Do the Collapse: Skyscraper Occupancy South of 3rd

And collapse they did, in the economic and occupancy sense. Structucally they remain standing though mostly empty.


Perhaps a better illustration is this timeline, showing how buildings drop out of the real estate market, via closure and conversion. The remaining open buildings are at just 16%-20% of their peak occupancy.
Investigating private sector occupants (dropping non-profits and government offices) by category one can see how the medical category dominates in the early years of the study period, but shrinks to insignifigance.


Occupancy Trends by Category

Recasting the bar graph as a line graph so the trends will pop out more, the crash in the medical category is quite evident. This category includes psychiatrists, psychologists, optomitrists and opticians, dentists, medical and dental labs, clinics, HMOs and health plans, and, of course practioners and specialists.
At the end of the study period there are no practioners left downtown, which is a remarkably thorough culling.

Taking out the medical category some of the smaller categories reveal their trends.

The "Other" category is a grab bag of occupants ranging from beuaty shops, jewelers, music teachers, detective agencys and wacth repairs to subscription services, branch offices, manufactures reps, archictectural and engineering firms, and so forth. This is the colorful and diverse mix of downtown business captureed in the comix works of Ben Katchor and maybe Will Eisner in "The Building". As we're often talking about small business in "other" this category is somewhat spikey, perhaps in response to the business cycle as the lows roughly correspond to recessions after the big drop of the 1970s.

Not shown here, but if one drills down into the "other" the subcategory mix also changes through time, revealing the changing character of downtown work.

Legal, which includes title search companies, shows a big drop in the 1970s, then some stability. Perhaps this shows a shift from the small one-, two-, and three- man law office to the larger multi-partner practices, such as the ones that fill entire floors in 1 Dayton Center.

Real estate and insurance (which includes appraisers and adjusters) show a similar drop, but in this case nearly to nothing, as was the case with accounts.

Employment is employment agencies, temps, and headhunters. Finance is collection agencies, loan and mortgage companies, credit bureaus, and finacial advisors. These categories drop, but are somewhat stable with a slow decline after 1985.

Government and Non-Profit Organizations.

Non-profits being trade and professional associations, unions, charities, and advocacy groups. This category of occupants acts as sort of a floor for building occupancy. In the case of the Riebold Building they become the only occupant, but they assume an increasingly important role in non-government buildings as private sector occupany declines, approching parity in recent years.


Comparing the occupancy of buildings with and without government/non-profit occupants.
And a closer look at two buildings.

Center City Offices became a quasi-government office building in the 1970s, and as private sector occupancy collapsed government and non-profits assumed an increasingly larger role, until they left, dropping the building occupancy into the single digits, perhaps rendering the building economically unviable.

There is a similar pattern at 40 West Fourth, where government and nonprofit groups were in the building, but a small percentage of occupants, until private sector occupancy collapsed in the 1990s.

This resulted in government/non-profit category accounting for a third of all building occupants.

Within the non-profit category the subtype of professional and trade associations all but disappears, leaving mostly charitable and social service non-profits by 2005.

A Business Ecosystem?

It should be noted that what's measured here is not square feet occupied, or the number of people in buildings, but the number and type of occupants. Perhaps more of a business ecosystem, where one measures the diversity and number of types, and their habitats. In the case of law, one sees a collapse, then stability. For the medical category the collapse is near total.

What hasn't been looked at is some detail as to what category of business preferred what building (though this has been alluded to) and possible relations between categories. Drilling deeper would demonstrate that proximity plays a role, with little clusters of subcategories serving each other. And with real life ecosystems, the less diverse the more at-risk to collapse?

And then there is the question of where did they all go? Where did all the doctors and lawyers and employment agencies and insurance agents go?

Perhaps topics for future posts.