I was here and it was different.
I was here and it has changed.
I landed last week from Chicago, back from a global conference for coworking and community. A friend texted me, hasn’t it changed? People are leaving the city?
At the conference, we discussed a future that is in disarray: commercial real estate is crashing, co-working is growing. I sat in an expansive conference center that was designed to be a wework like banquet hall. The space was inside a prime downtown building, in the core of Chicago’s downtown. One floor above us, board rooms wrapped in glass sat empty, as if staged for a shopping mall. You can see the missing traffic. You can feel the missing people. The city is still stirred and shaken from the pandemic, displacing our sense of place.
The office is dead. Nightlife is vibrant. Similar to Detroit.
I was here and it has changed.
Isn’t this how we all feel? That the places we thought we know, that we once lived in or loved, will change. The neighborhood will gentrify, generating or degenerating a community. The building we once knew will be there but yet gone. Depending on how close we feel to these places we may feel betrayed. We may want it to stay the way we liked it to be. We want to know what was once ours in a specific time and place can remain. We do not want to be reminded that time has moved on. That we must move on too.
When we closed Bamboo during the covid pandemic chairs were moved out of place, as if we did get up and walk out of one reality and into the next. Returning felt unreal. We were there, the people were not. They are now but it is different. It has changed.
Landlords and developers are of two mindsets: denial or adaptation. It’s just another cycle to ride out. It’s just a trend. It’s coming back. I call this denial. Some adopt a more innovative mindset. They see that office use in cities are changing and they are changing too, adopting retail, hospitality, coworking or perhaps living spaces.
A friend says: I haven’t really seen this whole city. I’ve been living here for years. And all I think: It just sprawls and sprawls and sprawls.
A focal point of the conference. No one is expanding into Downtowns anymore. We’re moving everywhere else, where everyone else will be. We’re seeing tremendous growth ahead for our industry, up for the taking, up for the sprawl.
Downtowns will be for experiences. They will be for living and concerts and art museums and restaurants and fun. They will not be required for work, not in the way they once were.
The glass is see through. The rooms are staged and still.
The conference is thriving, one floor below.
The coworking spaces are full. The rest of the floors of the building sit empty.
So who knows what the future will be, but likely it will be different.