Last one out of Lloyd, please turn off the lights
Liberty Mutual Insurance Company ("Only pay for what you need") has decided it doesn't need to pay rent in the Lloyd District in inner Northeast Portland any more. When its lease is up, as it will be soon, the company will be abandoning close to 100,000 square feet in "Liberty Centre," across from the Convention Center. The insurer will be moving its offices to the suburban shores of Lake Oswego.
The official story, which the kids at the Weed buy, is that so many of the company's workers are now working from home that Liberty doesn't need so much space. But of course, that begs the unasked question of why they couldn't just take less space in their current building.
I think we all know the answer to that question. The Lloyd District has always been a little sketchy, and now, like all of inner Portland, it's become downright scary. But we don't talk about that.
The exit of Liberty is yet another warning sign of how the transition to remote work presents a problem for building owners and city leaders alike, who are suffering from little foot traffic and high office vacancy rates.
Sure, blame it on Covid. Quite the Portland Polite thing to do.
I had my office in there. It had been nice telling clients to turn at the Land Rover dealership. It was not nice telling them to turn at the homeless camp that used to be a Land Rover dealership. The garage is wide open and patrols can only do so much, so parking there stopped feeling secure. Management never reopened the building to guests and retail customers without getting buzzed in, presumably for security reasons once covid restrictions were lifted. It's a shame. It had been a great location for a while.
ReplyDeleteMr Lloyd’s vision almost worked
ReplyDeleteBut, things changed in the mid 80s
The planning nerds over at skyscraperpage.com are probably having panic attacks over the sudden (or not so sudden) vacating of high rises and hotels going bust.
ReplyDeleteEverything was going just as planned, until it wasn’t.