Manhattan Offices Face Reckoning as Older Buildings Get Left Behind
/The fortunes of Manhattan’s office market are coming down to old versus new.
Glassy skyscrapers that have popped up in recent years are luring companies seeking new space and preparing for the hybrid-work era, a sign of New York’s revival from the depths of the pandemic. Left behind are countless older buildings that haven’t been modernized in the past decade, presenting a costly problem for landlords.
The question for owners of those buildings is whether it’s worth pouring hundreds of millions of dollars into a full gut-renovation -- a gamble at a time when office use is down in general, available space is piling up at a record rate and high-profile companies such as Deutsche Bank AG and HSBC Holdings Plc are shrinking their global footprints.
