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   From: remailer@domain.invalid   
      
   It’s pretty apparent that most office workers enjoy the perks of   
   working from home and are loath to go back to a daily commute,   
   leaving a lot of downtown Denver’s skyscrapers half-empty on any   
   given weekday.   
      
   What’s less clear is exactly what that means for the future of those   
   office buildings. There’s a lot of real estate that isn’t being   
   used, but not a lot of solid plans for what to do with it.   
   Intuitively, converting some of it into apartments makes sense, but   
   that’s easier said than done.   
      
   The one thing that is all but certain is that many office buildings   
   are worth significantly less money now than they were before the   
   COVID pandemic. Republic Plaza — the largest office tower in   
   Colorado and an icon of the Denver skyline since it was built in the   
   1980s — is worth less than half of what it was valued at in 2012,   
   according to loan documents for the property. That loss equates to   
   hundreds of millions of dollars.   
      
   Appraisals aren’t an exact science, and the building could   
   eventually recover some of that value. But even so, it’s definitely   
   not worth what it was just a few years ago, according to Vivek Sah,   
   director of DU’s Burns School of Real Estate and Construction   
   Management. The same holds true for much of the office real estate   
   downtown, he said.   
      
   “The value's not gonna go back to what it used to be,” Sah said. “We   
   are seeing [that] across all the markets in the country. It's not   
   ever gonna be the same .… If you add what’s happening in our   
   downtown in terms of homelessness and crime and other concerns, the   
   downtown market is going to shift.”   
      
   Indeed, it’s hard to see a turning point for the office market in   
   downtown Denver anytime soon. Nearly a quarter of the office space   
   downtown is vacant, meaning the landlord doesn’t have a paying   
   tenant, real estate services firm CBRE said in a recent report. On   
   top of that, companies that are paying rent are trying to offload a   
   record amount of space because they aren’t actually using it.   
      
   “Availability has shown few signs of plateauing,” CBRE analysts   
   wrote in the report.   
      
   https://www.cpr.org/2023/06/23/downtown-denver-buildings-real-   
   estate-value-decreasing/   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)