Page 8 - BusinessWest September 14 2020

concern that the office buildings that dominate the downtown landscape will need to find new tenants or new uses for that space.
“There’s some conflicting data out there — the average size of a typical commercial office lease was going down prior to COVID, and a big reason was the rise of the communal working space,”
he explained. “Well, now, the communal work- ing space isn’t working so well anymore; there are some impacts that are forcing companies to require more space, not less.
“Still, before COVID, the vacancy rate for com-
“It’s like shadow boxing in a lot of ways. With those other disasters, I knew what hit us, and I knew how to jab back; with COVID-19, we don’t know when it’s going to go away, and we don’t know what’s going to happen next.”
mercial real estate was somewhat high,” he went on. “We collectively need to be working with the building owners and businesses to make sure those numbers don’t exacerbate as we come out of COVID. But, clearly, there is concern about the commercial real-estate market.”
For this, the latest installment in BusinessWest’s Community Spotlight series, the focus turns to
the unofficial capital of the region, the current battle against COVID-19 and the many forms it takes, and the outlook for the future, both short- and long-term.
View to the Future
As he walked around the former Court Square Hotel while talking with BusinessWest about his involvement with the project to give the land- mark a new life, Peter A. Picknelly pointed to the windows in the northwest corner of the sixth floor, and noted that this was where a City Hall employ- ee had just told him she wanted to live as he and business partner Andy Yee were leaving a meet- ing with the mayor.
But then he quickly corrected himself.
“No, she was referring to that corner,” he noted, pointing toward the windows on the northeast side, the ones with a better overall view of Court Square and Main Street. “That’s the one she said she wanted.”
Talk about actually living in the still-handsome structure that dominates Court Square is now
Chief Development Officer Tim Sheehan says the city’s first priority has been to assist businesses and help ensure they’re still in business when the pandemic eases.
actually real, whereas for the better part of 30 years it had been nothing but a pipe dream. That’s how long people have been talking about renovat- ing this property, and that’s how challenging this initiative has been.
Indeed, like Union Station, another project that took decades to finally move beyond the talk stage, Court Square’s redevelopment became real because of a public-private partnership with
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8 SEPTEMBER 14, 2020
COMMUNITY SPOTLIGHT
BusinessWest
Staff Photo