The crowded Bryant Park area will soon be even more crowded.
Salesforce, the electrical software company that is the largest tenant at 1095 Sixth Ave. on West 42nd Street, is about to send most of its employees back to their offices.
An internal Salesforce memo advised staff that most employees should be back at their desks by October. 1, according to the online news site San Francisco Standard.
The directive appeared to apply to Salesforce staff everywhere, not just at its San Francisco headquarters.
The reported memo said: “Selected employees in sales, site services, data center engineering and on-site support technicians under the chief information officer will be required to come into the office four to five days per week , from October 1.”
Most other departments must report to offices three days a week.
A Salesforce spokesperson would not respond to our questions about New York or October. 1 term, just saying, “Salesforce has always been a hybrid workplace company. Our guidelines focus on personal connection, while also recognizing the value of working away from the office.”
A representative for CBRE, the national leasing agent for Salesforce, declined to comment.
But the company appears to be subtly backing CEO Marc Benioff’s 2022 declaration that “office tenures will never work.”
The streets and sidewalks around 1095 Sixth are already increasingly crowded, reflecting a much more extensive office return than has been reported.
Bryant Park Corporation founder Dan Biederman said, “It’s so busy you can’t walk half the time. It’s definitely as busy as it was in 2019 or so.
“The park is packed with office workers and tourists,” he said.
Perceptions of large numbers of employees giving up working from home — or being forced to do so — are supported by the latest data from Placer.ai, which monitors office visits based on location data from mobile devices.
According to Placer.ai, the New York City metro area (including the smaller markets of Newark and Jersey City), office visits in May rose to 83.9% of 2019 levels and to 85% in June.
These figures are in stark contrast to surveys showing lower rates of return and are widely cited by journalists eager to push a narrative of an office market collapse.
In fact, there are signs that Manhattan office abuse has reached an end, at least for prime properties. CBRE reported 35% more leasing volume in the second quarter than in the same period in 2023.
The city’s largest commercial landlord, SL Green, said in its second-quarter earnings report that it is on track to meet its goal of signing two million square feet of leases this year. Ares Management nearly doubled its space at the owner’s 245 Park Avenue.
The world’s largest commercial property owner, Blackstone, is adding 250,000 square feet to its space at Rudin’s 345 Park Ave.
Manhattan availability remains at over 17% and is unlikely to drop much due to an oversupply of outdated and undesirable space. Interest rates are punishingly high. Threatened foreclosures abound.
But anyone who sees only doom ahead is clearly not paying attention to the real world.
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Image Source : nypost.com
