Making Daily Headlines · Page 3
Chicago's Empty Offices Finally Find Colleagues Who Thrive in Fluorescent Light
· New York time
A Chicago entrepreneur is turning vacant downtown office space into vertical gardens, exploring a partial answer to the costly surplus of commercial real estate left by changed work patterns after the pandemic. The idea gives space once intended for office activity a different use: growing plants vertically. It does not promise to solve the entire vacancy problem, but it offers an alternative to leaving every unused floor waiting for a conventional tenant. Owners of empty commercial property still face the expense of maintaining it, even when fewer workers occupy the desks. A new use can change what a space offers and who might find it useful. It can also bring its own needs, including water, care and suitable growing conditions. The appeal is partly the contrast. Office buildings were designed around human productivity, complete with desks, rooms and schedules. A garden measures its progress in growth rather than meetings, and it has no interest in a return-to-office memo. There is a serious question under the greenery: how can downtown buildings adapt when the old demand for office space has changed? One entrepreneur's answer is to give some of that space another job. The plants will not resolve a city's real estate market by themselves, but they have at least stopped pretending that an empty floor is a collaboration strategy.
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