Talk about looking through rose-colored glasses.
The Post-Gazette reports “some local real estate experts … believe that the recent flurry of (Covid-19) vaccine-related good news could jump-start planning for future office needs.”
But that, of course, is only part of the equation. In fact, it’s an unbalanced calculation given the situation on the ground.
Indeed, when the pandemic struck in March, many companies followed state directives and allowed as many employees as possible to work remotely. And when those restrictions were eased over the summer, remote working did not go away (though some employees did return to their offices).
But with the recent surge, remote work remains encouraged by state health officials. And some of Pittsburgh’s largest employers now are urging employees to work at home until early July 2021.
However, and as we’ve reminded numerous times, downtown Pittsburgh’s premium office space malaise was not the product of the pandemic. While Covid-19 fears did lead to pared-down utilization of existing occupied space, the tanking occupancy rate predated the onset of the coronavirus.
As the Allegheny Institute also has noted, the continuing construction of publicly subsidized, top-notch new office space only stands to exacerbate what has been an extraordinarily high vacancy rate – and at some of the Golden Triangle’s marquee skyscraper offices.
More level-headed assessments have it that the pandemic likely has changed how we work, possibly forever. That likely will lead to more permanent high vacancy rates, vaccine or not.
Obviously, taxpayers should not underwrite private office space in good times, let alone in pre-pandemic and pandemic-exacerbated bad times.
And rosy calculations of a downtown Pittsburgh office space occupancy renaissance, at least right now, are the proverbial few bricks shy of a load.
As poor a public policy as is shaking down taxpayers to build private office space, an even worse public policy continues to play out in Harrisburg.
The P-G reports the Pennsylvania Turnpike Commission will borrow $550 million – that’s more than half-a-billion dollars – “in order to make overdue transit payments to the state Department of Transportation and get the quarterly payments back on schedule by the end of January.”
State legislation requires the commission to pay PennDOT $450 million annually, most of which is funneled into public transit. And that’s been standard practice since well before the pandemic struck. With the pandemic, Turnpike Commission revenue has tanked.
Thus, the perennial perversion that is “The State,” by statute, requiring one government entity to make its operations unsustainable by propping up another unsustainable government entity.
Such shell games never are sound public policy. Sadly, the courts have affirmed this “public purpose” larceny.
Colin McNickle is communications and marketing director at the Allegheny Institute for Public Policy (cmcnickle@alleghenyinstitute.org).
