A DARK HYMN TO FEMALE FRIENDSHIP
The Times reviews Soho Rep’s latest show, Kate Tarker’s “Montag,” directed by Dustin Wills. “Not quite a comedy and not quite a tragedy, sometimes a thriller and often something more bizarre, the play is a hymn to female friendship and, in harsher music, a study of the threat of intimate partner violence. No place, the show intimates, is safe. Not the kitchen table, not the stage.”
OOO LA LA AT FOUQUET’S
Forbes has a write-up on the new hotel at 456 Greenwich, Fouquet’s New York: “If you love Toile de Jouy and all-things-French – this is the place for you.”
NO SHOCKER: WORKERS STILL STAYING HOME
Crain’s has the latest stats on who’s in the office: as of the end of September, city offices were 46 percent full, according to card-swipe data from Kastle Systems. The trend was the same across the U.S. And ridership on commuter trains is also still down: the Long Island Railroad was at 71 percent of its 2019 average.
MORE ON REBUILDING WAGNER PARK
The Times gets into the Wagner Park fight: “The plan has drawn angry protests from some of the residents who live in the park’s surrounding high-rise towers. They say that demolishing the park goes too far. They have called for a less drastic approach that would make improvements to the existing park to achieve the same resiliency goal.”
The Kastle numbers underestimate occupancy in NYC because the biggest landlords here (Related, Brookfield, SL Green, Vornado, Tishman, Silverstein, etc.) don’t use their product. An enormous amount of trophy space is excluded from the 46%.
If Kastle is saying 46%, it’s probably more like ~55-60%, but it’s also highly variable depending on the day (and building). Maybe 70-80% Tues-Thurs and 15-30% Mon/Fri, for example.
My guess is we’ll get back to around 75%. Fridays in the office are never coming back and Mondays will remain noticeably low, but not as low as Friday. Tuesday-Thursday will become the new in-office workweek.
https://nypost.com/2022/10/18/real-estate-insiders-take-swipe-at-back-to-work-barometer/
Office attendance will likely rise when the next recession hits and people fear for their jobs.