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In pre-pandemic times, Steven Weinstein was like hundreds of thousands of other Washington-area commuters. Every weekday, he went from his home in Centreville, Virginia, to his office at 16th and L streets in downtown D.C. He left the office a few times during the day for a cup of coffee or lunch.
All that ended last March, when the COVID-19 pandemic shuttered most offices and left Weinstein to work from home. His company offered workers the chance to come back in the summer; not many did. By the end of the year, he says, the company decided not to renew its lease.
“I think the plan is to have everyone start coming back in around June or July, but lease a smaller office and then have people come into work, you know, twice a week, something like that,” says Weinstein, 25.
In other cases, office workers are already hearing that their employers are deciding to abandon their offices altogether, turning telework from a temporary solution to a permanent fixture.
There’s little question the pandemic has scrambled Washington working culture in a significant way. Legions of office workers are toiling from home, leaving Metro and the city’s many office buildings eerily empty. Now D.C. officials, building owners and businesses are now starting to confront a startling new question: what if many of those workers never come back?
It’s almost an existential question, given how many workers flooded into D.C. every day before the pandemic hit. According to an analysis from the U.S. Census, D.C.’s daily population swelled by 87% because of commuters, more than any other city in the country — and double the list’s second-place finisher (Boston). More than 250,000 commuters came in from Montgomery and Prince George’s counties alone; Fairfax County contributed another 100,000 per day.
Many of those commuters worked at non-profit organizations, advocacy groups, law firms, and other businesses that occupied office space throughout the city; those buildings — notably the newer ones — are a valuable source of property tax revenue for D.C. coffers. Commuters’ daily spending on lunch and lattes ($127 a week, on average) sustained many businesses, all of which collected sales taxes that were also remitted to the city.
RandyMarsh
Article URL : https://wamu.org/story/21/02/18/dc-officials-fear-office-workers-wont-come-back/