "life-style" communities.
jamespitts 11y ago
These emptying office parks presents an opportunity. Certainly the larger ones contain infrastructure that can be repurposed, and the asking prices is decreasing. In the next downturn, the cost of purchasing a park will go down even more. Perhaps the larger parks can be repurposed into something akin to a village. Reformat the buildings into something more traditional, apartments on the upper floors, offices and stores in the bottom, etc. Add more buildings to create more continuity. Let people be creative, let the fabric emerge. Now in any given area, each of these potential villages is quite isolated from another. Still, pedestrian connections can be forged and inter-village transportation arranged. Over time, we can heal this anomaly.
- normloman 11y ago
  This is the right answer. Instead of letting suburbs rot, we select some for renovation and reuse. With a little work, we can make suburbs more walkable, bikeable, and environmentally friendly. A book on the subject: http://www.sprawlrepair.com/index.html http://www.sprawlrepair.com/index.html Great Illustrations: http://inhabitat.com/urban-sprawl-repair-kit-offers-simple-plans-to-fix-suburbia/ http://inhabitat.com/urban-sprawl-repair-kit-offers-simple-p...
  - jamespitts 11y ago
    Those illustrations are great! Stuart Brand's "How Buildings Learn" also provides some theoretical background on buildings as infrastructure and can inform how a property may be improved with an eye to the future. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/How_Buildings_Learn https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/How_Buildings_Learn http://www.amazon.com/How-Buildings-Learn-Happens-Theyre/dp/0140139966 http://www.amazon.com/How-Buildings-Learn-Happens-Theyre/dp/... There's a whole video series as well, this segment discusses the advantages of loose zoning at the docks in Sausalito: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GuKPknFLHno https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GuKPknFLHno
- s73v3r 11y ago
  It's definitely a chicken and egg problem. Part of why these office parks are rotting is that no one really wants to be there, usually due to the fact that there's nothing there.
swagv 11y ago
The promise of traffic-free transportation to work briefly flourished and died. What's the point of putting up with the commuter hassle when you live in a box in the middle of Blandland. May as well live in a more urban environment and one with the infrastructure to offer realistic non-driving options for the same commuter hassles.
nickbauman 11y ago
One of the worst working experiences I've had in recent years was working in a first ring suburb in one of those office parks. Everything was falling apart. Even the nicer parts of the building had a strong "faux-opulence" feel. The firm was a publicly traded tech company. About a year after I left their biggest customer left and eventually they were delisted. Coincidence?
Scuds 11y ago
The only walkable food options in an office park might be a cafeteria, which I find to be depressing, more often than not. The only option is to get in your car and drive somewhere, just like everyone else does, which means the lunch rush is just more sitting in traffic.
Animats 11y ago
US manufacturing employment peaked in 1977. When do we hit "peak office"? With all this IT technology, office employment ought to start declining at some point.
roneesh 11y ago
Don't try and ascribe a single reason here. Architecture, urban planning, the rise of the creative class, high-speed internet, remote work and America's burgeoning reckoning with it's awful racial history are all at play here. The life and death of an American city can have no single story, because a city is only a composite of American stories
mschuster91 11y ago
Bit unrelated, but this website crashes Chrome on my Android phone, crashes the WebView inside my HN reader app, and brings my aged netbook to its knees. Oh, and my company MBP's fans blast on full until I close the page. What the fucking fuck is this thing doing with the RAM/CPU of my system? For heaven's sake, it's a load of text with a couple of pictures.
- Shounak 11y ago
  Huh, it works fine for me on Android Chrome (Nexus 5) and on PC (Dell Inspiron/Windows 8.1/Chrome).
Bostonian 11y ago
I see lots of suburb-bashing on this thread. Lots of people like having their own yards, where they can garden, have a barbecue, put a swimming pool, or simply have some space of their own. When you have little kids it's a relief to have your own home and not have complaints from your neighbor downstairs that your kids are making too much noise.
- jkestner 11y ago
  Speaking as a former Bostonian, it's also nice to have a fenced yard to let your dog out in the winter instead of bundling up to walk him around icy sidewalks.
ChrisNorstrom 11y ago
I work at one. A nice one. Honestly it's all because of the drive and location. - Office parks are usually built away from people and this creates a "long drive to work". Americans are tired of driving and traffic. Office parks are not usually built near busy residential areas, they're built farther out on empty or industrial or rezoned land. No one is going to pay $30-75 million dollars to buy up 120-300 homes (average going price is $250,000 offered per every $190,000 home to get the owners out), then pay millions to bulldoze the homes, then pay millions to build the office park. No. They will go out in the middle of no-where and offer $5-10 million to a farmer and build on his land instead. It's cheaper but this creates quite a drive. I also used to work as a courier and I -> HATED <- industrial/office park runs. They used up a ton of gas, a lot of cul de sacs, endless stop signs, and made me drive out in the middle of no-where. Most industrial/office parks of them are like that. It can't be helped due to regulations and zoning. Office parks aren't as bad and usually closer to civilization. - The cost, how does $7,000 a month sound for an office space smaller than a 2 bedroom house? - The US recession shut down a lot of businesses in premium locations and this opens up opportunities for new tenants to replace them and start their business closer to their homes, instead of paying exuberant prices to rent space in an office park. - They are soulless. Bland. Grey. Corporate. You will feel like a drone working in one. They do not allow the type of customization and construction that people take on when they own a building. ===== Office parks are great if... ===== - The city expands and engulfs the office park, surrounding it with residential areas, apartments, and hotels. - They're located near a highway AND near a residential area. This makes them accessible to both local residents and distant workers..
monad2000 11y ago
These office parks weren't built to last; they're more like shopping malls or Vegas casinos. To be imploded for the next new thing.
norea-armozel 11y ago
It's articles like these that make me wonder if the current paradigm of centralized production in general is a fluke. Before the industrial revolution there were a handful of cities that were big and mostly for political (cities where the sovereign reigned) or economic reasons (trading). But now, we seem to be overbuilding because that's what we're use to. The suburbs are just an extension of the same phenomenon where the ability to subsidize transportation costs via centralization of production has made this possible. Obviously, the steadily rising price of oil is slowing the growth, but in many ways if the societies before the industrial revolution could have kept the same inventions of production at the local level perhaps things wouldn't be as disjointed as they are. Imagine smaller towns and cities with the same tools of production, but not to the current scale as we experience. Only a handful of modern situations would warrant a big foot print (datacenters and certain factories come to mind), but those would exist in the regions and cities that make economic sense. Today, it just seems like everyone wants to go Stalinist/Soviet big with everything.
michaelvkpdx 11y ago
The Valley will be the next great ghost town. 30 years from now, most of the current offices in SJ, Mountain View, and Palo Alto will be abandoned because people will be sick of the suburban lifestyle. Plus earthquakes. I'm looking forward to random shots of wildlife from the marshes infesting FB's abandoned old Sun campus in 2050.
- ghaff 11y ago
  Where will they live? Legitimate question; there's no room in SF. Are they going to build some new mega-metropolis and get the water from... somewhere?
JulianMorrison 11y ago
Needs more vertical farms.
cletus 11y ago
So I have an anecdote here. I work for Google in the New York office. For those of you that don't know, several years ago Google bought the former Port Authority building in Chelsea for ~$1.9B. It is I believe the second largest office building in Manhattan by square footage of usable area. Google's presence here has steadily grown in the almost 5 years I've been here at least tripling in size. I live in the area and honestly it's amazing. Having no commute of any kind (unless you count a 5 minute walk a commute) is life-changing. Being in a dynamic, interesting area is a gift. For those that want more suburban lifestyles, there are a plethora of options <1 hour from the office in Long Island, New Jersey and Westchester. Most people I know who are married and do this have just one car since public transit is sufficient to get to and from work (only a madman would choose to drive into Manhattan). Contrast this with our headquarters in Mountain View. Actually, it's not even accurate to say that anymore as it now encompasses some of Sunnyvale and I believe we have or will have a presence in Redwood City and other places. All of this is essentially low-to-medium density office parks surrounded by a sea of parking space. Some commute in on Google buses. Those who want a more urban lifestyle life in SF and spend as many as 3 hours a day or more on the bus for the privilege. Living near campus is expensive and, well, boring. There are no cheap options. Compare this to NYC where you could buy a cheap (<$200k) apartment in say Jackson Heights or Sunnyside (in Queens) and be 30-40 minutes from the office. Because there are thousands of people in the NYC office, certain things become possible. You get a wider range of cafes (there are more in MTV but they're far more spread apart). Certain social activities can thrive within the office that seem to falter in MTV due to the much lower density. So it's actually an amazing office to work in and honestly I'd probably have to kill myself if I were forced to relocate to MTV (well OK, maybe I'd just quit...). My point here though is that office parks are a depressing and unsatisfying experience for any company or employee. They're not desirable in any way, even the high end tech campuses of Silicon Valley are just glorified office parks when it comes down to it. Honestly I don't know how any in the Valley does it. Maybe it's different if you get to work in SF but even then you have to contend with finding and paying for a place in SF. And if you need a bigger place (eg you have a family) then you just don't have the options you do in NYC. As for the lower end of office parks, technology has to be a factor here. With the ever-cheapening cost of bandwidth it becomes even easier to chase ever-cheaper real estate with ever-more-mobile low-paid office jobs doesn't it?
bingobob 11y ago
anyone else notice this page is 12MB because the two thumbnails images are 6MB each
akgerber 11y ago
The building featured here seems like a false example of blight, since it's in an area that's seeing major redevelopment. The same is true of the mall alongside it, which has been reckoned as a 'dead mall' in other articles, but only because it's being rebuilt into a urban neighborhood: https://b256ec319b64095c3d1d-e19f06f73efdb5028989d1916204cd71.ssl.cf2.rackcdn.com/71885_1426520209_White-Flint-Mall-Redevelopment-large.png https://b256ec319b64095c3d1d-e19f06f73efdb5028989d1916204cd7... I would guess that the owners of the office buildings in question here are warehousing it until the area becomes more desirable.
JosephHatfield 11y ago
Those buildings may be practically abandoned, but the new Pike & Rose development only two blocks away appears to be doing quite nicely, and work has already begun on a new development project near what used to be White Flint mall. I live right on the edge of this area, and it seems far from being a ghost town.
chromium73 11y ago
I apologize for a bit of a rambling response here - this article struck a chord with me. I hardly think there is a universal trend away from the suburbs. Its a matter of personal preference. Washington DC is highly unique however in the sense that one can easily commute from the suburbs into most parts of the city with a minimal drive to the Metro station. So you can have it both ways with a house/yard and an urban lifestyle when you need it. Old office parks out in MD are unnecessary, particularly because more of DC is safe than 5-10 years ago. My wife worked on U Street and I worked in Gallery Place, two areas you wouldn't be caught dead in 10-15 years ago. But... not all cities unfortunately offer this type of luxury. Having grown up and lived in NYC for almost 30 years, I see people wrestling with the following: 1) People want to "escape" the city either because costs are prohibitively high for a reasonable amount of square footage or simply to have the chance to decompress away from the people/activity/etc. As for costs, you only really begin to save when you get further and further away from the city, and your commute becomes soul-sucking. Parents of my friends growing up spent 3 hours in a car each day to be able to provide a good day in a safe community. That is a death sentence literally and psychically. If costs are less of an issue but you don't like the city, the added commute just makes you less productive. NJ Transit/LIRR are not quite at the point where people can be fully productive and extend the workday. 2)People who love the city and never want to leave: to make this possible, you have to prioritize the energy and conveniences of the city over your own personal comfort except in a few rare circumstances. I hope these unnecessary offices parks are replaced by more modern co-working spaces in smaller cities that provide employees optionality. NYC and SF are bursting at the seams and the sprawl will just continue.

247 points by chwolfe 11y ago

> There are 71.5 million square feet of vacant office space in the Washington region, much of it piled in office parks. > Last year, federal agencies vacated 7,315 buildings, abandoning 47 million square feet of office and warehouse space, Federal News Radio says. So the amount of vacant space in the area tripled last year, going from 24 million SQFT to 71.5 million SQFT? --- > Another 1 million square feet of office space will flow onto the market over the next seven years, as Marriott International moves out of its Bethesda office park Where are these companies moving to? Are they moving out of these office parks and into city centers? This article only tells half of the story. --- > With its space-hungry bureaucracies and contractors, Washington became a colossal hive of office parks, especially during years of government expansion — most recently the post-Sept. 11, 2001 period, when the military ramped up and the national-security apparatus spread along the Dulles Corridor. > The U.S. government hasn’t signed any major leases this year, ... but it maintains 98 million square feet in the District alone (411 million if you throw in Maryland and Virginia). Is the government portion of this solely from governmental contraction and shrinking of programs?

smacktoward 11y ago
> Is the government portion of this solely from governmental contraction and shrinking of programs? Not necessarily. The Department of Defense, for example, has been making a concerted push over the last few years to disperse a bunch of offices that used to all be clustered in the D.C. metro area out across the country at large. As a result, neighborhoods in Northern Virginia like Pentagon City and Crystal City that used to be nothing but endless blocks of government-leased office space have started shifting towards more high-end residential development and the lifestyle businesses that high-end residential development attracts -- trendy restaurants and bars and so forth. This has led to the somewhat bizarre sight of Crystal City, which was built in the '60s as a sort of dystopian Brutalist Disneyworld of giant, blank office towers connected by a warren of underground tunnels, suddenly looming down disapprovingly on outdoor concerts and tapas joints.
- vonmoltke 11y ago
  The DOD also abandoned and tore down a couple buildings in Arlington in order to make space for an expansion of Arlington National Cemetery.
jobu 11y ago
The article doesn't have any concrete numbers for where companies are moving, but it does offer this: "People telecommute. People move into the city or into faux-urban areas that are friendlier to pedestrians, that aren’t barnacled on a highway. Younger generations don’t want to be stranded in a “Dilbert” cartoon. They want cozy nooks and nap spaces, walkable commutes, the tastes and conveniences of the city."
- stephengillie 11y ago
  The article does suggest that more people are telecommuting, but given the amount of resistance that all employers have to telecommuting, I'm hesitant to believe. I really doubt that, all of a sudden, tens of thousands of federal employees are working from home.
  - norea-armozel 11y ago
    I'm betting they're using smaller offices closer to downtown or urban centers. Mainly because I can't imagine the same large scale offices being cheap for any company downtown.
  - monknomo 11y ago
    Actually, teleworking is definitely pushed as an option in the federal government. Not least of which through the "Telework Enhancement Act of 2010" The current administration is big on it, partly for office space savings, partly to apologize for the paycut most government workers take over the private sector (I suspect, anyhow). In practice, it looks a lot like hot desking, because you have to show up in the office once a week, and teleworkers usually end up sharing a desk amongst themselves. It allows workers in the DC area to live in affordable West Virginia :D or Fredricksburg or wherever and not kill themselves commuting
- vonmoltke 11y ago
  I suspect it is driven partly (mostly?) by a reduction in square footage per employee, as a cost-cutting measure. Companies either downsize the space without downsizing their workforce, or do not upsize their space when hiring after they downsized both workforce and space during the recession.
dogsGhost 11y ago
Marriott International plans to relocate within the general area, though it seems the exact location is still up in the air, with a focus on somewhere more urban and accessible via public transit. http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/digger/wp/2015/03/01/marriott-ceo-we-will-move-our-headquarters/ http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/digger/wp/2015/03/01/marr...
asmithmd1 11y ago
The US Federal government is not shrinking and they are not moving into cities. If you were the newly confirmed head of the Fish and Wildlife Service would you want to stay in some dingy, 30 year old office building, or build a brand new office farther out from the city? http://www.bizjournals.com/washington/breaking_ground/2015/02/arlington-economic-officials-fight-to-keep-the-tsa.html http://www.bizjournals.com/washington/breaking_ground/2015/0... 5 of the 6 highest average income counties in the US are in the suburbs and exurbs around Washington DC: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_highest-income_counties_in_the_United_States https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_highest-income_countie...
- stephengillie 11y ago
  So...they're moving from these office parks...to other, more distant office parks?
euroclydon 11y ago
Here in Raleigh/Durham, home of Research Triangle Park, a business park that historically housed IBM, GSK, and tons of other big companies, and which was founded to take advantage of the three major universities: NC State, UNC and Duke, by locating itself in the middle of all three (and next to none), we are seeing many companies build large downtown office buildings in Raleigh, rather than The Park. These include RedHat and Ipreo.
sageabilly 11y ago
Where are these companies moving to? In some cases, shiny new office buildings that are going up in more "hip" and metro-accessible areas like Tyson's Corner. Commuting in DC is absolute hell so companies combat it by either moving to luxe new office buildings close to public transportation or moving out of the area entirely.

patmcguire 11y ago

Saw an article a while ago that about how one of the big retail/office buildings in St Louis has emptied out almost completely, and now there's just a tech incubator sitting on 12 abandoned floors: http://www.urbanreviewstl.com/2013/07/lots-of-entrepreneurship-happening-in-st-louis-railway-exchange-building/ http://www.urbanreviewstl.com/2013/07/lots-of-entrepreneursh... Never can build where there's demand, though.

dade_ 11y ago

Thomas Jefferson is to blame and not one mention of taxes? I would be really surprised that some research wouldn't find that many of these office parks are built outside of the borders of major cities to avoid paying taxes, or were provided incentives by neighbouring municipalities to build further out and pay lower tax. The lower cost is attractive and allows the company to operate in a big shiny building that immediately lends credibility to the company. Further, there is no mention of ample amounts of free parking. I think this article is very lacking, the for lease signs on suburban office parks across much of North America isn't really a mystery.

api 11y ago
You can also blame subsidies and zoning laws. Free highway and road construction counted as a massive subsidy for sprawl, and zoning laws force sprawl in many cases by outright prohibiting the location of any place of business where people live or any mixed-use development. Excessive sprawl is not a result of pure free market activity. The 'burbs are heavily subsidized, legally encouraged, and heavily regulated. My personal hypothesis is that the 'burbs served (intentionally or not) as a massive post-WWII work project to employ vast numbers of people in construction and real estate. (Not necessarily a free market fundamentalist ideologue, but this is one thing you can't blame on them.) I do agree with the article to a point though. America certainly has a nostalgic preoccupation with agrarian and rural life that has been used to sell the faux-ruralism pastiche of suburbia. It's a contributing factor in that it makes these ridiculous wastelands marketable.
- toomuchtodo 11y ago
  I agree with part of your post, but not all of it. Subsidies and zoning laws? Definitely. Suburban land was cheap, automobiles and fuel were cheap, hence Suburbia. The post-war US economy was booming, so you had families with higher-than-now purchasing power. Are people moving to cities because fuel and automobiles are more expensive compared to stagnant incomes? In some cases. It probably also helps that people value their time more (commute time/distance to services and social venues) and that there are more opportunities for work in cities than suburban and rural areas. I am curious to see what happens with remote work; I see a big push happening right now, at least in the tech sector. Not everything can be done remotely, but if the advantages are truly great enough, companies will compete against each other to hire quality remote workers (who can live anywhere its convenient for them).

michaelochurch 11y ago

On Silicon Valley: Yet Facebook, Apple and Google — companies that brag about their forward thinking — are trying to reinvent this template of the past. They have commissioned high-profile architects to design versions of the ultimate office park in Silicon Valley, an hour-plus shuttle ride from San Francisco. [...] They will be movable, lightweight structures instead of blocky concrete buildings. Anything to attract brilliant minds and assure employees that they’re living in the future, not a glorified version of the past.

Dirlewanger 11y ago

Nice article, but the jab at Jefferson is completely inane. Soooo many other nascent societal/cultural forces at work in the 1800s/early 1900s that coalesced into the suburban office park. Without knowing the context of the quote, it seems even Jefferson was off in directly equating corruption with the centerpiece of human civilization. It's also a seemingly colloquial letter to a friend. I'm also probably reading too much into this now.

colkassad 11y ago
It's just a framing device for the article. Office parks are a very American thing so why not work in a founding father somehow. You could swap out the whole bit with a quote and vignette from the life and work of Henry Ford. Perhaps it could have been related to the lingering notion of Manifest Destiny. I could go on and on.

forthwall 11y ago

Even Silicon Valley has these abandoned SOPs, just look at South San Jose. Most of these offices have been vacant for years.

Apocryphon 11y ago
After the IBM factory in south SJ closed down, the whole area just seems so sleepy, new shopping complex or not (http://preservation.org/projects/ibm25/ibm25_background.html http://preservation.org/projects/ibm25/ibm25_background.html).

20years 11y ago

I would love to see stats on where these companies are moving to. Are many of them transitioning into remote teams? Did some go out of business? Are they moving elsewhere? Does anyone have stats on this? New business formations are on the decline (http://www.futurepundit.com/archives/009854.html http://www.futurepundit.com/archives/009854.html) and more businesses are closing shop each year than are forming (http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/wp/2014/05/05/u-s-businesses-are-being-destroyed-faster-than-theyre-being-created http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/wp/2014/05/05/u...). Are these some of the reasons we are seeing vacant commercial buildings in a lot of areas? "I think, as with many other things, our younger folks are more inclined to be Metro-accessible and more urban" I do believe that to be true. I wonder if some of these can be turned into more modern co-working spaces that can be rented by the desk. Add a coffee shop, gym, etc into them and I think they would appeal to the younger generation, smaller service type businesses and start-ups. Just a thought.

NathanKP 11y ago
> I wonder if some of these can be turned into more modern co-working spaces that can be rented by the desk. It would depend on where the commercial building is. WeWork locations in the city are convenient and fantastic, but even a very, very cool WeWork location with all the bells and whistles wouldn't get me to commute out of the city to some suburban hell. It's just not worth it.
- 20years 11y ago
  Great point! WeWork looks awesome.
Tiktaalik 11y ago
It's hinted at in the article: "This past quarter, Northern Virginia gained more leases than it lost for the first time since 2013, mostly because of the magnetic powers of Metro’s new Silver Line, according to realty company CBRE Group." There's much more demand for commercial properties in transit oriented developments.
- 11y ago

macNchz 11y ago

My girlfriend worked for a 'beltway bandit' in Rockville Maryland for a while after college, exactly in the midst of the office parks described in this article. Everything about the environment of metro-DC suburban Maryland was absolutely repellent to me. Miles and miles of office parks, housing developments and strip malls, over and over and over. I couldn't stand the idea of having a daily routine of sitting in 8 lanes of traffic, finding a spot in a sea of parked cars and spending the day in a faceless office building, surrounded by other faceless office buildings yet entirely isolated in a corporate campus. I definitely see the appeal of suburbs for certain lifestyles, but I think that a suburban home with a commute into an urban office would be very preferable to working in an office park. The only redeeming feature of my girlfriend's office park workplace was that she, as a very junior employee, had a private office to herself. I've dealt with the frustration of a number of loud open offices at NYC tech companies, but I'd never give up a downtown office space explicitly for a private space in a giant soulless office building in the suburbs.

rayiner 11y ago
> exactly in the midst of the office parks described in this article. Everything about the environment of metro-DC suburban Maryland was absolutely repellent to me. Miles and miles of office parks, housing developments and strip malls, over and over and over. What boggles my mind is that the people here have money and choose to live this way.
- rhino369 11y ago
  Because the parts of DC that you can safely, raise a family in are either: 1) Really expensive 2) Essentially suburban anyway. Most of NW is suburban. 3) both 1 & 2 Another cause is that until 10 years ago most of the city was considered to be too unsafe. Gentrification has gone into overdrive and has greatly expanded the area middle class and UMC people will live. But even then a lot of that area is still pretty crazy in terms of cultural stuff. And it isn't as safe as people claim. There has been a recently uptick in violence. People getting murdered on the metro. A home invasion that led to a family getting massacred. A guy got shot in a luxury high rise in NOMA.

bunderbunder 11y ago

I think suburbia might be a victim of its own success. As people moved out to more widely-dispersed communities, that caused commuting all the way downtown for work to be increasingly problematic. So of course that encouraged demand for business to also move out to the suburbs. Eventually things got so dispersed that people had to start driving everywhere. Roads got congested. It became increasingly common for people to spend 1/5 or more of their free time behind the wheel. Attempts to relieve the congestion inevitably require frequent road construction projects, which only increases everyone's sense of frustration. I think it's pretty plain to see that nobody actually likes this state of affairs, and also that continuing the suburbanization trend would only continue to make it worse. Maybe there was a period back during the baby boom when the suburban lifestyle worked out really well (from a happiness perspective; let's forget about the economic and environmental cost for the sake of argument) for the first people to adopt it, but it's a lot harder to see the attraction now that the wide open spaces have become crowded with cars and parking lots.

skolor 11y ago
We've seen the reverse of this now. Everything I've seen has shown that newer generations are moving more into the cities, back to closer to their employers.
- erikj1321 11y ago
  Have to factor in population density and massive increases in the population overall. US pop in 1950 was less than half of what it is now. So I could see why it would work out back then.
- exstudent2 11y ago
  I wonder if increased urban demand pushing up housing costs in metro areas will eventually cause a reverse migration back to the suburbs (facilitated by telecommuting).
  - johnward 11y ago
    Increase telecommuting would solve a lot of the transportation problems. I've been full-time remote for awhile now. I turned down an offer that was almost double my current salary because I don't want to commute.

cestes 11y ago

Hah! I had a gig in that building (6116 Executive) when I was a consultant... writing billing systems for a phone company right after the Bell breakup.

pmorici 11y ago

I think this article perhaps misses the real story. That being, office parks first built in 25+ years ago are reaching an age where their long term leases are expiring and they need to be renovated for the first time since being constructed to attract new tenants. While it makes sense to renovate an old factory and turn it into trendy office space with exposed brick and vintage architectural details from decades past you have to wonder what the fate of more recently constructed buildings will be. It's hard to see any situation where the 90's office park building will ever be valued for it's structural appeal to the extent that people will want to gut and remodel it instead of bulldozing.

jonknee 11y ago
Except there aren't tenants to renovate for which is why they are sitting empty and not being renovated. The long term tenants don't want new paint and carpeting, they want to be in the city.
- deleted 11y ago
  [deleted]
hiou 11y ago
Exactly, I see this as the same situation as shopping centers and big box retailers. The cost of renovation etc, is not low enough compared to the cost of building a new building in a better location for the current times. On top of that, the DC metro area is becoming very public transit oriented. Most employers consider good access via public transit an important feature when looking for office space. Being in an outside suburb based upon the current design of the metro transit system means that someone from northern VA will have to travel all the way into DC then transfer back out the Maryland which makes for a significantly longer commute as opposed to an office more centrally located along the metro lines.
- vonmoltke 11y ago
  > On top of that, the DC metro area is becoming very public transit oriented. Most employers consider good access via public transit an important feature when looking for office space. While at the same time the Metro is going to hell.

astrocyte 11y ago

All of this works in cycles. There once was a time when people were flocking to the suburbs. Now, it is fashionable to live in the city. This too will pass when people (a generation maybe) comes to understand the little value obtained from all the chaos and activity. What are people chasing? Technology has made it easier to be in touch and socialize w/ people beyond physical geography. Transportation is getting better. Yet, people are centered on cramming into cities. The concrete jungle... Living among all the action but having no time to enjoy it because you're too busy busting your ass to pay for the insane cost of the 'privilege'. I used to live in Mountain View, CA and knew more about San Francisco and the cool things than most of my friends who lived in the city. Many times, I could get to places in the city faster than friends living in it. What's the allure? When I think of California, I think of the beautiful outdoors and geography... Not cramming into a concrete jungle. Hey look, I live in the city. I don't have a car. I pay a company to clean my place. I pay a company to do my laundry. There is no parking available for friends visiting me. I can't host anything at my place because its so small. I have to do all of my get together events 'out'. The city generally provides the illusion that you are part of something that's bigger than you really are. Young people haven't formed a clear definition of this. So, they flock to the city which provides it in 'instant' form. This changes when a generation after realizes the cons of one thing and seeks out the pros in another. Or, when you get older and wiser. As the saying goes, a smart investor is selling when everyone is buying and buying when everyone is selling. With all of the distractions of technology around me, I desire peace and quiet when i am at home. When I want noise and chaos, I go to the city. The big thing is, I have a choice in the matter and live by the beat of my own drum. When you are young, you have no sense of this 'beat'. The city provides a steady one. Will the youth be able to maintain affordability of the city? How long will this cycle last? https://resilienceeconomics.files.wordpress.com/2013/03/40-year.gif https://resilienceeconomics.files.wordpress.com/2013/03/40-y... Arcade Fire - Album (The Suburbs) 2010 Choice song (Suburban war)

untog 11y ago
When I think of California, I think of the beautiful outdoors and geography... Which an office park isn't, either. Of course the outdoors and mountains are very attractive but they're not a viable workplace. While many of your city complaints are valid, it's not as if the suburbs solves all of them. "There is no parking available for friends visiting me." Sure, and if you live in the suburbs there is plenty of parking but nothing to do.

MindTooth 11y ago

Crashes Safari on my iPhone 6 Plus (iOS 9.0). But have experienced it on more site recently. Is it all the JavaScript libraries? Sad when I wanted to read it..

mschuster91 11y ago
Same for Chrome on Android and on an old-ish netbook. Doesn't anyone test their websites with hardware below $2K?!
- keithpeter 11y ago
  Oddly enough, this page was gobbling up around 900Mb of RAM under Firefox 39.0 on Linux on a laptop with 1Gb. Firefox quit. Reloading with noscript active allowed the page to load but I was seeing something like 650Mb of RAM which is a record! What has the page got in it? (I resorted to elinks in a terminal to be able to read the text until I installed noscript). EDIT: Swapped another Gb of RAM in and still crashes Firefox with noscript disabled. Can read with noscript on.

jonknee 11y ago

A little more about Marriott's move: http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/digger/wp/2015/03/01/marriott-ceo-we-will-move-our-headquarters/ http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/digger/wp/2015/03/01/marr... > “I think it’s essential we be accessible to Metro and that limits the options. I think as with many other things our younger folks are more inclined to be Metro-accessible and more urban. That doesn’t necessarily mean we will move to downtown Washington, but we will move someplace.” Sounds like the trick is to try and get a sweetheart incentive package by a town that is close to the Metro.

Tiktaalik 11y ago

I'm curious amongst urbanite hackers here: How many would turn down a job at Facebook, Google, Apple or any other company primarily due to their suburban office park nature? Could you see yourself choosing a poorer quality job from an urban company over a better suburban company? Right now I'm a 15 minute bike ride away from my downtown employer. It'd be pretty hard to convince me to give that up. I've done a 30 minute bus commute to the suburbs and that wasn't very fun. I can't imagine doing a 1 hour plus commute.

potatolicious 11y ago
Urbanite here (Manhattan), Have turned down offers/interviews at many companies because of non-urban location. FB/GOOG at least have urban offices, Apple does not, as much as I admire their products and would like to work on them. Even when I lived in SF I'd routinely turn down interviews for peninsula/south bay companies because of the location. Fortunately there is no shortage of good quality jobs in my specialty in both SF proper and NYC, so I don't think I've ever been in the position of choosing a poor job in an urban area vs. a great job in a suburb. The fact that it's in a suburb is less of a factor than the commute. Even with fancy-schmancy shuttle buses delivering you from the city it's still a giant pain in the ass. Right now my commute is a 15-minute walk where I can pick up coffee along the way, or drop into the gym which is midway between work and home. Spending 1+ hrs cooped up on a bus, even a nice bus, sounds downright nightmarish. I already work full-time, I want the remainder of my time to be my own to do with as my please, as much as humanly possible, and long commutes are the antithesis of this (and yes, save the "but I'm productive on my laptop on the bus!" or "podcasts! audio books!" arguments, I've heard them all).
- mlrtime 11y ago
  Forget the suburbs, people turn down jobs in Jersey City and Brooklyn to stay in Manhattan (avoiding reverse commute).
  - potatolicious 11y ago
    > "people turn down jobs in Jersey City and Brooklyn to stay in Manhattan (avoiding reverse commute)." Sometimes, but also sometimes to avoid a double-commute. I used to work in Brooklyn (Dumbo) while living in Manhattan, the reverse commute was actually really nice. The trains were mostly empty every single day, both going to work and leaving! But it was also very restrictive in terms of where you can live to get a decent commute - for Dumbo you had to live along the F train, otherwise it's multiple transfers to get where you need to go. Not fun. Coworkers from Queens had it worst - they had a regular old commute into Manhattan, and then a second commute out of it into Brooklyn. There is an unfortunately pretty good reason for companies to stay in Manhattan, the transit infrastructure just isn't set up well for anything else.

matt_s 11y ago

I wonder if any of the real estate owners have considered applying for a dual-zone - residential and commerical. Then rehab the building into part offices for smaller businesses and apartments of some kind. If you get enough of these clustered together then you start to have little urban-like communities instead of miles of office parks. Sprinkle in restaurants, dry cleaner, gym, etc. and you might attract enough tenants to turn it around. Better than being vacant.

swalsh 11y ago

My ideal would be a house on a lake, it would have a sufficient space for my son to play outside, and It would also have a high speed internet connection, which I could use to work etc. Before there was telecommuting, there was commuting. What people with families ultimately want is more space. Grilling out, kids in the sandbox, etc. It's all focused on spending time with kids. Commuting enabled this "country like lifestyle", while keeping the "city benefits" of a good job, and easy access to decent restaurants. As traffic grew though, the definition of commuting changed. This is where office parts came from, and it's also where chain restaurants came from. Going downtown was not an option any more for shopping (parking!? argh). But there's this mall just a mile up the road. Of course with a limited audience of families (the single people still saw the benefit of living in a city), with limited time and money. Chains are great answers.

tosseraccount 11y ago

Then how come office vacancy rates are way down and rents way up? http://www.reuters.com/article/2015/04/01/property-usa-office-idUSL3N0WX5AU20150401 http://www.reuters.com/article/2015/04/01/property-usa-offic... U.S. office vacancy rate fell to 16.6 percent in the first quarter from 16.7 in the fourth, the lowest since the third quarter of 2009 Washington D.C. remained the tightest market, with a vacancy rate of 9.3 percent. New York followed at 9.6 percent. What happened at 6116 Executive Blvd in Rockville, MD is that the big fat Federal client moved even farther outside the beltway to new digs in Gaithersburg, Maryland (to another, newer office complex.) New place is one of those "faux green" buildings where everything like the light switches, blinds, faucets and toilets don't work intuitively if they even work at all. They have to mow the roof so at least you can feel Eco-conscious as you flush 3 times. Old place was close to Whole Foods and walkable to the metro(subway). New place is close to Subway(sandwich shop). If the Washington Press wants to bemoan the old office space situation at NIH (National Institutes of Health), then they should ask about having NIH tear down the fortified walls they built around their beautiful Bethesda campus because of "9-11 terrorist threats". The old NIH used to look like a friendly college campus. Now it looks like a gated community with TSA style security theater.

pappyo 11y ago

I see this as a buy low opportunity for those that could afford such a thing. Let me paint a picture of the future: - In five to ten years, 20 and 30 somethings of today who have mostly flocked to metropolitan areas don't leave when they are at the age of starting a family. The lack of space is still trumped by the a near zero commute and the cultural landscape that surrounds them. - Right around that time, self-driving car services (Uber sans drivers) have started making serious headway in metropolitan areas. Traffic within the cities have drastically reduced due to less cars on the road and less need for parking. (So that cab ride across town that once took 35 minutes, now takes nine). - With the reduction in traffic, corporations never changing urn to save a buck, and the next crop of 20 and 30 somethings that want to create their own identity, businesses start snatching up these industrial park cemetaries. More space, less money, room to grow. They no longer have to worry about employee parking. The commute out to the building is only 15 minutes (where it used to be a full hour +). AND YOU GET YOUR OWN OFFICE!!!! In a sea of community work spaces, "YOUR OWN OFFICE" is the shiney fish. - And of course, once one business successfully implements this strategy, the rest of sure to follow. Brass tacks, these office parks are dying because of increasing traffic and fuel costs...and that's really it. If we do wind up living in a world where people don't own cars and the self-driving car startups of today eliminate tomorrow's traffic, no doubt these cemeteries will see a second coming. If I had the funds, I'd wait for the industrial park real estate market to bottom and then start snatching up property.

s73v3r 11y ago
The office parks are still out in the middle of nowhere with nothing around them for errand running or stuff to eat at lunch besides a McDonalds.
- blueatlas 11y ago
  But that will change too. Within miles - actually within about 1500 feet (http://www.pikeandrose.com/ http://www.pikeandrose.com/) of the property mentioned in the article, trendy new town centers are cropping up. Let's face it, those office parks are just recycle material. Some are in very good locations, particularly Executive Blvd, and they will be torn down or redeveloped for these new "life-style" communities.

jamespitts 11y ago

These emptying office parks presents an opportunity. Certainly the larger ones contain infrastructure that can be repurposed, and the asking prices is decreasing. In the next downturn, the cost of purchasing a park will go down even more. Perhaps the larger parks can be repurposed into something akin to a village. Reformat the buildings into something more traditional, apartments on the upper floors, offices and stores in the bottom, etc. Add more buildings to create more continuity. Let people be creative, let the fabric emerge. Now in any given area, each of these potential villages is quite isolated from another. Still, pedestrian connections can be forged and inter-village transportation arranged. Over time, we can heal this anomaly.

normloman 11y ago
This is the right answer. Instead of letting suburbs rot, we select some for renovation and reuse. With a little work, we can make suburbs more walkable, bikeable, and environmentally friendly. A book on the subject: http://www.sprawlrepair.com/index.html http://www.sprawlrepair.com/index.html Great Illustrations: http://inhabitat.com/urban-sprawl-repair-kit-offers-simple-plans-to-fix-suburbia/ http://inhabitat.com/urban-sprawl-repair-kit-offers-simple-p...
- jamespitts 11y ago
  Those illustrations are great! Stuart Brand's "How Buildings Learn" also provides some theoretical background on buildings as infrastructure and can inform how a property may be improved with an eye to the future. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/How_Buildings_Learn https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/How_Buildings_Learn http://www.amazon.com/How-Buildings-Learn-Happens-Theyre/dp/0140139966 http://www.amazon.com/How-Buildings-Learn-Happens-Theyre/dp/... There's a whole video series as well, this segment discusses the advantages of loose zoning at the docks in Sausalito: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GuKPknFLHno https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GuKPknFLHno
s73v3r 11y ago
It's definitely a chicken and egg problem. Part of why these office parks are rotting is that no one really wants to be there, usually due to the fact that there's nothing there.

swagv 11y ago

The promise of traffic-free transportation to work briefly flourished and died. What's the point of putting up with the commuter hassle when you live in a box in the middle of Blandland. May as well live in a more urban environment and one with the infrastructure to offer realistic non-driving options for the same commuter hassles.

nickbauman 11y ago

One of the worst working experiences I've had in recent years was working in a first ring suburb in one of those office parks. Everything was falling apart. Even the nicer parts of the building had a strong "faux-opulence" feel. The firm was a publicly traded tech company. About a year after I left their biggest customer left and eventually they were delisted. Coincidence?

Scuds 11y ago

The only walkable food options in an office park might be a cafeteria, which I find to be depressing, more often than not. The only option is to get in your car and drive somewhere, just like everyone else does, which means the lunch rush is just more sitting in traffic.

Animats 11y ago

US manufacturing employment peaked in 1977. When do we hit "peak office"? With all this IT technology, office employment ought to start declining at some point.

roneesh 11y ago

Don't try and ascribe a single reason here. Architecture, urban planning, the rise of the creative class, high-speed internet, remote work and America's burgeoning reckoning with it's awful racial history are all at play here. The life and death of an American city can have no single story, because a city is only a composite of American stories

mschuster91 11y ago

Bit unrelated, but this website crashes Chrome on my Android phone, crashes the WebView inside my HN reader app, and brings my aged netbook to its knees. Oh, and my company MBP's fans blast on full until I close the page. What the fucking fuck is this thing doing with the RAM/CPU of my system? For heaven's sake, it's a load of text with a couple of pictures.

Shounak 11y ago
Huh, it works fine for me on Android Chrome (Nexus 5) and on PC (Dell Inspiron/Windows 8.1/Chrome).

Bostonian 11y ago

I see lots of suburb-bashing on this thread. Lots of people like having their own yards, where they can garden, have a barbecue, put a swimming pool, or simply have some space of their own. When you have little kids it's a relief to have your own home and not have complaints from your neighbor downstairs that your kids are making too much noise.

jkestner 11y ago
Speaking as a former Bostonian, it's also nice to have a fenced yard to let your dog out in the winter instead of bundling up to walk him around icy sidewalks.

ChrisNorstrom 11y ago

I work at one. A nice one. Honestly it's all because of the drive and location. - Office parks are usually built away from people and this creates a "long drive to work". Americans are tired of driving and traffic. Office parks are not usually built near busy residential areas, they're built farther out on empty or industrial or rezoned land. No one is going to pay $30-75 million dollars to buy up 120-300 homes (average going price is $250,000 offered per every $190,000 home to get the owners out), then pay millions to bulldoze the homes, then pay millions to build the office park. No. They will go out in the middle of no-where and offer $5-10 million to a farmer and build on his land instead. It's cheaper but this creates quite a drive. I also used to work as a courier and I -> HATED <- industrial/office park runs. They used up a ton of gas, a lot of cul de sacs, endless stop signs, and made me drive out in the middle of no-where. Most industrial/office parks of them are like that. It can't be helped due to regulations and zoning. Office parks aren't as bad and usually closer to civilization. - The cost, how does $7,000 a month sound for an office space smaller than a 2 bedroom house? - The US recession shut down a lot of businesses in premium locations and this opens up opportunities for new tenants to replace them and start their business closer to their homes, instead of paying exuberant prices to rent space in an office park. - They are soulless. Bland. Grey. Corporate. You will feel like a drone working in one. They do not allow the type of customization and construction that people take on when they own a building. ===== Office parks are great if... ===== - The city expands and engulfs the office park, surrounding it with residential areas, apartments, and hotels. - They're located near a highway AND near a residential area. This makes them accessible to both local residents and distant workers..

monad2000 11y ago

These office parks weren't built to last; they're more like shopping malls or Vegas casinos. To be imploded for the next new thing.

norea-armozel 11y ago

It's articles like these that make me wonder if the current paradigm of centralized production in general is a fluke. Before the industrial revolution there were a handful of cities that were big and mostly for political (cities where the sovereign reigned) or economic reasons (trading). But now, we seem to be overbuilding because that's what we're use to. The suburbs are just an extension of the same phenomenon where the ability to subsidize transportation costs via centralization of production has made this possible. Obviously, the steadily rising price of oil is slowing the growth, but in many ways if the societies before the industrial revolution could have kept the same inventions of production at the local level perhaps things wouldn't be as disjointed as they are. Imagine smaller towns and cities with the same tools of production, but not to the current scale as we experience. Only a handful of modern situations would warrant a big foot print (datacenters and certain factories come to mind), but those would exist in the regions and cities that make economic sense. Today, it just seems like everyone wants to go Stalinist/Soviet big with everything.

michaelvkpdx 11y ago

The Valley will be the next great ghost town. 30 years from now, most of the current offices in SJ, Mountain View, and Palo Alto will be abandoned because people will be sick of the suburban lifestyle. Plus earthquakes. I'm looking forward to random shots of wildlife from the marshes infesting FB's abandoned old Sun campus in 2050.

ghaff 11y ago
Where will they live? Legitimate question; there's no room in SF. Are they going to build some new mega-metropolis and get the water from... somewhere?

JulianMorrison 11y ago

Needs more vertical farms.

cletus 11y ago

So I have an anecdote here. I work for Google in the New York office. For those of you that don't know, several years ago Google bought the former Port Authority building in Chelsea for ~$1.9B. It is I believe the second largest office building in Manhattan by square footage of usable area. Google's presence here has steadily grown in the almost 5 years I've been here at least tripling in size. I live in the area and honestly it's amazing. Having no commute of any kind (unless you count a 5 minute walk a commute) is life-changing. Being in a dynamic, interesting area is a gift. For those that want more suburban lifestyles, there are a plethora of options <1 hour from the office in Long Island, New Jersey and Westchester. Most people I know who are married and do this have just one car since public transit is sufficient to get to and from work (only a madman would choose to drive into Manhattan). Contrast this with our headquarters in Mountain View. Actually, it's not even accurate to say that anymore as it now encompasses some of Sunnyvale and I believe we have or will have a presence in Redwood City and other places. All of this is essentially low-to-medium density office parks surrounded by a sea of parking space. Some commute in on Google buses. Those who want a more urban lifestyle life in SF and spend as many as 3 hours a day or more on the bus for the privilege. Living near campus is expensive and, well, boring. There are no cheap options. Compare this to NYC where you could buy a cheap (<$200k) apartment in say Jackson Heights or Sunnyside (in Queens) and be 30-40 minutes from the office. Because there are thousands of people in the NYC office, certain things become possible. You get a wider range of cafes (there are more in MTV but they're far more spread apart). Certain social activities can thrive within the office that seem to falter in MTV due to the much lower density. So it's actually an amazing office to work in and honestly I'd probably have to kill myself if I were forced to relocate to MTV (well OK, maybe I'd just quit...). My point here though is that office parks are a depressing and unsatisfying experience for any company or employee. They're not desirable in any way, even the high end tech campuses of Silicon Valley are just glorified office parks when it comes down to it. Honestly I don't know how any in the Valley does it. Maybe it's different if you get to work in SF but even then you have to contend with finding and paying for a place in SF. And if you need a bigger place (eg you have a family) then you just don't have the options you do in NYC. As for the lower end of office parks, technology has to be a factor here. With the ever-cheapening cost of bandwidth it becomes even easier to chase ever-cheaper real estate with ever-more-mobile low-paid office jobs doesn't it?

bingobob 11y ago

anyone else notice this page is 12MB because the two thumbnails images are 6MB each

akgerber 11y ago

The building featured here seems like a false example of blight, since it's in an area that's seeing major redevelopment. The same is true of the mall alongside it, which has been reckoned as a 'dead mall' in other articles, but only because it's being rebuilt into a urban neighborhood: https://b256ec319b64095c3d1d-e19f06f73efdb5028989d1916204cd71.ssl.cf2.rackcdn.com/71885_1426520209_White-Flint-Mall-Redevelopment-large.png https://b256ec319b64095c3d1d-e19f06f73efdb5028989d1916204cd7... I would guess that the owners of the office buildings in question here are warehousing it until the area becomes more desirable.

JosephHatfield 11y ago

Those buildings may be practically abandoned, but the new Pike & Rose development only two blocks away appears to be doing quite nicely, and work has already begun on a new development project near what used to be White Flint mall. I live right on the edge of this area, and it seems far from being a ghost town.

chromium73 11y ago

I apologize for a bit of a rambling response here - this article struck a chord with me. I hardly think there is a universal trend away from the suburbs. Its a matter of personal preference. Washington DC is highly unique however in the sense that one can easily commute from the suburbs into most parts of the city with a minimal drive to the Metro station. So you can have it both ways with a house/yard and an urban lifestyle when you need it. Old office parks out in MD are unnecessary, particularly because more of DC is safe than 5-10 years ago. My wife worked on U Street and I worked in Gallery Place, two areas you wouldn't be caught dead in 10-15 years ago. But... not all cities unfortunately offer this type of luxury. Having grown up and lived in NYC for almost 30 years, I see people wrestling with the following: 1) People want to "escape" the city either because costs are prohibitively high for a reasonable amount of square footage or simply to have the chance to decompress away from the people/activity/etc. As for costs, you only really begin to save when you get further and further away from the city, and your commute becomes soul-sucking. Parents of my friends growing up spent 3 hours in a car each day to be able to provide a good day in a safe community. That is a death sentence literally and psychically. If costs are less of an issue but you don't like the city, the added commute just makes you less productive. NJ Transit/LIRR are not quite at the point where people can be fully productive and extend the workday. 2)People who love the city and never want to leave: to make this possible, you have to prioritize the energy and conveniences of the city over your own personal comfort except in a few rare circumstances. I hope these unnecessary offices parks are replaced by more modern co-working spaces in smaller cities that provide employees optionality. NYC and SF are bursting at the seams and the sprawl will just continue.