The phrase “Stick a fork in it, it’s done” comes to mind.
We refer not just to the latest Post-Gazette report on still quite high office vacancy rates in the Pittsburgh region but forecasts that things aren’t going to get much better anytime soon. The P-G even used the word “dismal” in its headline.
As the P-G’s Mark Belko leads his Wednesday story:
“The regional office market is taking it on the chin, vexed by record high vacancy rates, the lowest amount of space under construction in six years and a massive increase in Pittsburgh zoning review fees that could further hamper development.”
The continuing sour news – which predates the pandemic — comes from a trio of reports on first-quarter 2023 occupancy/vacancy rates from the Newmark, Jones Lang LaSalle and CBRE real estate firms. But, indeed, the pandemic has only exacerbated the foundering.
Again, from the P-G report:
“In its report, JLL stated that the overall market first-quarter vacancy rate, at 21.8 percent (slightly lower than Newmark’s 23.4 percent estimate) reached its highest point in 25 years, as companies look to shrink their office footprint with so many employees working from home at least part of the week.
“In the first quarter of 2020, the vacancy rate was just 15.1 percent, it pointed out.”
Newmark measured the Golden Triangle vacancy rate at 22.8 percent in the first quarter, up 1.4 percent from the last quarter,
Not only have downsizings “intensified,” JLL says vacancies “will increase in the coming quarters as evidenced by upcoming large lease expirations and announced downsizings that are looming on the horizon.”
Certainly not helping matters, real estate types say, is the reality of a lawless Downtown – think shootings, muggings, very public drug-dealing, not to forget public urination and defecation – and recent massive increases in permitting and zoning fees.
But the great unspoken in this matter remains the continuing declining population and no appreciable economic growth.
In a phrase, things remain a mess in Pittsburgh and that mess is growing. Consider it what we’ve call “definitional public policy insanity”:
Government’s recidivist and predictably failed attempts to command the economy with ever more taxpayer dollars, onerous regulations and dedication to “equity” – equal outcomes that have only traduced equal opportunity, free markets and the very Founding precept of limited government.
And all under an overarching fealty to organized labor. And with a public school system that redefines failure.
Decades of “leaders” in Pittsburgh must be insane, for they keep insisting on trying the same failed policies decade in and decade out. And look where it has left Pittsburgh.
As Jake Haulk, president-emeritus of the Allegheny Institute, succinctly put it, “What a pathetic excuse for city governance.”
Colin McNickle is communications and marketing director at the Allegheny Institute for Public Policy (cmcnickle@alleghenyinstitute.org).
