Planning for the "rebuild" - Pivoting commercial property

With the nation [and most of the world] under lockdown, we are all trying to come to terms with new ways of working; with the new landscape slowly starting to become clearer, now is the time for businesses [and individuals alike] to look to the future and to what the world will look like once everything is "back to normal".

But what is "normal"? It used to mean the 9 - 5, grabbing a coffee en route to the office and a lengthy commute either side. So how will the "new normal" look after what will [probably] be months of isolated remote-working? With many companies - at least those able to operate a remote workforce - having successfully pivoted from their physical offices to home working and utilising communication and collaboration technologies to their fullest [and sometimes beyond] capabilities, it begs the question: if businesses have been surviving - or even thriving - with these new, enforced working practices, why would they revert back to the "traditional" office based model when things are back "as they were"?

For businesses with high rental costs for space in city buildings and for those who maintain their own real estate portfolio, there is an opportunity to reduce one of the major overheads and even to identify new revenue streams.

So how to approach this? Well of course for entire buildings the owners could look to sell these on, but as the property market seems likely to experience a similar downturn to everything else right now, how else could these dormant spaces be utilised without having to sell short, or reinstate the "traditional" workspace just to justify the building rather than make use of the space in a more lucrative way that can support the regeneration of the economy?

We need only look at how the smaller, independent restaurants and family run cafes have innovated the use of their premises after "regular" opening hours; there has been a slew of cafés - whose hours usually end around 17:00 - opening their premises [and kitchens] to local chefs who have the menus but no restaurant space in which to operate. This kind of space-innovation not only gives both enterprises exposure to a different audience, it also brings in more revenue for the café owners [usually with a small percentage of the dinner takings]. It enables the restaurateur to operate in a commercial setting and also helps to utilise the building and associated services for a full five [or more] hours every day.

So why shouldn't corporate offices provide similar pop-up services to get the most out of their expensive real estate?

Without too much modification an open-plan office could be converted to, for example, a comedy club, with "desk-service" for drinks and snacks; corporate headquarters with high speed internet lines could open up as e-sports arenas; even schools could provide access to their sports facilities to become late-opening ad-hoc gyms, or classrooms turning into mini movie theatres.

The possibilities are limited only to imagination; sure there are potentially complex logistics and technological, security and legal questions to address, but bringing more diverse organisations and services together and creating a new industry of "transformers" - the teams that re-configure spaces as they turn from office to something new - is a possible way of making more of our existing resources and ensuring that these monolithic business centres don't spend most of their time as mausoleums.

We are all facing uncertainty at the moment, so what better time to seize control of the future and dictate how we come out of it? Trends tire, fashion fades, so why lock your property down for a single purpose? If some of the biggest businesses in the country can pivot in just days to manufacture medical supplies as opposed to their traditional products, there seems to be no excuse for others being stuck in their ways.