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by EMM_386 1052 days ago
> How do you overcome that?

It will lower itself naturally.

Less people in office buildings means less foot traffic to stores, which means less fewer stores will be enticed to rent.

If nobody's renting, eventually the owners and investors will have to realize some rent is better than no rent, even if it means they are going to take a loss.

Then rents start dropping back to earth.
1 comments
latchkey 1052 days ago
That doesn't mean the people will come back to support those businesses though. In the case of SF, since there is only office space downtown and almost zero housing, this is going to be a problem of finding tenants than it is about lowering rents. Who's going to want to open a retail space where there is no foot traffic?
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HWR_14 1051 days ago
The usual solution to that is that someone (maybe the owner of many buildings in an area) finds several tenants to open at the same time, and thus tries to produce a retail destination. So no one wants to open a bar near 30 empty offices, but if I tell you I am getting 4 restaurants, 3 art galleries, another bar and a theater to all open in the same area than you all can feed off each other. Or instead of a lot of little things, tries to get one big draw to open. You can imagine that opening a bar next to a movie theater is better than not near one.
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latchkey 1051 days ago
I opened a night club on a block in SF that had lots of other bars. Unfortunately, we also picked the one spot on the block that was also next door to a liquor store.

I can't tell you how much that cost us because people would just go next door, get a small bottle of something for cheap, down it while they were out on their smoke break and then come back to the show in my place.

It really sucked honestly.

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fragmede 1051 days ago
Which one? Butter? The moves California ABC made during Covid were interesting.
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latchkey 1051 days ago
Same block. I have stories about the ABC for days, evil evil humans work there. If meter maids had a place to graduate to, this is where they go.
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HWR_14 1051 days ago
I can see how that's bad placement. Did you try a cover with no-reentry to at least cut down on that?

But, yeah, it can be harmful like that or positive in that maybe there are restaurants next door where people eat before they come to your bar for drinks and a show.

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