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Originally Posted by Londonee
There's also a ton of folks who when forced to work from home decided to leave the city b/c their 3bedroom house wasn't suitable with a kid and two parents working from home. People enjoying their urban life, but felt forced to leave b/c they couldn't afford something bigger in the city and their just wasn't enough space for this lifestyle to continue. The virtual schooling last year was brutal for a lot of people in smaller spaces.
Also, a huge driver of Center City's $$ (and therefore a massive consideration) is not just office workers who work in CC full time. It's Tues-Thurs consultants for Deloitte with expense accounts and 3-4 hotel nights booked per week, who are now not coming in anymore . It's the executives who fly in from the coast for a big quarterly shindig who book out ballrooms at the Marriott and dinners for 10 c-suiters at Del Frisco's - not happening. There are massive ripple effects across the whole hospitality, retail and transportation industries because office workers aren't back yet.
"So many people on the street" - is a bit of a stretch. It's noticeably quieter around the clock in Center City. One of the things that drew me to cities in the first place is the constant feeling of energy, of things always happening. The hustle and bustle - outside of certain times (like a beautiful spring Saturday in Rittenhouse Sq) - is just not really there right now and that's just not a good thing for a host of reasons.
Interestingly, in Fitler Square - it's the most crowded it's ever been from a pedestrian standpoint M-F. Despite that, a lot of the services haven't returned. Bars, restaurants, cafes, for example, all are still operating at limited hours for some reason. Like, hey everyone is working from home, can you please open for lunch again?
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You can't ignore there is still an ongoing pandemic. Obviously many aspects of the city I love I can't enjoy in full. I have two unvaxed children under five, one of whom is at an elevated risk for covid complications. There's still plenty of people with issues like this that prevent them from living as they did prepandemic and that's obviously been hard on a lot of businesses.
But there was also a period this summer when a lot of in person work obligations resumed and I traveled a bit. This pandemic hit everywhere, and whatever you think about Philadelphia now compared to before, it's bounced back a lot better than most of the places I went to.
And while I agree that obviously WFH has had a ripple affect that has hurt Philadelphia businesses, my issue with what Levy is saying is that just because WFH has had negative affects, pleading for it to end as covid is spiking again is asinine. Things are not going to go back to normal, and he's delusional if thinks it is. Things will get more normal. And there were certainly aspects of conducting business that as soon as it seemed safe, people were jumping at going back to in person. But, plenty of the work people do, it's simply not necessary to come into the office everyday. Look at the decisions companies have been making with office space in the past year or so. These are not short term decisions. No one is expecting a return to how things were before.
I work for a pretty small company that nonetheless has a global footprint. More than half of our employees are in Philly and previously we'd all come into the office. But for many of our employees they're literally the only employee in their city. Well before the pandemic we had plenty of employees that worked from home and video conferencing was a regular aspect of our days. Well before the pandemic people were already realizing with modern tools, there isn't a need to be in the same physical space constantly to work with someone. This was all trending this way anyway, the pandemic just accelerated everything.
So my point is simply, I wish Levy was more cognizant of these realities and rather than hoping for a return to the past that is never happening, he'd be more concentrated with leveraging the many advantages Philly has that has allowed this city to respond to the pandemic better than most.
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