I hate clickbait tiles, but I hate it more when a perfectly good title (<i>How SF tech giants are navigating a successful return to the office</i>) is replaced by a clickbait title for posterity (and looking at the URL, it was definitely not A/B testing).
I constantly think about how at the same time we have a housing shortage there a millions of square feet of empty office and retail spaces. Will we ever reuse these spaces the way we turn small scale manufacturing spaces into trendy lofts?
I worked in a four story building with maybe 100 people in it at one time, but in the past held about 600 people comfortably (dude to an acquisition we were what was left).<p>It still received regular cleaning services and etc to all floors. Only a few bothered to leave our corner of our floor.<p>Using the executive suite bathrooms was a real treat.
It should be remembered that until quite recently there was an extreme lack of office space in San Francisco. Construction of new office space in the city is rationed because of the perception of an imbalance with residential space. On top of that Salesforce was infamous for having an insatiable appetite for office space exhibited by leasing whole buildings before construction was finished. Even a fractional return to normal could quickly use up all of the available space. The idea that it is time to convert office space to residential is not solid and ignores the laws against converting anything into new office space again if the balance changes.<p>San Francisco has a history of converting office buildings into residential space with some notable examples within blocks of the Salesforce building. The Palms on Fourth between Bryant and Brannan is an example of this. Compared to the cost of housing in the area the complications involved with remodeling are actually rather minor, especially for new modern construction like this recently finished building.