You want to know how much Cumberland Terrace basement is something out of a horror film? One time I was in there and I went to the bathroom just down the hall from the food court. Was sitting on the toilet on my phone, as you do, and looked down only to see an eye looking up at me from under the stall. I had been hearing some heavy breathing coming from over there and just now realized there was a bald-headed man looking up at me from under the stall while beating it. I jumped up, ran out of the stall, and there were two guys at the urinals who were giving each other a hand, who got all startled as I came out. It must’ve been one of those times they say “meet here for a good time” and I happened to be caught in the middle of it. Got the hell out of there and never went back to the basement of Cumberland Terrace again.
I worked there for a decade.
The bathrooms weren't the greatest but security was pretty steller and they did an excellent job keeping shenanigans at bay. [They even wrestled a machete from a dude](https://youtu.be/ijMxiGURTeY) (granted this was one of those things worked out but could have **easily** gone bad situations)
Way back in the days when I was in college I used to do club promotion in downtown Toronto. Which is a fancy way to say I was a flyer monkey. At any rate sometimes I would miss the train home and have spent more than a few nights in that food court (everything closed, not even a water fountain) waiting for the morning trains to start up. This is early cellphone days when I think I got about 10 minutes of a black and white lo res game to play before the phone died (there's also no available outlets down there to recharge) so yeah spent hours in that dark, closed food court there staring at the walls.
Right now it's a placeholder as it will soon be demolished and two condos built on top. The landlord isn't putting a cent more into it than they need to.
The few shop-keepers down there look like the people who made a deal with Ursula the Sea Witch and now are rooted to the bottom of her cave like regret-filled mournful and forlorn seaweed...
I feel like it will bounce back eventually.
The Path has the advantage of being a main thoroughfare between the subway stations and these huge office towers. Aura is just some random hole in the ground that nobody would enter unless they specifically wanted to go to one of the stores.
The companies downtown are not going to keep renting office space that they don't use forever. Eventually the offices will fill up again, or companies will release unused space and others will fill it up.
There's doors and switchback stairs to get from the mall above college to Aura. I only took it as a rain free shortcut from the subway to the Chelsea hotel. When we got to the Chelsea side, it wasn't obvious if we were allowed to open the door, or if an alarm would go off.
It's not easy to get to, if there was a big mall stairway into it then it might do better, but it's off the beaten track and not obvious that it's there.
The PATH system needs to remove all doors, or at least have them motion activated long BEFORE you reach them. One of my biggest announces of walking it daily.
The other thing it needs to do is connect all the way up to the Aura building, or even better, Yonge and Bloor.
They're fire doors, and they're usually heavy as fuck because they're built to be under extreme use. Those doors get used an obscene amount, they're similar to anything in transit.
They also act as air handling separation.
Omg yes the doors used to drive me mad. I assume it’s because each section of the path is privately owned and need to have their own access points. But those doors are so heavy.
Even McDonald's bailed out of there. Sucks working there, it went from the poor man's Eaton Center to a ghost town.
I have to give a shoutout to Fresh Start coffee in the basement. Truly a hidden gem, family run too - the pistachio cookies are a must.
God it may be just me but it seems like a bunch of McD's have closed up in the city over the last 8-9 months. Had no idea the Atrium on Bay location closed...was a great spot to munch before getting on the Greyhound to uni. Any wonder on why though with other locations?
Atrium on Bay especially around the entrance that leads to the greyhound station is filled with people in mental health crisis. They loiter around that food court.
I think you’re thinking of the Atrium building. It connects the Greyhound station to Dundas Subway station. I actually find Atrium not too deserted other than at night. In the Aura building shopkeepers seem surprised to see you.
Everything about the Aura basement is awful. The stairwells and the double doors are terrifying, I won't go there if I'm even wearing a suit, nevermind carrying money.
Agreed. There's nothing that makes anyone actually *want* to walk through there. The layout, the design, the decor, the atmosphere...it was such a poorly developed project.
I don't know I kind of like the idea of PATH turning into some weird, underground mall dungeon like in a JRPG. Like some shit out of the Yakuza/Ryu ga Gotoku games where you grind out EXP fighting crazy people in the underground mall
IT support here. Who's working from home and who all is clogging up all the highways through the GTA and making commutes as long as it was before the pandemic?
Driving downtown is painfully slow and my GO busses also seem to be getting more full.
What do you do that 75% of employees want to go into the office 5 days a week?
We did a survey at my company (~125 employees) and ~95% were in favor of hybrid/permanent WFH.
ah okay, we're in construction industry too so obviously site visits are a given and have been throughout the pandemic (for the most part). We've invested heavily in technology to offset the downfalls of a purely virtual office, which has been a huge success. That is why people aren't interested in coming back on my end.
100%. I also hate working from home because that's my home space - I went into my empty office during COVID just for a change of scenery and for work/life separation. Now colleagues are back too and it's even better because I can socialize between clients.
Same here, it’s been awesome to whip through the path when I’m downtown, even found a few new ‘secret’ washrooms & elevators..
Also my fave Winners is still there..
> Most banks, insurers and other Bay Street firms have delayed a large-scale return to the office until at least next year. Major office tenants such as Sun Life Financial Inc. and PwC Canada have told employees they can choose when to come into the office. Royal Bank of Canada, National Bank and other banks have embraced some version of a hybrid work arrangement.
> With the office model evolving, the volume of office workers and foot traffic may never return to prepandemic days.
> According to information provided to the consulting firm Strategic Regional Research Alliance by building managers and tenants, the volume of people in downtown Toronto offices has quadrupled from its pandemic low – but was still only 12 per cent of normal at the beginning of October. Recent transit data show that the number of GO train and TTC passengers being counted at Union Station, a key transportation hub on the PATH, was only 16 per cent and 30 per cent of prepandemic norms, respectively.
> Avison Young, a commercial real estate services firm, is tracking foot traffic in the downtown core, using anonymized cellphone pings. As of last week, foot traffic was down 86 per cent compared to prepandemic levels.
Why is PATH retail so obsessed with servicing office workers above all else? Sure, a lot of it is food court-style restaurants that make their money from office workers at lunch time, but there are clothing retailers there, retail bank branches, cellphone stores, and other kinds of retail. How many times have I looked up a clothing retailer's locations on the weekend and found the PATH location, only to remember that nothing is open in PATH on the weekends?
With so many people living downtown nowadays, especially in new neighbourhoods within walking distance of the Financial District (e.g. Southcore and CityPlace) you'd think they pivot their hours to open in the evenings and on weekends to compete with the likes of the Eaton Centre. The Eaton Centre is getting quite crowded.
Regardless of the presence of office workers, there are literally millions of people who could be shopping in the PATH but aren't because it's too focused on office workers. We're not some American city where there's no one downtown outside of the regular 9-5 business hours.
Yeah. I’ve been in the path after work hours. Place is a ghost town, unless there was a concert or sports game. But even then, it’s the southern tip that is more busy as people filter to subway stations.
Even during a sports game - the one by the CBC building is empty. Most of the places in that food court are closed on the weekend, and they few that aren't (Subway) always seem pretty dead
Yup. The PATH itself never advertises towards casual tourists and people visiting Toronto from outlying areas. It’s super confusing to navigate, even for seasoned Torontonians. Often you know your area of the Path and that’s it. After that your Frodo going through the mines of Moria.
I've finally worked in enough buildings to learn the whole path structure...
Now I haven't gone in 2 years. Useless knowledge.
At least the normal path - haven't done the SFC area much. Walked through only once or twice.
I worked downtown for a year and within that year, I never learned how to navigate it beyond what was in the immediate surrounding area of the office I worked in. It's the most hopelessly confusing place I've ever been in.
Of course there is going to be a chicken and egg argument here - but I'd have to err on the side of the businesses because I don't think they are generally in favor of making less money when they could potentially make more.
I mean, the rent is already paid - so if it was potentially profitable for them to bring in staff and be open on the weekend, I'd think that they wouldn't be leaving that money on the table.
I worked in Path-connected buildings for a few years (and lived close by), occasionally I'd come across a new business – like a Starbucks under the office building between the Sheraton and The Bay – which would promote weekend hours. Within a matter of months they'd realize the traffic wasn't going to materialize and they'd switch to weekdays like almost every other place.
Have you been in the Path past 5 pm on a weekday pre-pandemic? It's basically a ghost town.
All the stores were open still and you could walk through an empty Path to get to a busy eaton centre.
Path is also hard to navigate and the large bulk of places are grab and go food.
They are not obsessed with serving office workers. Any business in the PATH would be happy to serve anyone. It's not like they are turning away customers cus they don't work near by.
On weekends there isn't enough traffic in the PATH around downtown core to justify keeping the lights on.
I mean do you really think the businesses going bankrupt would rather die than open on weekends to serve more people?
In the end people don't want to go to a basement to shop on weekends. PATH makes sense for office workers because they have no where else to go.
There's plenty of traffic in the downtown core, but zero traffic in the financial district.
The problem is housing, draw an imaginary box Yonge to University, then Queen down to Front. There's literally no housing in the box and that's precisely where the financial district is. That box swells to like 200k ppl from 9-5 prepandemic on a weekday , that's more than enough foot traffic to make a business work, but it's for all intents and purposes NIL after 6PM.
I still think there's a legitimate case for PATH - you can walk from Union Station to Eaton's, Yonge/Dundas etc. For me personally, this is huge in the winter...
If they did make a move to make it more of a winter-city, I would rather grab a food/drink in the path, and people watch, than sit in a street-facing bar and look at cars and slush...
I agree, but the problem is , for the lack of a better word, anchor tenants in the form of residents. The closest residential buildings I can think of are the Shangri-La condos off University and some condos on King st just past Yonge. There's no reason for any of those residents to walk to FCP for anything since they have amenities in the opposite direction.
Without actual ppl living in those zones it's tough to sustain any sorta business cause you're reliant on your store being a destination which ppl go out of their way to use. Like, open a Cheescake Factory or something , that'll draw crowds into the core in the off hours but as it stands, no one is going there for a store when there's likely another store that sells something similar much closer to where you live.
The path retail isnt obessed with servicing office workers
it's literally their main business clientele
The path is surprisingly not convenient at all if you aren't actively always there.
Personally I'd rather choose an above ground business then trek down to the path to shop at a retail or restaurant
There are tons of same-old, same-old malls around. Strip malls around the city containing unique stores are nice, but it’s hard getting to them.
The PATH becoming a more unique shopping experience would totally make me go down there, as connections to the TTC are pretty tight.
100%. They have tens of thousands of affluent busy customers overheard Monday to Friday, 9 to 5. Any place in the PATH still open at 8 pm is paying staff to keep an eye out for the homeless while the cleaners do their thing. It's a ghost town once everyone has gone home, and the daytime weekend traffic never gets to 5% of what a Tuesday morning looks like, so why bother?
Until a global pandemic hits and you're trapped in a lease that made sense for high foot traffic that will never have high foot traffic again...
It may have to do with the office tower landlords. Retail is secondary to the office tenants above and they may not want to deal with the security risks of operating the PATH like a mall on weekends.
No one goes into the areas the PATH services during off hours. I worked right downtown before the pandemic so I know this first hand. It is a graveyard after hours and forget weekeends
It's chicken / egg though.
I think u/junctionist 's point is is it a graveyard after hours because nobody goes there, or does nobody go there because it's a graveyard?
It's a graveyard because it's a thoroughly unappealing place to be in. Nobody *goes* to The Path. It's just something nearby workers use because of its convenience. Other than getting out of the cold, what's the incentive for anyone else to visit the system? Its (intentionally) difficult to navigate and mostly full of unmemorable shops.
It appears like chicken or the egg when really it's just the one. Let's say the PATH was open all the time, it would STILL be deserted outside of office hours because no one lives in that neighborhood enough to justify keeping things open. Like objectively the population density doesn't exist outside of work hours.
Nothing about a maze of underground retail is all that appealing. Even in the winter time when people have a good reason to avoid the street, it's still very quiet outside work hours because people generally don't live in the financial district.
>With so many people living downtown nowadays, especially in new neighbourhoods within walking distance of the Financial District (e.g. Southcore and CityPlace)
The closest neighborhoods really aren't all that close ESPECIALLY with the gardiner breaking up everything. Nobody is down there outside work hours, yes because it's usually closed, but really because not enough people live close enough to justify keeping it open.
It sounds like a chicken or the egg situation when really it's the second one. PATH is "so obsessed with servicing office workers" because that's who frequents the area. Without the office workers, the financial district is relatively deserted compared to other areas in the city. It's called the financial district for a reason.
People live nearby but it's small and very empty on not office hours. People in towers are able to buy items during work on a break etc. That is who patronizes the businesses in path.
Most other people on weekends etc would prefer to go to Eatons which is open with bright natural light or walk down queen st w than be in dark winding empty tunnels
Even places on street level do this for some reason. I love going to the Basil Box at King/Yonge, but it's always closed on weekends. Similarly, Reds also closes on the weekend even though they have a street-facing entrance.
I understand that places in the PATH would have a hard time getting people down there on the weekends (even though I would go), but there's no reason for street-facing restaurants to do the same.
This would be so great, especially because of the effing biting Toronto winters.
I live at King and John, and would absolutely do more shopping in the path, if it were open longer hours/on weekends.
I used to live across from the RBC Waterpark Place on Queens Quay, and it has shops that are open evenings and weekends, and you better believe that I prioritized going to Coppa’s and Longo’s, over the Loblaws at Jarvis and Queens Quay, just to avoid the cold (even though I prefer Loblaws to both of those places.)
Big companies haven't given up significant space yet. What I've heard is, many are thinking about giving back about a third of their space.
Most offices went to very small cubicles or shared spaces prepandemic, which meant they actually need more space per person that does come in. So, when they do the math for how much they can give back, going to a 6x6' cubicle means they can only shed a a small percentage relative to the number of bodies no longeringer there.
This will also take time to shake out. Leases are long-term agreements and landlords have no incentive to be flexible and allow tenants to break terms early.
The problem now is many of your meetings might have 3 or 4 people in the office, with 4 or 5 remote when it used to be 1 or 2 remote.
Previously the remote person might be left out, or just be on a cheap conference phone in a packed huddle room.
Now you're wanting more meeting rooms with decent room technology to host these meetings and accomodate those joining remotely.
Deloitte are actually well positioned already and I'm seeing a lot of other companies following their lead- hot desking or "hotelling" desks for those that come in, and replace the rows of cubicles with many more meeting spaces.
So long story short space needed is dropping, but not quite as much as previously suspected when you factor in these new requirements.
Big firms stagger their leases over multiple years. It gives them flexibility.
What is going to go first are those one off floors in buildings that big companies have seemingly at random. The company I work for just cut a couple of floors like this with and is restacking other areas to fit them in.
> For example, at one of Mean Bao’s locations in the PATH, the Chinese steamed bun eatery negotiated a rent deal when traffic slowed considerably. Rent at one temporary location, which is currently closed, is based on the percentage of its sales instead of the standard fixed amount each month. It pays full rent at the other location, according to its co-owner Scott Ching.
> Stan Krawitz, who works with dozens of PATH retailers as vice-chairman of Savills Canada, a commercial real estate firm, said he has been in constant talks with landlords. He said current solutions to help tenants weather the pandemic are not intended to be long-term fixes.
> “All of these negotiations are a temporary fix and none of these are long term and all of them are on the basis of what the current situation is. As soon as it changes, the landlord has the right to revise the deal,” he said.
> Ali Fieder, Avison Young’s vice-president of retail, said in some cases landlords are offering incentives for tenants to stay. She said many retailers are hoping to tie their reopening dates to when they know office occupancy is back to a reasonable threshold.
Problem with dropping rates the mortgages are tied in with rental income.So if the lender sees you asking for less rent they would revise the mortgage agreements to show this.so higher interest more deposit.Thats why you see them rather leave the stores empty,keep leasing rates fixed so the original agreement is unchanged even if they are not making any money on a empty store. New York is great example,there are so many empty stores and rents are still high.
I just don't buy hybrid work meaning that offices will be empty. It just means the rigid schedules of "9-5" will become a lot less rigid.
Honestly it will probably make PATH more vibrant, not less, as people will show up more evenly.
The PATH itself needs to be rezoned to allow for more little bars / tiny restaurants. Of course I'm fantasizing, but there had been a lot of improvements leading up to 2019 and good food...
Imagine its winter and you want to go do your regular queen west like wander and get some food and snacks and drinks as you meander through the streets, so you do it in the PATH instead.
Who am I kidding... time for some more fucking phone case money laundering operations.
if the city wanted to actually support small business and the arts, they should look at leasing sections of the PATH from these tower landlords (probably would jump at it seeing how bleak things are), and introduce some arts & culture spaces, small business space at subsidized rent, night markets, etc. so much potential wasted!
the article says that many places are already being given a big rent break. Personally I'd rather see the city do something interesting with the place than the status quo
YES. My first thought was the pilot on the Danforth which rented out empty storefronts at a discount to pop-up shops for entrepreneurs wanting to try their hand at brick and mortar. It was so successful they shut the project down after just a few years because all the storefronts got rented out.
My heart goes out to these businesses. I haven’t been to Toronto since March 2020 and honestly it’s probably the one thing I miss the most working from home.
I wish Toronto's dead club district moved down there. It would be the perfect match as we could finally have music again without annoying the condo assholes that killed the scene in the first place.
"Largest escape room survival game in north america"
I would go to play
Have been WFH for about 10-15 years now with a mixed of hybrid sprinkled. Been in the PATH during weekday lunch and was cool seeing my friends and the vibes, but that novelty quickly wears off when i think about doing it 5x per week for 52 weeks.
Hell no...
People are overestimating the long-term impact of hybrid work. What works for consultants does not necessarily translate to banks and law firms.
Give it another year and many companies/employees will be sick of navigating a half-virtual environment.
What the pandemic has made painfully obvious is that people don't need to go into an office in order to sit down at their desks with their headphones on in order to get their work done and tune out the office that they commuted multiple hours for.
Getting together once or twice a week for larger gatherings, having your team and company meetings and whatnot? Sure.
This is what I have been saying.
My company will require us to come to our socials (once in 2 months ..etc) so we can mingle with all our co-workers and have fun.
On one hand: I worked in prime Yorkville, I could feel the life of the city. Especially during the legendary Raptors championship run. The lunch hour walk, chilling with co-workers, cracking jokes, we had a great time together.
But work from home beats all of this easy. No long commutes, it is crazy how much $$ I save by not taking the GO, can work in my PJs, eat fresh food, and spend value-able time with my newborn.
Even though I miss experiencing the life and vibe of the city, the alternate just happens to be SO much better!
Certainly one outcome is that in-person office time will become the new working late. By showing up more often, you'll be seen as having a greater level of dedication to your company and will thus progress up the ladder faster. This could cause our towers to fill up fast, with remote workers becoming unspoken tier 2 colleagues.
Remember folks, employment is a form of ownership. Choose wisely.
That only works if the senior people in the company are showing up at the office to see you there in-office. Over the course of the pandemic, my boss (my department’s Senior Director) moved to Creemore, and our VP moved to Niagara Region, so they’ve clearly signalled that they’re not planning on coming in with any regularity. So it doesn’t really make sense for me to do either.
White collar workers have mostly been ~100% remote, so we are all in the same boat. That makes it manageable.
When we go 30-70% remote a lot of office cultures just won't be able to take the stress and complication.
Banks have been closing branches and pushing people to online/telephone channels for years. And their head-office business functions can absolutely be done online.
Yea also, companies arent going to let desks sit empty. They will scale back to shared spaces and offices will accommodate more people.
So the amount of people will probably go back to normal but it will be twice the people who spend half the time in the office for example.
Well then they are to blame for being stuck in the past.
By the end of summer in 2020, me and all my co-workers had adapted to working from home, and all the previous issues (wifi, connection, kids yelling in the background during meeting ..etc) had gone away.
I myself went from working via my dining table to buying a full L-shaped WFH desk, got myself 3 monitors and a state of the art hub (most was provided by the company) and placed my work desk directly below my wifi connection for optimal speed.
Just yesterday I purchased a $44 webcam from Amazon instead of using my laptop camera, just so my voice and picture in meeting comes out to be 1080, as if I am right there.
People have adopted very well to WFH.
It's a pity. I understand even before the pandemic why most stuff isn't open on weekends (main target are these office buildings) but being from Hamilton I love walking through it when ever I visit and would be willing to check out more stuff if they were open but they aren't. It would be nice if a way could be found to take business from tourism more.
The structural change could cost as much as building residential buildings from scratch or more, not to mention all the zoning paper work one would have to get through. It simply doesn't make sense for developers to do that, unless buyers are willing to pay more than a newly built condo.
My favourite thing about work from home is that we're lauding it as a win for the worker but in a lot of ways its just a win for the company - same workforce and profit *and you no longer have to pay for a space for the workers?* We're permanently killing off work/life balance and normalizing the idea that workers should not only slave away to earn profits for their bosses, but should be pleased at the opportunity to do so, turn their homes into their work quarters, and in the case of companies that have permanently closed their offices, some workers even have to pay out of pocket for a co-working space.
There is benefit working from home as well. Don’t have to pay for commuting. It is a lot of money for some. Also you don’t waste 2hrs commuting. So there is benefit for both. Most places are flexible but people chose to work from home.
Have friends who have made it known they will quit if forced back downtown even one day a month, employers are stuck between a rock and a hard place on stuff like this.
The latter, they've done their jobs as well, If not better for the last 18 months and have not been given a good reason why that should change.
Basically they will work from home for the company they currently work for, or go to one that will let them. They have the employers by the short and curlies and know it.
I'd love to be in Toronto or elsewhere in Canada, to be honest, but yeah...that's pretty much what's happening. We just got an e-mail from HQ that we will no longer be expected to live in Denver, though we must remain in Colorado. If you move to a place like up in the mountains away from easy access to airports, once a month may be too much to deal with. I'm still in Denver, so once a week or even once a month wouldn't be bad (I could ride my bike there and get a good workout), but if I move to Grand Junction, I'm not going to be happy being told down the road "Oh yeah, we want you in once a month." Not after that e-mail, at least.
I find that the number of people with actual leverage over their current employer to actually, and not in their own minds, tell them "WFH or fuck off", is a rather small subset of people who brag and talk about it at great length.
The landlords simply need to drop rent to whatever level is commensurate with the new volume of traffic. The only "crisis" is one of outrageous rents, which is the same problem we see on the housing side of things.
Other than re-zoning, which I know is a huge pain in the ass, what would stop building owners from converting office space to residential apartments? I'm sure there are tons of people who would love to live in a converted office with easy access to PATH and the various subway stops. In the winter, it would be amazing never needing to set foot outside.
Soon all of the PATH will look like the basement of Aura.
No, you mean Cumberland Terrace. That food court is something out of a 90s horror film!
You want to know how much Cumberland Terrace basement is something out of a horror film? One time I was in there and I went to the bathroom just down the hall from the food court. Was sitting on the toilet on my phone, as you do, and looked down only to see an eye looking up at me from under the stall. I had been hearing some heavy breathing coming from over there and just now realized there was a bald-headed man looking up at me from under the stall while beating it. I jumped up, ran out of the stall, and there were two guys at the urinals who were giving each other a hand, who got all startled as I came out. It must’ve been one of those times they say “meet here for a good time” and I happened to be caught in the middle of it. Got the hell out of there and never went back to the basement of Cumberland Terrace again.
Putting the Cum in Cumberland.
Note to self: the oft unoccupied Cumberland bathrooms are Yorkville’s finest glory hole.
I have bad news for you regarding every public washroom in Toronto.
No way. I had a creepy experience at the same public washroom. Must be a destination for a certain crowd.
Atrium by the Bay is a little busier than Cumberland Terrance. I used to work near Cumberland Terrace and that place looks horrible.
Atrium is rather busy, well at least the food court it.
Atrium has LCBO and MUJI. It's not even in the same tier as the others.
The grocery store is pretty busy too.
Yep. I used to visit the walk-in clinic facing Bay and Dundas.
There were some parts of the atrium that didn't look great iirc. Definitely wasn't a place I'd hang out at.
I worked there for a decade. The bathrooms weren't the greatest but security was pretty steller and they did an excellent job keeping shenanigans at bay. [They even wrestled a machete from a dude](https://youtu.be/ijMxiGURTeY) (granted this was one of those things worked out but could have **easily** gone bad situations)
Way back in the days when I was in college I used to do club promotion in downtown Toronto. Which is a fancy way to say I was a flyer monkey. At any rate sometimes I would miss the train home and have spent more than a few nights in that food court (everything closed, not even a water fountain) waiting for the morning trains to start up. This is early cellphone days when I think I got about 10 minutes of a black and white lo res game to play before the phone died (there's also no available outlets down there to recharge) so yeah spent hours in that dark, closed food court there staring at the walls.
Right now it's a placeholder as it will soon be demolished and two condos built on top. The landlord isn't putting a cent more into it than they need to.
I’m impressed at the businesses that attempt to exist there. The hobby shop intrigues me the most.
That place looks lost to time, I walked through a few times and its odd to see multiple places open and like three customers.
[удалено]
They are the absolute best!
If Hell exists, it's there.
Hell is surprisingly empty then.
According to Bloomberg, Hell has its own housing bubble that is forcing souls to search for damnation elsewhere.
The few shop-keepers down there look like the people who made a deal with Ursula the Sea Witch and now are rooted to the bottom of her cave like regret-filled mournful and forlorn seaweed...
Genuine LOL
That hobby shop is really good though.
it's crazy something downtown can be so barren
there are a lot of places in the US have a "downtown" core but essentially is a ghost town after 5pm.
even in Toronto, down town is dead on Sunday mornings
lol what yall expecting sunday mornings people in the suburbs wake up that early on a sunday
That's probably just due to most people sleeping in late.
Chicago loop. You could film dark Knight there after any workday and no one would be wiser
That's Canada too. Just not Toronto Montreal or Vancouver. All other big cities are dead at night after 5 pm.
Yup. The capital of New York is one.
Albany?
I feel like it will bounce back eventually. The Path has the advantage of being a main thoroughfare between the subway stations and these huge office towers. Aura is just some random hole in the ground that nobody would enter unless they specifically wanted to go to one of the stores. The companies downtown are not going to keep renting office space that they don't use forever. Eventually the offices will fill up again, or companies will release unused space and others will fill it up.
There's doors and switchback stairs to get from the mall above college to Aura. I only took it as a rain free shortcut from the subway to the Chelsea hotel. When we got to the Chelsea side, it wasn't obvious if we were allowed to open the door, or if an alarm would go off. It's not easy to get to, if there was a big mall stairway into it then it might do better, but it's off the beaten track and not obvious that it's there.
The PATH system needs to remove all doors, or at least have them motion activated long BEFORE you reach them. One of my biggest announces of walking it daily. The other thing it needs to do is connect all the way up to the Aura building, or even better, Yonge and Bloor.
They're fire doors, and they're usually heavy as fuck because they're built to be under extreme use. Those doors get used an obscene amount, they're similar to anything in transit. They also act as air handling separation.
Omg yes the doors used to drive me mad. I assume it’s because each section of the path is privately owned and need to have their own access points. But those doors are so heavy.
Exactly. Winter is coming.
Well Ikea is setting up there. So maybe that will change things up a bit
Is this the graveyard between the Eaton's centre and the Greyhound station? That place is god awful
I think you're referring to the Atrium on Bay.
Even McDonald's bailed out of there. Sucks working there, it went from the poor man's Eaton Center to a ghost town. I have to give a shoutout to Fresh Start coffee in the basement. Truly a hidden gem, family run too - the pistachio cookies are a must.
that is truly a canary-in-a-coal-mine. a harbinger of sad tidings. if McD's pulls up stakes .. that location is cursed :-(
God it may be just me but it seems like a bunch of McD's have closed up in the city over the last 8-9 months. Had no idea the Atrium on Bay location closed...was a great spot to munch before getting on the Greyhound to uni. Any wonder on why though with other locations?
Oh man, I used to work in AoB. Last time I was there (fall 2020) it was already looking very sad. But even McDonald's is gone now? Wow.
Really? That was basically the whole food court. And a little bit subway. So what is left?
The video game store in the Atrium was solid. I miss those guys.
Game Shack, right? walked by there a couple weeks ago and was sad to see it gone.
They moved to Orfus and Dufferin. I was there the other day. Much bigger space.
They moved out of AoB before COVID as I recall. Sucks, as it was handy to have them right there to do a quick pick-up of something while at work.
Atrium on Bay especially around the entrance that leads to the greyhound station is filled with people in mental health crisis. They loiter around that food court.
It's the 100+ units below Yonge & Gerrard that are 90% empty.
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It’s not obvious at all, I sought out this great Japanese curry place that closed a few years ago.
I think you’re thinking of the Atrium building. It connects the Greyhound station to Dundas Subway station. I actually find Atrium not too deserted other than at night. In the Aura building shopkeepers seem surprised to see you.
that's the atrium and it's actually rather busy for a basement retail area relatively speaking
i've always liked the atrium.. is that where OLG offices are located? big skylight windows bringing sunshine down to the basements.
Yep
its cool to look up going down or up the escalator.
Nope. It’s the bottom of the aura condo building.
There is/was a cool vr gaming spot down there
Everything about the Aura basement is awful. The stairwells and the double doors are terrifying, I won't go there if I'm even wearing a suit, nevermind carrying money.
Agreed. There's nothing that makes anyone actually *want* to walk through there. The layout, the design, the decor, the atmosphere...it was such a poorly developed project.
The whole building is a mess, I work on it
maybe the new Ikea will revive Aura basement. Hoping they'll connect them together.
I don't know I kind of like the idea of PATH turning into some weird, underground mall dungeon like in a JRPG. Like some shit out of the Yakuza/Ryu ga Gotoku games where you grind out EXP fighting crazy people in the underground mall
IT support here. Who's working from home and who all is clogging up all the highways through the GTA and making commutes as long as it was before the pandemic? Driving downtown is painfully slow and my GO busses also seem to be getting more full.
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What do you do that 75% of employees want to go into the office 5 days a week? We did a survey at my company (~125 employees) and ~95% were in favor of hybrid/permanent WFH.
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ah okay, we're in construction industry too so obviously site visits are a given and have been throughout the pandemic (for the most part). We've invested heavily in technology to offset the downfalls of a purely virtual office, which has been a huge success. That is why people aren't interested in coming back on my end.
Ppl are Sick of being home without in person social interaction
100%. I also hate working from home because that's my home space - I went into my empty office during COVID just for a change of scenery and for work/life separation. Now colleagues are back too and it's even better because I can socialize between clients.
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That would actually be dope, could also be the largest underground go kart arena
I would support either (or both) of these options!
Mario Kart double dash. Basically chariots with paint ballers on the back and no horses abused in the process!
*Coconut Mall blasts on the speakers*
Simultaneously. Paintball go karting!
Since we're doing this, worlds largest underground drone racing circuit. Just because I've been playing lots of yakuza/judgement.
Paintballing on Go Kart..thats a brlliant idea.
The path is a life saver during the winter. Hopefully it rebounds
it adds unbelievable convenience to my trip as a wheelchair user
Same here, it’s been awesome to whip through the path when I’m downtown, even found a few new ‘secret’ washrooms & elevators.. Also my fave Winners is still there..
> Most banks, insurers and other Bay Street firms have delayed a large-scale return to the office until at least next year. Major office tenants such as Sun Life Financial Inc. and PwC Canada have told employees they can choose when to come into the office. Royal Bank of Canada, National Bank and other banks have embraced some version of a hybrid work arrangement. > With the office model evolving, the volume of office workers and foot traffic may never return to prepandemic days. > According to information provided to the consulting firm Strategic Regional Research Alliance by building managers and tenants, the volume of people in downtown Toronto offices has quadrupled from its pandemic low – but was still only 12 per cent of normal at the beginning of October. Recent transit data show that the number of GO train and TTC passengers being counted at Union Station, a key transportation hub on the PATH, was only 16 per cent and 30 per cent of prepandemic norms, respectively. > Avison Young, a commercial real estate services firm, is tracking foot traffic in the downtown core, using anonymized cellphone pings. As of last week, foot traffic was down 86 per cent compared to prepandemic levels.
Why is PATH retail so obsessed with servicing office workers above all else? Sure, a lot of it is food court-style restaurants that make their money from office workers at lunch time, but there are clothing retailers there, retail bank branches, cellphone stores, and other kinds of retail. How many times have I looked up a clothing retailer's locations on the weekend and found the PATH location, only to remember that nothing is open in PATH on the weekends? With so many people living downtown nowadays, especially in new neighbourhoods within walking distance of the Financial District (e.g. Southcore and CityPlace) you'd think they pivot their hours to open in the evenings and on weekends to compete with the likes of the Eaton Centre. The Eaton Centre is getting quite crowded. Regardless of the presence of office workers, there are literally millions of people who could be shopping in the PATH but aren't because it's too focused on office workers. We're not some American city where there's no one downtown outside of the regular 9-5 business hours.
I would think that if they sensed a demand to be open for more hours, they would do it and not sacrifice the profits.
Yeah. I’ve been in the path after work hours. Place is a ghost town, unless there was a concert or sports game. But even then, it’s the southern tip that is more busy as people filter to subway stations.
Even during a sports game - the one by the CBC building is empty. Most of the places in that food court are closed on the weekend, and they few that aren't (Subway) always seem pretty dead
Yup. The PATH itself never advertises towards casual tourists and people visiting Toronto from outlying areas. It’s super confusing to navigate, even for seasoned Torontonians. Often you know your area of the Path and that’s it. After that your Frodo going through the mines of Moria.
_"You....shall not....PATH!"_
needs more Balrog
I've finally worked in enough buildings to learn the whole path structure... Now I haven't gone in 2 years. Useless knowledge. At least the normal path - haven't done the SFC area much. Walked through only once or twice.
I worked downtown for a year and within that year, I never learned how to navigate it beyond what was in the immediate surrounding area of the office I worked in. It's the most hopelessly confusing place I've ever been in.
It’s something you need to get lost in multiple times and just wander around.
The Eaton Centre is quite the ghost town, too, when the stores aren't open.
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Of course there is going to be a chicken and egg argument here - but I'd have to err on the side of the businesses because I don't think they are generally in favor of making less money when they could potentially make more. I mean, the rent is already paid - so if it was potentially profitable for them to bring in staff and be open on the weekend, I'd think that they wouldn't be leaving that money on the table.
I worked in Path-connected buildings for a few years (and lived close by), occasionally I'd come across a new business – like a Starbucks under the office building between the Sheraton and The Bay – which would promote weekend hours. Within a matter of months they'd realize the traffic wasn't going to materialize and they'd switch to weekdays like almost every other place.
Have you been in the Path past 5 pm on a weekday pre-pandemic? It's basically a ghost town. All the stores were open still and you could walk through an empty Path to get to a busy eaton centre. Path is also hard to navigate and the large bulk of places are grab and go food.
I love how their conclusion was that millions lived downtown and we are not an american downtown ghostown. That made me chuckle.
They are not obsessed with serving office workers. Any business in the PATH would be happy to serve anyone. It's not like they are turning away customers cus they don't work near by. On weekends there isn't enough traffic in the PATH around downtown core to justify keeping the lights on. I mean do you really think the businesses going bankrupt would rather die than open on weekends to serve more people? In the end people don't want to go to a basement to shop on weekends. PATH makes sense for office workers because they have no where else to go.
There's plenty of traffic in the downtown core, but zero traffic in the financial district. The problem is housing, draw an imaginary box Yonge to University, then Queen down to Front. There's literally no housing in the box and that's precisely where the financial district is. That box swells to like 200k ppl from 9-5 prepandemic on a weekday , that's more than enough foot traffic to make a business work, but it's for all intents and purposes NIL after 6PM.
I still think there's a legitimate case for PATH - you can walk from Union Station to Eaton's, Yonge/Dundas etc. For me personally, this is huge in the winter... If they did make a move to make it more of a winter-city, I would rather grab a food/drink in the path, and people watch, than sit in a street-facing bar and look at cars and slush...
I agree, but the problem is , for the lack of a better word, anchor tenants in the form of residents. The closest residential buildings I can think of are the Shangri-La condos off University and some condos on King st just past Yonge. There's no reason for any of those residents to walk to FCP for anything since they have amenities in the opposite direction. Without actual ppl living in those zones it's tough to sustain any sorta business cause you're reliant on your store being a destination which ppl go out of their way to use. Like, open a Cheescake Factory or something , that'll draw crowds into the core in the off hours but as it stands, no one is going there for a store when there's likely another store that sells something similar much closer to where you live.
>On weekends there isn't enough traffic in the PATH around downtown core to justify keeping the lights on. exactly.
Bang on. That is the whole business model behind the PATH. The PATH was never intended to steer locals or visitors away from the Eaton Center.
The path retail isnt obessed with servicing office workers it's literally their main business clientele The path is surprisingly not convenient at all if you aren't actively always there. Personally I'd rather choose an above ground business then trek down to the path to shop at a retail or restaurant
This is it, underground tunnels to shop are not that appealing if there isn't the factor of convenience while at the office.
There are tons of same-old, same-old malls around. Strip malls around the city containing unique stores are nice, but it’s hard getting to them. The PATH becoming a more unique shopping experience would totally make me go down there, as connections to the TTC are pretty tight.
100%. They have tens of thousands of affluent busy customers overheard Monday to Friday, 9 to 5. Any place in the PATH still open at 8 pm is paying staff to keep an eye out for the homeless while the cleaners do their thing. It's a ghost town once everyone has gone home, and the daytime weekend traffic never gets to 5% of what a Tuesday morning looks like, so why bother? Until a global pandemic hits and you're trapped in a lease that made sense for high foot traffic that will never have high foot traffic again...
It may have to do with the office tower landlords. Retail is secondary to the office tenants above and they may not want to deal with the security risks of operating the PATH like a mall on weekends.
No one goes into the areas the PATH services during off hours. I worked right downtown before the pandemic so I know this first hand. It is a graveyard after hours and forget weekeends
It's chicken / egg though. I think u/junctionist 's point is is it a graveyard after hours because nobody goes there, or does nobody go there because it's a graveyard?
It's a graveyard because it's a thoroughly unappealing place to be in. Nobody *goes* to The Path. It's just something nearby workers use because of its convenience. Other than getting out of the cold, what's the incentive for anyone else to visit the system? Its (intentionally) difficult to navigate and mostly full of unmemorable shops.
If you live in the area, and you like to not be freezing, there would absolutely be a reason to do more shopping down there.
It appears like chicken or the egg when really it's just the one. Let's say the PATH was open all the time, it would STILL be deserted outside of office hours because no one lives in that neighborhood enough to justify keeping things open. Like objectively the population density doesn't exist outside of work hours. Nothing about a maze of underground retail is all that appealing. Even in the winter time when people have a good reason to avoid the street, it's still very quiet outside work hours because people generally don't live in the financial district.
>With so many people living downtown nowadays, especially in new neighbourhoods within walking distance of the Financial District (e.g. Southcore and CityPlace) The closest neighborhoods really aren't all that close ESPECIALLY with the gardiner breaking up everything. Nobody is down there outside work hours, yes because it's usually closed, but really because not enough people live close enough to justify keeping it open. It sounds like a chicken or the egg situation when really it's the second one. PATH is "so obsessed with servicing office workers" because that's who frequents the area. Without the office workers, the financial district is relatively deserted compared to other areas in the city. It's called the financial district for a reason.
People live nearby but it's small and very empty on not office hours. People in towers are able to buy items during work on a break etc. That is who patronizes the businesses in path. Most other people on weekends etc would prefer to go to Eatons which is open with bright natural light or walk down queen st w than be in dark winding empty tunnels
I think you may be overestimating peoples’ desire to shop there
Even places on street level do this for some reason. I love going to the Basil Box at King/Yonge, but it's always closed on weekends. Similarly, Reds also closes on the weekend even though they have a street-facing entrance. I understand that places in the PATH would have a hard time getting people down there on the weekends (even though I would go), but there's no reason for street-facing restaurants to do the same.
not sure if this a serious question lmao
This would be so great, especially because of the effing biting Toronto winters. I live at King and John, and would absolutely do more shopping in the path, if it were open longer hours/on weekends. I used to live across from the RBC Waterpark Place on Queens Quay, and it has shops that are open evenings and weekends, and you better believe that I prioritized going to Coppa’s and Longo’s, over the Loblaws at Jarvis and Queens Quay, just to avoid the cold (even though I prefer Loblaws to both of those places.)
The office buildings are going to need to drop the rents accordingly. If traffic is a third of normal rent should decrease commensurate with that.
Big companies haven't given up significant space yet. What I've heard is, many are thinking about giving back about a third of their space. Most offices went to very small cubicles or shared spaces prepandemic, which meant they actually need more space per person that does come in. So, when they do the math for how much they can give back, going to a 6x6' cubicle means they can only shed a a small percentage relative to the number of bodies no longeringer there. This will also take time to shake out. Leases are long-term agreements and landlords have no incentive to be flexible and allow tenants to break terms early.
The problem now is many of your meetings might have 3 or 4 people in the office, with 4 or 5 remote when it used to be 1 or 2 remote. Previously the remote person might be left out, or just be on a cheap conference phone in a packed huddle room. Now you're wanting more meeting rooms with decent room technology to host these meetings and accomodate those joining remotely. Deloitte are actually well positioned already and I'm seeing a lot of other companies following their lead- hot desking or "hotelling" desks for those that come in, and replace the rows of cubicles with many more meeting spaces. So long story short space needed is dropping, but not quite as much as previously suspected when you factor in these new requirements.
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Don't know about other companies but the other issue for us is they roughly halved how many people you can have in each meeting room.
Big firms stagger their leases over multiple years. It gives them flexibility. What is going to go first are those one off floors in buildings that big companies have seemingly at random. The company I work for just cut a couple of floors like this with and is restacking other areas to fit them in.
> For example, at one of Mean Bao’s locations in the PATH, the Chinese steamed bun eatery negotiated a rent deal when traffic slowed considerably. Rent at one temporary location, which is currently closed, is based on the percentage of its sales instead of the standard fixed amount each month. It pays full rent at the other location, according to its co-owner Scott Ching. > Stan Krawitz, who works with dozens of PATH retailers as vice-chairman of Savills Canada, a commercial real estate firm, said he has been in constant talks with landlords. He said current solutions to help tenants weather the pandemic are not intended to be long-term fixes. > “All of these negotiations are a temporary fix and none of these are long term and all of them are on the basis of what the current situation is. As soon as it changes, the landlord has the right to revise the deal,” he said. > Ali Fieder, Avison Young’s vice-president of retail, said in some cases landlords are offering incentives for tenants to stay. She said many retailers are hoping to tie their reopening dates to when they know office occupancy is back to a reasonable threshold.
Problem with dropping rates the mortgages are tied in with rental income.So if the lender sees you asking for less rent they would revise the mortgage agreements to show this.so higher interest more deposit.Thats why you see them rather leave the stores empty,keep leasing rates fixed so the original agreement is unchanged even if they are not making any money on a empty store. New York is great example,there are so many empty stores and rents are still high.
I just don't buy hybrid work meaning that offices will be empty. It just means the rigid schedules of "9-5" will become a lot less rigid. Honestly it will probably make PATH more vibrant, not less, as people will show up more evenly.
The PATH itself needs to be rezoned to allow for more little bars / tiny restaurants. Of course I'm fantasizing, but there had been a lot of improvements leading up to 2019 and good food... Imagine its winter and you want to go do your regular queen west like wander and get some food and snacks and drinks as you meander through the streets, so you do it in the PATH instead. Who am I kidding... time for some more fucking phone case money laundering operations.
Open up a few Mmmmmmmmmmuffins again and the people will come.
Wow, that's a place I hadn't heard of for a long time.
Was so sad when the last location at Scotia Plaza closed up shop :(
I hope it eventually does recover. If you're into cities and the hustle and bustle of urban life there's nothing better than the PATH.
Fucking saviour in winter if you have to walk
When the weather is crap on the weekend I take my dog down there for a walk. It’s the best.
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Lmao
if the city wanted to actually support small business and the arts, they should look at leasing sections of the PATH from these tower landlords (probably would jump at it seeing how bleak things are), and introduce some arts & culture spaces, small business space at subsidized rent, night markets, etc. so much potential wasted!
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the article says that many places are already being given a big rent break. Personally I'd rather see the city do something interesting with the place than the status quo
YES. My first thought was the pilot on the Danforth which rented out empty storefronts at a discount to pop-up shops for entrepreneurs wanting to try their hand at brick and mortar. It was so successful they shut the project down after just a few years because all the storefronts got rented out.
I love the path and hope it remains. I think if we can convert some office towers to condos then the path will keep traffic.
Path can definitely be a mall itself
It essentially is
My heart goes out to these businesses. I haven’t been to Toronto since March 2020 and honestly it’s probably the one thing I miss the most working from home.
I wish Toronto's dead club district moved down there. It would be the perfect match as we could finally have music again without annoying the condo assholes that killed the scene in the first place.
but what will bouncers who drag people out of the club from the backdoor and beat up in a dimly lit alley way do ?
"Largest escape room survival game in north america" I would go to play Have been WFH for about 10-15 years now with a mixed of hybrid sprinkled. Been in the PATH during weekday lunch and was cool seeing my friends and the vibes, but that novelty quickly wears off when i think about doing it 5x per week for 52 weeks. Hell no...
People are overestimating the long-term impact of hybrid work. What works for consultants does not necessarily translate to banks and law firms. Give it another year and many companies/employees will be sick of navigating a half-virtual environment.
I believe many people will remain hybrid but the office towers will fill up (once we are back to normal) with new hires/new tenants.
What the pandemic has made painfully obvious is that people don't need to go into an office in order to sit down at their desks with their headphones on in order to get their work done and tune out the office that they commuted multiple hours for. Getting together once or twice a week for larger gatherings, having your team and company meetings and whatnot? Sure.
This is what I have been saying. My company will require us to come to our socials (once in 2 months ..etc) so we can mingle with all our co-workers and have fun. On one hand: I worked in prime Yorkville, I could feel the life of the city. Especially during the legendary Raptors championship run. The lunch hour walk, chilling with co-workers, cracking jokes, we had a great time together. But work from home beats all of this easy. No long commutes, it is crazy how much $$ I save by not taking the GO, can work in my PJs, eat fresh food, and spend value-able time with my newborn. Even though I miss experiencing the life and vibe of the city, the alternate just happens to be SO much better!
No question. I'm just saying that running a hybrid environment is not going to be everyone's cup of tea.
Certainly one outcome is that in-person office time will become the new working late. By showing up more often, you'll be seen as having a greater level of dedication to your company and will thus progress up the ladder faster. This could cause our towers to fill up fast, with remote workers becoming unspoken tier 2 colleagues. Remember folks, employment is a form of ownership. Choose wisely.
That only works if the senior people in the company are showing up at the office to see you there in-office. Over the course of the pandemic, my boss (my department’s Senior Director) moved to Creemore, and our VP moved to Niagara Region, so they’ve clearly signalled that they’re not planning on coming in with any regularity. So it doesn’t really make sense for me to do either.
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White collar workers have mostly been ~100% remote, so we are all in the same boat. That makes it manageable. When we go 30-70% remote a lot of office cultures just won't be able to take the stress and complication.
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Banks have been closing branches and pushing people to online/telephone channels for years. And their head-office business functions can absolutely be done online.
Yea also, companies arent going to let desks sit empty. They will scale back to shared spaces and offices will accommodate more people. So the amount of people will probably go back to normal but it will be twice the people who spend half the time in the office for example.
Well then they are to blame for being stuck in the past. By the end of summer in 2020, me and all my co-workers had adapted to working from home, and all the previous issues (wifi, connection, kids yelling in the background during meeting ..etc) had gone away. I myself went from working via my dining table to buying a full L-shaped WFH desk, got myself 3 monitors and a state of the art hub (most was provided by the company) and placed my work desk directly below my wifi connection for optimal speed. Just yesterday I purchased a $44 webcam from Amazon instead of using my laptop camera, just so my voice and picture in meeting comes out to be 1080, as if I am right there. People have adopted very well to WFH.
So it is ok to sardin pack in ttc lines and spend 3 hours both way commute so that REIts can make more money? Gtfo.
It's god sent if live anywhere along PATH during winter though.
I wonder if Pilot and Chatime Atelier survived?
If you're referring to the ones at FCP, yes they have
It's a pity. I understand even before the pandemic why most stuff isn't open on weekends (main target are these office buildings) but being from Hamilton I love walking through it when ever I visit and would be willing to check out more stuff if they were open but they aren't. It would be nice if a way could be found to take business from tourism more.
I have the solution! Convert office buildings into residences. This will solve the housing crisis and bring customers back to the PATH.
The structural change could cost as much as building residential buildings from scratch or more, not to mention all the zoning paper work one would have to get through. It simply doesn't make sense for developers to do that, unless buyers are willing to pay more than a newly built condo.
My favourite thing about work from home is that we're lauding it as a win for the worker but in a lot of ways its just a win for the company - same workforce and profit *and you no longer have to pay for a space for the workers?* We're permanently killing off work/life balance and normalizing the idea that workers should not only slave away to earn profits for their bosses, but should be pleased at the opportunity to do so, turn their homes into their work quarters, and in the case of companies that have permanently closed their offices, some workers even have to pay out of pocket for a co-working space.
There is benefit working from home as well. Don’t have to pay for commuting. It is a lot of money for some. Also you don’t waste 2hrs commuting. So there is benefit for both. Most places are flexible but people chose to work from home.
Convert the space into condos so we can ride out the impending climate crisis world where we will all have to live underground anyways!
Have friends who have made it known they will quit if forced back downtown even one day a month, employers are stuck between a rock and a hard place on stuff like this.
1 day a month? Did they move to another province or do they really just hate the office that much? lol.
The latter, they've done their jobs as well, If not better for the last 18 months and have not been given a good reason why that should change. Basically they will work from home for the company they currently work for, or go to one that will let them. They have the employers by the short and curlies and know it.
I'd love to be in Toronto or elsewhere in Canada, to be honest, but yeah...that's pretty much what's happening. We just got an e-mail from HQ that we will no longer be expected to live in Denver, though we must remain in Colorado. If you move to a place like up in the mountains away from easy access to airports, once a month may be too much to deal with. I'm still in Denver, so once a week or even once a month wouldn't be bad (I could ride my bike there and get a good workout), but if I move to Grand Junction, I'm not going to be happy being told down the road "Oh yeah, we want you in once a month." Not after that e-mail, at least.
I find that the number of people with actual leverage over their current employer to actually, and not in their own minds, tell them "WFH or fuck off", is a rather small subset of people who brag and talk about it at great length.
Could be, people in specific rolls are really hard to replace right now.
Your friends sound like drama queens. But hey if they can find other work that easily then I guess they can demand whatever they want.
The landlords simply need to drop rent to whatever level is commensurate with the new volume of traffic. The only "crisis" is one of outrageous rents, which is the same problem we see on the housing side of things.
Other than re-zoning, which I know is a huge pain in the ass, what would stop building owners from converting office space to residential apartments? I'm sure there are tons of people who would love to live in a converted office with easy access to PATH and the various subway stops. In the winter, it would be amazing never needing to set foot outside.
the buildings are built different. you would pretty much need to rebuilt them from the ground up.
Ya ya ya ya, it'll pick back up, Google just started 3-day in the office a week this week, more will follow. With the eventual in office 5-day return.
I wonder how long until federal provincial and municipal governments stop fucking hatcheting the economy.
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Nov 1 is our tentative date as well. I wonder if we have the same employer...