When consulting giant Bain & Co. was looking for a new office recently, one of its biggest priorities was finding something close to a transit hub. Its current office, near Bryant Park, was accessible enough, but the firm couldn’t have gotten much closer than its ultimate choice: more than 200,000 square feet at 22 Vanderbilt Ave., a recently renovated building from Milstein Properties that provides direct access to Grand Central Terminal and its system of commuter and subway lines.
“The size of our New York team has doubled over the past several years,” Bain & Co. Co-Managing Partner Allison Gans said in a statement, “and convenience to a major transportation center was a nonnegotiable as we searched for a new home.”
The company plans to move from 1114 Sixth Ave. into 22 Vanderbilt by 2026, apparently looking to ensure attendance in the office will be high by making employees’ commutes as easy as possible.
Easy access to transit has become a stubborn demand of many New York workers who dutifully schlepped to the office five days a week prior to the Covid-19 pandemic. After getting accustomed to clocking in remotely during the past four years, they are now resistant to give up the perk, with a recent study from the Partnership for New York City finding slightly fewer workers are in their offices on an average weekday now than last September. The percentage has dropped from 58% to 56%, according to the study.
(Data on how full individual office buildings are on a typical day is harder to come by. Representatives for office watchers Placer.ai and Kastle said the firms do not share this information.)
Office landlords have unsurprisingly been among the biggest cheerleaders of getting workers back in their properties but have been more focused on building renovations, surmising that employees will come in more often if their office is filled with amenities. This makes sense to a certain extent, as it is much easier for them to upgrade the properties they control than to upgrade the transportation network.
But the quality of the building itself can only matter so much if it is not easy to get to. And in a city as notoriously expensive as New York, many workers have found themselves living farther and farther from central business districts. That can make commuting to an office that is also far from transit even less appealing. So despite calls for them to return to the office, workers just aren’t showing up.
Short trips, happy people
Multiple studies on commuting across multiple countries have all reached the same broad conclusion: People don’t like doing it and tend to be happier the shorter their ride is. This was true before Covid as well, but the issue has gained new salience after workers got a taste of not having to commute at all during the pandemic.
Recent data stresses how important it is for companies to be as close as possible to commuter hubs and how even marginal distances can make a huge difference.
A study from real estate tech firm VTS comparing the number of tours companies took of properties during the first half of 2023 to the first half of 2022, for instance, found that office buildings within a five-minute walk of the city’s major transit hubs saw 51% more tours than buildings that were 10 minutes or more from them. The study defined Grand Central, Penn Station and the Union Square and Fulton Street stations, each of which provides access to multiple transit lines, as the major hubs.
In addition to an easier commute, these areas also help ensure that, when workers do come in, they will not just be stuck at their desks, VTS Chief Strategy Officer Ryan Masiello said.
“Neighborhoods around major transit hubs tend to be more oriented to the convenience of office workers and commuters,” he said. “Think fast-casual restaurants to grab lunch, bars to grab happy hour drinks after work, sit-down restaurants to entertain colleagues and clients.”
The Grand Central area, in particular, has re-emerged as a popular place for offices, which is a marked shift from the city’s prepandemic landscape, said Andrew Lim, director of New York research at the brokerage JLL.
“One of the things that surprised us the most in 2023 was how much more demand we saw by Grand Central. The center of gravity when it came to leasing pre-Covid was Hudson Yards,” he said. “If they’re coming in on Metro-North [Railroad], they don’t want to transfer. They just want to be able to walk to work.”
(Andrew Rosen, COO of Hudson Yards at The Related Cos., stressed that 99% of the development’s office space is leased up, and more than 7 million workers live within a 40-minute commute.)
The launch of Long Island Rail Road service into Grand Central Madison has also been a game changer for the area. The LIRR, which is the busiest commuter rail network in the U.S., finished 2023 with ridership growth of 65.2 million customers, a 24% uptick compared to 2022, according to Metropolitan Transportation Authority data.
The boost of travelers put the railroad at 71.6% of its prepandemic ridership. And it grew at a higher rate among people traveling for nonwork purposes than among commuters, according to an MTA analysis.
The housing factor
Major pushes from the city and the state to build more housing, especially near transit, are connected to the push for shorter commutes as well. If it is easier to find a home in the five boroughs, after all, it should be easier to have a short trip to the office.
The MTA, for instance, is seeking to ramp up developments near train stations in the boroughs and the surrounding suburbs. And the effort behind office-to-residential conversions could open up opportunities to live a short walk from your workplace, given that many of these revamped buildings will, by design, be in neighborhoods with plenty of office buildings, Department of City Planning Director Dan Garodnick noted.
Adding housing has a tangible impact on the return-to-office goal, along with the city’s economy in general, Garodnick said.
“When businesses look at their prospective workforce and the amount of time they have to travel, sometimes they make other decisions, which are not in New York City’s favor,” he said. “I definitely think it is a key issue here and impacts the return-to-office dynamic in a real way.”
Employee choice
Of course, the commute is not the only factor involved as workers decide when and how often to go to the office. The shifting priorities of employees since the pandemic also play a major role.
“I think some of it comes down to employer enticement and mandates, some of it is transit-driven, and some of it is just really personal,” said Lisa Daglian, executive director of the Permanent Citizens Advisory Committee to the MTA.
“There are some folks who will not ever commute again,” Daglian added, “and that’s their prerogative if they have alternatives.”
Evan Jones, a software engineer who lives in Dyker Heights, is one of those people.
Before the pandemic, Jones would walk 15 minutes, or sometimes catch a bus during the colder months, to hop on an R train at the 86th Street station. He would then ride the train for at least 45 minutes to reach his office in the Financial District. All that time spent commuting felt like a waste, he said.
“I did like seeing my colleagues, but I’m writing code on my computer all day,” said Jones. “Do I need to be in an office to do that? No, I don’t.”
Jones’ company went fully remote during much of the pandemic, and it was an eye-opening experience. So when management began encouraging workers to return to the office, Jones resigned and found a fully remote position.
“I just enjoy my life more,” he said. “I take trips all the time now. The world is my office.”
The greater work-life balance that results from a short or nonexistent commute has become essential to many New York workers who saw going to the office five days a week as their only option prior to the pandemic.
Marleen Meyers similarly spent a decade leaving her White Plains home each weekday at 6 a.m. She’d drive 20 minutes to catch an hourlong Metro-North train to Manhattan followed by a 10-minute walk to her Midtown office building, where she worked in marketing. The trip typically took 90 minutes each way.
Now she works remotely three days a week and is relishing the newfound flexibility.
“The time I spent commuting took me away from being present with my family,” said Meyers. “I’d argue I’m a happier, more productive worker because of my improved work-life balance, and if the work is getting done, then what’s the problem?”
Meyers says she enjoys occasionally traveling to her office to connect with fellow workers and have meetings in person but would consider moving closer to the office, or looking for another job, if faced with an ultimatum to commute four or five days a week.
“People don’t want planes, trains and automobiles to get to the office anymore. Everyone did it for years and years. It became our culture. You never thought twice about it as much as you complained,” said Fred Cerullo, president of the Grand Central Partnership, a business improvement district. “If I’m going to go to work, I want to get on a train and off a train and be in my neighborhood.”
Eddie Small, Caroline Spivack , 2024-06-03 11:48:07
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