Quarantine (Life and Culture)

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    British Tourists Return to Portugal, Unleashed but (Mostly) Masked

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    Sorely in need of sun and a change of scene, British travelers returned to the newly “green-listed” country and were met by relief, exasperation — and hardly anyone.After enduring a winter of strict lockdown, and a spring that saw a gradual reopening but lousy weather to spend it in, the first British tourists to Portugal since the country was “green-listed” for quarantine-free travel were elated by the thrill of escape, even if their trips were not quite as carefree as in past summers. “We just wanted to go anywhere that wasn’t London, basically,” said the singer and songwriter Celeste Waite, 27, as she climbed a hilly street in Lisbon’s Alfama district last Saturday with Sonny Hall, 22, a model and poet.“It’s been nice finally getting back to normal,” said Karen Kaur, 35, of Kent, England, after she and Jay Singh, 38, downed shots of ginjinha, a cherry liqueur, from a street vendor in Praça da Figueira, a large square in the city’s center. But British travelers expecting a kind of pre-pandemic travel experience found something different in Lisbon during the first weekend it reopened to them. Though the Portuguese capital still offered its signature food, museums, picturesque vistas and attractions, stringent mask rules and curfews reminded visitors this would not be an unfettered escape. The opening weekend for Britons offered a preview of what a broader return to international travel may look like for others, including vaccinated Americans when they are welcomed to Europe this summer: A mixture of joy, relief, and at times awkward interactions as cultures converge after a year of disparate pandemic experiences. Tourists soak up the sun in Cascais, a coastal resort town near Portugal’s capital of Lisbon. Before the pandemic, Britons were one of the town’s top tourist markets.Daniel Rodrigues for The New York TimesPortugal has long been among Britain’s favorite tourist destinations, with scenic city escapes in Lisbon and Porto, and beachside restaurants and hotels catering to British tourists in the coastal resort town of Cascais and the Algarve, known for its alluring beaches, all within a three-hour flight. More than 2.1 million people visited from Britain in 2019, the most from any country except Spain, according to Turismo de Portugal, the national tourist board.Now, Portugal is one of Britain’s only tourist destinations. Earlier in May, Britain included Portugal on its “green list” of 12 countries and territories that residents could travel to from May 17 without quarantining for up to 10 days upon return. Most other green-listed places are either not accepting tourists or are not major destinations.A tourist passing the Casa de Santa Maria in Cascais. Britain added Portugal to its “green list,” which allowed its residents to travel there without quarantining from May 17.Daniel Rodrigues for The New York TimesPrices for flights to Portugal spiked after the announcement. But flying now means accepting expensive, and, at times, confusing extra steps, highlighting the tentative nature of international travel’s reopening. Tourists need to fill out multiple forms and submit a negative PCR test taken less than 72 hours before the flight. Before returning to Britain, they must take another test within 72 hours of their flight, and prove they have booked a third test to be taken on their second day back in Britain. The tests add up to hundreds of dollars per person, for many people exceeding the cost of the flight. Some tourists on a British Airways flight from London last Saturday said the extra steps were a pain, but they needed to get out of Britain after a difficult winter. From December to late March, the country experienced one of the world’s strictest and longest nationwide lockdowns, with socializing permitted only through walks in the cold with one other person. Pubs and restaurants didn’t open for outdoor dining until mid-April, and overnight travel within the country wasn’t permitted until last week.“No one else is going, so I’ve been rubbing it in with my friends,” said Anna De Pascalis, 23, before boarding a flight to Lisbon with her mother, Julie De Pascalis. “Everyone’s pretty jealous.” After a winter of rising coronavirus cases, Portugal has been down to a few hundred cases and single-digit deaths per day since late March. But there is a disparity in inoculations against Covid-19: About 36 percent of Portuguese people have received at least one dose of a vaccine, compared to about 57 percent of those from the United Kingdom.Tourists enjoying the view from São Jorge Castle, a popular attraction in Lisbon. A mere trickle of tourists have returned to Portugal so far compared to the hordes before the pandemic.Ana Brigida for The New York TimesSilvia Olivença, the owner of the food tour company Oh! My Cod in Lisbon, said being indoors with unmasked tourists while eating does not worry her, though she’s heard concerns from other Portuguese people that the return of foreigners could threaten Portugal’s low case numbers, despite tourists testing negative before they can fly.“You have people thinking about it, of course,” she said. But, she added: “I think people in general are quite happy to see the tourism come back.”One month ago, she would run maybe one tour per week. Now it’s up to 10 per week, with about 70 percent of her bookings from Britain, she said. In addition to British tourists, Portugal has also welcomed back visitors from the European Union. For Sara Guerreiro, who owns a ceramics shop in the Feira da Ladra flea market in the winding Alfama district, last Saturday was more of a tease of normality. Looking outside her shop, she saw maybe 10 percent of the pre-pandemic foot traffic through the twice-weekly market, which sells miscellaneous items to locals alongside artwork and trinkets to tourists.A tourist photographs the famous 28 tram in Lisbon’s historic heart, Baixa.Ana Brigida for The New York TimesBut she said Lisbon could use a better balance in how many tourists it welcomes, because “how it was before was also too much.” Overall, a mere trickle of tourists have returned to Portugal so far compared to the pre-virus hordes. Those who made the trip were able to enjoy the city as few have: without swarms of other tourists to jostle with. At the ornate Praça do Comércio, a historic square typically packed with visitors, just a few dozen lingered. You could easily take a wide-angle photo outside Belém Tower, a popular landmark, at noon on Sunday with no other people in it. The line for custard tarts at nearby Pastéis de Belém, typically an out-the-door affair, passed in a few brief minutes Sunday morning. At Tasco do Chico, renowned for its live fado music, a spot at the bar was available one minute before Saturday night’s first performance began. Belém Tower, one of the most famous monuments in Lisbon, has few tourists still. Ana Brigida for The New York TimesIn one lively scene reminiscent of pre-pandemic freedom, tourists and locals alike converged Saturday night in Bairro Alto, with bars and restaurants packed with revelers until the 10:30 p.m. curfew. Nicci Howson, 65, said she was surrounded by Portuguese people dancing in Cervejaria do Bairro, a restaurant in that neighborhood, the first time she had danced outside her home in a year.“You could see the elation on people’s faces to just let loose,” she said.At 10:30 p.m., when some Portuguese might just be sitting down to dinner in normal times, the bars closed and sent packs of people dancing and singing tightly together in the narrow streets, until they were shooed away by police on motorcycles about five minutes later. The revelers lingered in the nearby Luís de Camões Square until 11:30 p.m., when officers dispersed the group. But during the day, there were no such crowds to contend with.Mark Boulle, 38, from Oxford, England, said he typically tries to avoid crowds while traveling, so the trip was in that respect a dream. When he took a day trip to Sintra, a nearby town with postcard-ready palaces and castles, on Monday, “for the first half of the day I virtually had the whole place to myself,” he said. But he was dismayed by the widespread use of masks outdoors in Lisbon — a sharp departure from behaviors in Britain, where the government has never suggested wearing masks outside and most people do not. It was a source of tension for both visitors and the Portuguese.British tourists in Lisbon did not have competition for a prime view at the ancient São Jorge Castle. Ana Brigida for The New York TimesUsing masks outdoors is mandatory in Portugal, with violators in some locations, including beaches, facing fines. At the Castelo de São Jorge, an 11th century castle with sweeping views of the city, a security guard roamed the grounds outside, instructing the few tourists there to put masks on while standing far away from others. A bookseller at an open-air market in Baixa grumbled that the tourists ought to comply with local attitudes and customs about masks, instead of bringing their own ideas abroad.But Mr. Boulle said he wanted the sun on his face. As he went to buy his ticket at the Jerónimos Monastery, a popular tourist attraction, he recalled, a security guard stopped him before he could buy his ticket, asking him to put a mask on. Mr. Boulle replied that he has asthma, and he couldn’t wear one because he’d have trouble breathing. “That isn’t true, but I just wanted to see,” he said. “In England you can always say that.” No such luck, as the security guard insisted. Frederico Almeida, the general manager of the Albatroz Hotel in the nearby beach town of Cascais, said he and his staff has had to remind visitors from Britain of the requirements.Despite these issues, he’s happy to see British tourists again. They are the top market for the area, he said, and their return has been swift. The 42-room hotel was at about 20 percent occupancy two weeks ago; now it’s up to about 80 percent. “All of a sudden, in the last two weeks, it’s as if we’ve turned back to normality,” he said. “It’s wonderful.”THE WORLD IS REOPENING. LET’S GO, SAFELY. Follow New York Times Travel on Instagram, Twitter and Facebook. And sign up for our Travel Dispatch newsletter: Each week you’ll receive tips on traveling smarter, stories on hot destinations and access to photos from all over the world. More

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    Gap Sees Its Post-Pandemic Future Outside of Malls

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    The retailer’s first-quarter sales jumped 89 percent to $4 billion from a year earlier as its e-commerce continues to grow.Gap has long been among the biggest operators of mall stores in the country. But after the pandemic, it will have a much smaller presence in traditional indoor malls as it closes Gap and Banana Republic locations and bets on the expansion of its Old Navy and Athleta brands. More

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    At Saks, Return to Office Means Mandatory Vaccines, Optional Manicures

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    Marc Metrick, the company’s chief executive, says employees will have more flexibility but for reasons having to do with corporate culture, “the default needs to be our office.”After more than a year of remote work, Marc Metrick, the chief executive of Saks, has a message for the company’s 500 corporate employees in New York: Starting in September, the office will again become the company’s primary workplace. More

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    ‘We’re Suffering’: How Remote Work Is Killing Manhattan’s Storefronts

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    #styln-signup .styln-signup-wrapper { max-width: calc(100% – 40px); width: 600px; margin: 20px auto; padding-bottom: 20px; border-bottom: 1px solid #e2e2e2; } A big shift toward working from home is endangering hundreds of locally owned Manhattan storefronts that have been hanging on, waiting for life to return to the desolate streets of Midtown and the Financial District. The […] More

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    Welcome to the YOLO Economy

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    Something strange is happening to the exhausted, type-A millennial workers of America. After a year spent hunched over their MacBooks, enduring back-to-back Zooms in between sourdough loaves and Peloton rides, they are flipping the carefully arranged chessboards of their lives and deciding to risk it all.Some are abandoning cushy and stable jobs to start a new business, turn a side hustle into a full-time gig or finally work on that screenplay. Others are scoffing at their bosses’ return-to-office mandates and threatening to quit unless they’re allowed to work wherever and whenever they want.They are emboldened by rising vaccination rates and a recovering job market. Their bank accounts, fattened by a year of stay-at-home savings and soaring asset prices, have increased their risk appetites. And while some of them are just changing jobs, others are stepping off the career treadmill altogether.If this movement has a rallying cry, it’s “YOLO” — “you only live once,” an acronym popularized by the rapper Drake a decade ago and deployed by cheerful risk-takers ever since. The term is a meme among stock traders on Reddit, who use it when making irresponsible bets that sometimes pay off anyway. (This year’s GameStop trade was the archetypal YOLO.) More broadly, it has come to characterize the attitude that has captured a certain type of bored office worker in recent months.To be clear: The pandemic is not over, and millions of Americans are still grieving the loss of jobs and loved ones. Not everyone can afford to throw caution to the wind. But for a growing number of people with financial cushions and in-demand skills, the dread and anxiety of the past year are giving way to a new kind of professional fearlessness.I started hearing these stories this year when several acquaintances announced that they were quitting prestigious and high-paying jobs to pursue risky passion projects. Since then, a trickle of LinkedIn updates has turned into a torrent. I tweeted about it, and dozens of stories poured into my inboxes, all variations on the same basic theme: The pandemic changed my priorities, and I realized I didn’t have to live like this.Brett Williams, 33, a lawyer in Orlando, Fla., had his YOLO epiphany during a Zoom mediation in February.“I realized I was sitting at my kitchen counter 10 hours a day feeling miserable,” he said. “I just thought: ‘What do I have to lose? We could all die tomorrow.’”So he quit, leaving behind a partner position and a big-firm salary to take a job at a small firm run by his next-door neighbor, and to spend more time with his wife and dog.“I’m still a lawyer,” he said. “But I haven’t been this excited to go to work in a long time.”Olivia Messer, a former reporter for The Daily Beast, also quit in February, after realizing that a year of covering the pandemic had left her exhausted and traumatized.“I was so drained and depleted that I didn’t feel like I knew how to do my job anymore,” she said. So Ms. Messer, 29, announced her departure and moved from Brooklyn to Sarasota, Fla., near her parents. Since then, she has been doing freelance writing as well as pursuing hobbies like painting and kayaking.She acknowledged that not all people could uproot themselves so easily. But she said the change had been restorative. “I have this renewed creative sense about what my life could look like, and how fulfilling it can be,” she said.If “languishing” is 2021’s dominant emotion, YOLOing may be the year’s defining work force trend. A recent Microsoft survey found that more than 40 percent of workers globally were considering leaving their jobs this year. Blind, an anonymous social network that is popular with tech workers, recently found that 49 percent of its users planned to get a new job this year.“We’ve all had a year to evaluate if the life we’re living is the one we want to be living,” said Christina Wallace, a senior lecturer at Harvard Business School. “Especially for younger people who have been told to work hard, pay off your loans and someday you’ll get to enjoy your life, a lot of them are questioning that equation. What if they want to be happy right now?”Fearful of an exodus, employers are trying to boost morale and prevent burnout. LinkedIn recently gave the majority of its employees a paid week off, while Twitter employees have been given an extra day off per month to recharge under a program called #DayofRest. Credit Suisse gave its junior bankers $20,000 “lifestyle allowances,” while Houlihan Lokey, another Wall Street firm, gave many of its employees all-expenses-paid vacations. Raises and time off may persuade some employees to stay put. But for others, stasis is the problem, and the only solution is radical change.“It feels like we’ve been so locked into careers for the past decade, and this is our opportunity to switch it up,” said Nate Moseley, 29, a buyer at a major clothing retailer.Mr. Moseley recently decided to leave his $130,000-a-year job before June 1 — the date his company is requiring workers to return to the office.He created an Excel spreadsheet called “Late 20s Crisis,” which he filled with potential options for his next move: Take a coding class, start mining Ethereum, join a 2022 political campaign, move to the Caribbean and open a tourism business. He looks at it regularly, he said, adding new pros and cons for each option.“The idea of going right back to the pre-Covid setup sounds so unappealing after this past year,” he said. “If not now, when will I ever do this?”Disillusioned workers with money to spare have always gone soul-searching. And it’s possible that some of these YOLOers will end up back in stable jobs if they spend through their savings, or their new ventures fizzle. But a daredevil spirit seems to be infecting even the kinds of risk-averse overachievers who typically cling to the career ladder.In part, that’s because more people than ever can afford to take a risk these days. Stimulus checks, enhanced unemployment benefits and a stock market boom have given many workers bigger safety nets. Many sectors now face severe labor shortages, meaning that workers in those fields can easily find new jobs if they need them. (Not all of these are high tech; many restaurants and trucking companies, for example, are struggling to fill open jobs.) U.S. job openings rose to a two-year high in February, and economists and business owners expect more turnover in the months ahead, as workers who stayed put during the pandemic start emerging from their bunkers.“Lots of things were on hold during the pandemic,” said Jed Kolko, the chief economist at Indeed.com. “To some extent, we’re seeing a year’s worth of big life changes starting to accelerate now.”In addition to the job-hopping you’d expect during boom times, the pandemic has created many more remote jobs, and expanded the number of companies willing to hire outside of big, coastal cities. That has given workers in remote-friendly industries, such as tech and finance, more leverage to ask for what they want.“Employees have a totally unprecedented ability to negotiate in the next 18 to 48 months,” said Johnathan Nightingale, an author and a co-founder of Raw Signal Group, a management training firm. “If I, as an individual, am dissatisfied with the current state of my employment, I have so many more options than I used to have.”Individual YOLO decisions can be chalked up to many factors: cabin fever, low interest rates, the emergence of new get-rich-quick schemes like NFTs and meme stocks. But many seem related to a deeper, generational disillusionment, and a feeling that the economy is changing in ways that reward the crazy and punish the cautious.Several people in their late 20s and early 30s — mostly those who went to good schools, work in high-prestige industries and would never be classified as “essential workers” — told me that the pandemic had destroyed their faith in the traditional white-collar career path. They had watched their independent-minded peers getting rich by joining start-ups or gambling on cryptocurrencies. Meanwhile, their bosses were drowning them in mundane work, or trying to automate their jobs, and were generally failing to support them during one of the hardest years of their lives.“The past year has been telling for how companies really value their work forces,” said Latesha Byrd, a career coach in Charlotte, N.C. “It has become challenging to continue to work for companies who operate business as usual, without taking into account how our lives have changed overnight.”Ms. Byrd, who primarily coaches women of color in fields like tech, finance and media, said that in addition to suffering from pandemic-related burnout, many minority employees felt disillusioned with their employers’ shallow commitments to racial justice.“Diversity, equity and inclusion are extremely important now,” she said. “Employees want to know, ‘Is this company going to support me?’”Not every burned-out worker will quit, of course. For some, an extended vacation or a more flexible workweek might quell their wanderlust. And some workers might find that returning to an office helps restore balance in their lives.But for many of those who can afford it, adventure is in the air.One executive at a major tech company, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because she was not authorized to talk to the media, said she and her husband had both been discussing quitting their jobs in recent weeks. The pandemic, she said, had taught them that they’d been playing it too safe with their life choices, and missing out on valuable family time.The executive then sent me a quote from the Buddha about impermanence, and the value of realizing that nothing lasts forever. Or, to put it in slightly earthier terms: YOLO. More

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    What Will Happen to All the Empty Office Buildings and Hotels?

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    Commercial real estate has been hit hard by the pandemic, but there are plans to convert some of the now empty spaces into apartment buildings. Dark windows. Quiet lobbies. Hushed halls.Many of New York’s hotels and office buildings have been empty for more than a year now as the pandemic continues to keep tourists and workers out of the city.And some of those properties may never recover. An effort is afoot to take these eerily empty commercial structures and convert them to housing of some kind and perhaps other uses as well, potentially spurring a number of building conversions not seen since the crash of the late-1980s.But in the development world, top-to-bottom makeovers can take years, and a robust recovery could make landlords think twice about reinventions. Space and safety requirements could also complicate some conversions, real estate executives say.Still, with some companies allowing employees to permanently work from home, and officials bracing for tourism to not fully recover for years, there is support across the city for breathing new life into struggling buildings.“Covid has expedited the ultimate repurposings,” said Nathan Berman, the managing principal of Metroloft Management, a developer in the process of buying two large office buildings in Lower Manhattan that have been hammered by the pandemic.These shell-of-their-former-selves buildings, which Mr. Berman declined to name while negotiations continue, would become market-rate rentals. “They are perfect targets,” he said.From corporate high-rises in the financial district to boutique lodgings near Central Park to mid-market accommodations in Midtown, real estate players are redeveloping or canvassing dozens of sites, according to those involved.So far, most of the attention has been trained on Manhattan, home to the city’s largest business and tourism districts, and where the pandemic has dealt the harshest blows. But hotels in Brooklyn, where prices for buildings are generally lower, are also getting a look.The conversions seem to fall into three categories: offices to housing, hotels to housing, and hotels turning into offices, though not for long stays but short-term sessions.“It’s definitely all happening, for sure,” said Eric Anton, an agent with the firm Marcus and Millichap who specializes in selling buildings. Of the seven hotels in New York he currently represents, three will likely become senior housing, one will become market-rate apartments, and the balance will stay hotels.“But a lot of the conversations revolve around whether the conversions can happen efficiently,” Mr. Anton said.An alcove studio at 20 Broad Street, which was an office building until 2018. Conversions of office buildings often result in unusual layouts with long halls and windowless sleeping areas.Katherine Marks for The New York TimesBoardrooms to BedroomsSome buildings, of course, can be converted more easily than others.Decades ago, prewar office buildings were all the rage for reinvention. In the financial district, which became hollowed out after insurance companies and investment banks moved uptown, developers grabbed up limestone and granite former headquarters and sliced them up into apartments.But there aren’t many of those grand old buildings left, at least downtown, forcing developers to consider newer structures, like glassy mid-20th-century office towers, which in some cases have become obsolete as fancier offerings have risen around them.In March, more than 17 percent of Manhattan’s office space was vacant or soon to be, with a slightly higher rate downtown, according to CBRE, the real estate firm. Few of those spaces have been so empty since the early 1990s.Though many landlords are long-term investors who don’t panic in tumultuous times, the ghost-town vibe may be at least causing jitters. Since the pandemic began a year ago, city projections suggest that Manhattan office towers are worth 25 percent less.Mr. Berman, who for years converted mostly prewar properties, like 67 Wall Street, 84 William Street and 20 Exchange Place, has lately gone Modernist himself. The two office buildings he is now in talks to buy went up in the postwar period, he said, adding that they are also of the “Class B” variety, industry-speak for “a bit drab.”“It’s too expensive to upgrade those kinds of buildings, so a change of use is really the optimum path,” said Mr. Berman, adding that they also aren’t usually landmarks, which reduces the number of necessary permits.But how easily can structures where people once pecked at computers and huddled in conference rooms become places to live?John Cetra, a co-founder of the firm CetraRuddy Architecture, on the roof of 20 Broad Street, a 1950s office building he helped convert to luxury housing.Katherine Marks for The New York TimesIt really depends, said the architect John Cetra, a co-founder of the firm CetraRuddy, which has made bedrooms out of boardrooms at several Manhattan addresses.One major factor is the distance between the facade and the elevators, otherwise known as a “lease span.” When it comes to creating housing, the smaller the lease span, the better, according to Mr. Cetra.A span of 30 feet is ideal, said Mr. Cetra, as he recently led a tour of 20 Broad Street, a 1957 former office building next to the New York Stock Exchange that in 2018 swapped its stockbrokers for residents. (Its thick-doored bank vault remains in the basement though, and now serves as a lounge.)At 20 Broad, a CetraRuddy project, the lease span measures 45 feet, which is close to the outer limit of what can work, he explained, adding that anything greater “just becomes too awkward,” because apartments would likely have to have large windowless spaces and other hard-to-adapt spaces.The facade of 20 Broad Street in the financial district, which was once an office building and is now a luxury apartment building. The next wave of conversions is expected to target similar structures.Katherine Marks for The New York TimesBut recently constructed office buildings often have lease spans of 50 feet or more, Mr. Cetra said, suggesting that laying out conventional apartments in them could be difficult.Focusing on the floor plans at 20 Broad, which has 533 rental units across 30 stories, then, can be instructive. Reaching the living room in No. 721, an alcove studio on the seventh floor, for instance, requires navigating a long gangplank-like hall. But what could have been a void between the front door and a couch has been filled creatively — with a closet, a washer and dryer and the alcove, which can fit a bed but has no windows. Also squeezed in, along one wall, in what might be called a half-galley-style, is a kitchen. Mr. Cetra is the first to admit that the quirks, which in No. 721 includes an off-center window, are unavoidable when tackling a commercial conversion. But on the plus side, no two units seem the same. “You’re not doing cookie-cutter apartments,” he said. “You get so much more variety.”The studio, with about 500 square feet, is listed at $3,760 per month. But to help fill the building, which is grappling with a 40 percent Covid-related vacancy rate, its landlord, Metroloft, is dangling four months of free rent, so renters would essentially pay $2,600 a month.The Holiday Inn FiDi, a large hotel in Lower Manhattan, is now in foreclosure after defaulting on its loans. Some developers are pushing to convert struggling hotels like this one to affordable housing.Katherine Marks for The New York TimesNo More Room ServiceIt’s a hard time to be a hotelier. Facing a drought of tourists and business travelers, about 200 of the city’s 700 hotels have closed since Covid hit, and many of those closures are expected to be permanent, especially as debts mount.There are also many soured loans. Since fall, hotels in the New York City area have led the country in terms of delinquencies, according to the analytics firm Trepp, which tracks securitized mortgages. In April, New York hotels accounted for $1.8 billion in unpaid balances, far outpacing second-place Chicago with about $1 billion past due.Even though the construction of new hotel rooms does continue in the city, there have been casualties, both big and small. Hilton Times Square, a 476-room hotel, shuttered last fall, and after months when the owner, Sunstone Hotel Investors, failed to make loan payments, wound up this winter in the hands of a lender with an uncertain fate.Similarly, the Holiday Inn FiDi, a soaring 50-story, 492-room high-rise near the National Sept. 11 Memorial and Museum, is now in foreclosure because of its three troubled loans, according to Trepp. But relatively small properties are in tight spots as well, like the 72-room Hotel Giraffe on Park Avenue South, which has fallen more than three months behind with its mortgage checks.What’s still up and running is often not being run as a typical hotel. Starting a year ago, in an effort to stop the spread of Covid in often cramped shelters, more than 60 city hotels became shelters for 9,500 homeless people, an arrangement that continues at many addresses. The Watson Hotel at 440 West 57th Street in Midtown Manhattan. The two-towered hotel, which has served as a homeless shelter during the pandemic, recently sold to a developer that may convert one tower into market-rate housing.Katherine Marks for The New York TimesBut developers are starting to consider struggling hotels as potential investments. This month, Yellowstone Real Estate Investments plunked down $175 million for the 600-room Watson Hotel in Midtown that in many ways is an emblem of the embattled hospitality sector.Long a Holiday Inn, the West 57th Street property was reinvented as a boutique getaway in 2017 by a new owner, BD Hotels, whose portfolio includes downtown hot spots like the Mercer, the Bowery and the Jane. But then Covid hit, and BD defaulted, despite turning much of the Watson Hotel into a homeless shelter, for which the city reimbursed it.For the 1964 building’s newest chapter, Yellowstone will turn one of the hotel’s two towers into market-rate apartments, according to sources familiar with the deal, while leaving the other tower as a hotel. Isaac Hera, the firm’s chief executive, said in an email that plans were not set yet, but added that “having the flexibility of implementing different uses and different business plans is a very attractive proposition.”City and state officials have pushed for the conversion of hotels into affordable housing, but developers note that building codes could make that difficult.For starters, apartments must be at least 150 square feet, while hotel rooms are allowed to be smaller. And apartments require kitchens, though in some affordable-housing complexes, tenants can share kitchen facilities, said Mark Ginsberg, a principal at Curtis + Ginsberg Architects, which has designed affordable projects.Adding kitchens and enlarging rooms to meet codes could also ultimately reduce the number of beds, a counterproductive move, Mr. Ginsberg said. It could also balloon costs, turning a standard hotel makeover with $3 million in cosmetic changes into a $30 million overhaul.The process seems so daunting that an investor interested in converting a struggling 60-room hotel on the Lower East Side is getting cold feet, said Mr. Ginsberg, who is assessing the site for the investor.Since last spring, Mr. Ginsberg has looked at about a half dozen other hotel sites for similar clients. “With the destruction of the tourism industry, this is the time to act,” he said.Ted Houghton, an affordable-housing developer, says that hotels in industrial zones will likely be conversion targets.Katherine Marks for The New York TimesIt can also be tricky to identify ideal sites, said Ted Houghton, the head of Gateway Housing, an affordable-housing developer that creates what is known as supportive housing, which provides some social services on-site.Hotels in industrial areas seem to be low-hanging fruit, said Mr. Houghton, who began his career in the late 1980s, during another housing crash, by helping create supportive housing in the crumbling Times Square Hotel on West 43rd Street.Many neighbors don’t approve of hotels in industrial zones because they take land away from true manufacturers, he said. About 250 of New York’s 700 hotels are in such zones, though you wouldn’t always know an industrial zone when you see one. The Mercer, in ritzy SoHo, for example, is in one, as is the line of hotels along Wythe Avenue in Williamsburg, Brooklyn — though converting those locations to affordable housing could also stir controversy.“No hotel has a for-sale sign on it, but every hotel could be for sale,” Mr. Houghton said.Streamlining the redesign process so that old hotels can become affordable housing is a priority of State Senator Brian Kavanaugh, a Democrat who represents parts of Brooklyn and the Lower East Side. He is sponsoring a bill that would allow developers to convert hotels into affordable housing without having to get the kinds of building permits required for new residential properties. Also, the law would apply only to hotels in industrial zones within about a block of residential neighborhoods.“You don’t want to be dropping affordable housing into the middle of a desert,” said Mr. Kavanaugh, who added that offices would be much harder to convert. “It would be too expensive, even with subsidies. That would probably happen only with market-rate apartments.”Similarly, a bill from Michael Gianaris, a State Senator from Queens, would give the state power to buy distressed hotels and office buildings, and redevelop them into housing for low-income and homeless tenants, though most Manhattan addresses would be excluded. Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo has also discussed similar goals.The state budget passed this month allocates $100 million to reinvent hotels as affordable housing. Plus, $270 million in the federal American Rescue Plan is designated for the homeless in New York, and those funds could potentially help finance conversions as well. “There is a sense of a real opportunity here,” Mr. Kavanaugh said.20 Broad Street, a converted office building in the financial district that once housed stockbrokers, has transformed a former vault into a lounge.Katherine Marks for The New York TimesComing Full CircleIn a city where renewal takes odd turns — churches have morphed into nightclubs, factories into fashion shops, and post offices into train stations — it should come as no surprise that some buildings can revert to their original purpose years later.That’s what’s happening at 960 Sixth Avenue, a 16-story limestone edifice at West 35th Street that began life as an office building, had a brief turn as a hotel, and is now set to welcome workers again in May.Opening in 1930, the building housed fabric textile showrooms and yarn firms for much of the 20th century, before Atlantic Bank of New York took it over for its headquarters. In the late 2000s, an attempt by the Statuto Group, an Italian firm, to recast the building with a mix of creative tenants fell flat because of the Great Recession, and a foreclosure followed. The next owner, the developer Hidrock Properties, then created a 167-key outpost of Courtyard by Marriott. But after eight years in operation, the coronavirus put the hotel out of business last year.A hotel room at a former Courtyard by Marriott has been converted to a co-working space at 960 Sixth Avenue.Katherine Marks for The New York TimesThe latest location of the Yard, a co-working provider, is in a former hotel at 960 Sixth Avenue that was originally an office building.Katherine Marks for The New York TimesNow, the building, which also goes by 8 Herald Square, is transforming itself into a co-working hub from the Yard, a Brooklyn-based company. In a third-floor area that used to welcome tourists, the Yard has removed the reception desk and couches, and replaced them with conference rooms, phone booths and a kitchen. And in hotel rooms above, the Yard has replaced beds with desks — sometimes four to a room — while installing fake plants in shower stalls to make them less hotel-like.Desks rent for about $500 a month, in leases as short as 30 days, said Richard Beyda, a Yard co-founder, who looked at several other shuttered lodgings before landing there.“It felt like a hotel until we did our usual aesthetics,” said Mr. Beyda of his first hotel-to-office job. And while some may look around at all the empty office buildings and grimace, Mr. Beyda sees an ecosystem that’s adapting.Workers who no longer want to punch in for a nine-to-five experience might come around eventually, warming to his firm’s more flexible workplace strategy. “It might be the only silver lining of the pandemic,” he said.And at least one landlord is considering the ultimate repurposing: demolition.Vornado Realty Trust announced plans this month to raze the Hotel Pennsylvania, a 1,700-room building across from Madison Square Garden that opened in 1919, but has been shuttered for more than a year, and replace it with an office tower layered with outdoor gardens.The Hotel Pennsylvania “is decades past its glory and sell-by date,” said Steven Roth, Vornado’s chairman, in a letter to shareholders. But he also suggested that there were fundamental problems with the city’s hospitality industry that predate the pandemic.“The hotel math has deteriorated significantly over the last five years,” Mr. Roth wrote, “a victim of oversupply, relentlessly rising costs and taxes, and an aging physical plant.”For weekly email updates on residential real estate news, sign up here. Follow us on Twitter: @nytrealestate. More

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    in Economy

    NYC Retail Zones: Midtown Has Been Empty, but Other Areas Have Bounced Back

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    Shopping locally has helped foot traffic in some commercial districts across the city return almost to prepandemic levels.All eyes are on Midtown Manhattan as everyone anxiously waits to see if and when office workers and tourists will return to what have been eerily empty streets and whether the businesses that line them will regain customers lost during the pandemic.But other retail corridors across New York are also important barometers of the city’s economy, as well as key to its recovery; a survey of five of them, one in each borough, showed signs of resilience.“On the whole, business districts outside Manhattan are holding up better and some are really thriving,” said Jonathan Bowles, executive director of the Center for an Urban Future.This is not to gloss over the hardship experienced practically everywhere.Corridors outside Midtown that have much in common with it — commuter hubs drawing 9-to-5 workers — have also experienced a dramatic falloff in foot traffic and, therefore, customers for stores and restaurants. The same goes for areas reliant on leisure activities that Covid restrictions shut down.But retail hubs surrounded by residential development have fared better during a time when many people who normally work in offices were holed up at home for extended periods. When they went out, they spent locally. Supermarkets and other essential businesses have been flourishing.Larger economic forces that were in play even before the pandemic — such as the decline in brick-and-mortar retail in the face of online shopping — have continued to exact their toll. Empty storefronts were an issue on many streets before Covid, and the closing of Century 21 and Modell’s Sporting Goods outlets during the pandemic have left gaping holes in some shopping districts.Street vendors have long been part of the scene on Harlem’s 125th Street; some now sell face shields and other pandemic items.Katherine Marks for The New York TimesRetailers that remain have scrambled to adapt to ever-changing pandemic policies. Some have branched into online sales, often with the help of merchant groups, business improvement districts or the NYC Small Business Resource Network, a new public-private partnership that has deployed “small business support specialists” to neighborhoods throughout the city. But stores are also competing with street vendors, which have proliferated during the pandemic, and other problems have emerged, including increases in graffiti and litter.On streets with empty storefronts, asking rents are falling as landlords try to lure new tenants. Some new businesses have opened because they have been able to take advantage of lower rents, more flexible lease terms and the ability to move into a space that had already been kitted out by a departing business.But store openings do not match closings, and the moratorium on commercial evictions that was put in place to protect tenants during the pandemic is set to expire May 1. Many businesses owe back rent because they had no income during the lockdown and reduced earnings since then.“Many of our merchants are still in business because of the eviction moratorium,” said Jennifer Tausig, co-chair of the NYC BID Association, which represents 76 business improvement districts across the city. “We don’t know what will happen when the rent apocalypse hits.”Much is still unknown, and the absence of hard data has left people searching for signs of recovery wherever they can find them.Thomas J. Grech, president and chief executive of the Queens Chamber of Commerce, estimates that 1,000 of the 6,000 restaurants in his borough have closed for good. But he is busy going to ribbon cuttings for new businesses. And he has noticed more small delivery trucks on the streets — “the Boar’s Head trucks, the folks who supply bacon and eggs to diners.” To him, it means “people are buying sandwiches,” he said. “All that stuff has a ripple effect.”The businesses along 125th Street have benefitted from local residents shopping locally.Katherine Marks for The New York TimesManhattan: 125th Street While Midtown has been a ghost town for much of the pandemic, four miles north, 125th Street in Harlem has at times felt like its old bustling self, a clamorous mix of chain stores, mom-and-pop shops and sidewalk vendors.For years, Harlem boosters had made efforts to attract “Class A” office buildings and hotels, with relatively little success. But ironically, during the pandemic, that meant the east-west corridor did not suffer the way areas dependent on 9-to-5 workers and tourists have.Instead, 125th Street had 600,000 residents within walking distance and shopping locally. Those who otherwise would have been heading to offices sheltered in place and, when they ventured out, spent money closer to home.“We had a lot of the essentials — the banks, the telecoms, even the pawn shops,” said Barbara Askins, the president and chief executive of the 125th Street Business Improvement District. “People needed money and that kept the pawn shops busy.”When Covid restrictions shut down the Apollo Theater, 125th Street lost a  major generator of foot traffic.Katherine Marks for The New York TimesAll is far from normal, though. The Apollo Theater, which typically attracts about 220,000 visitors annually, was forced to close, eliminating a big draw.Overall pedestrian activity declined, according to the BID’s counts. After a dramatic falloff during the lockdown of April and May of last year, it rose steadily until, by September, foot traffic was back to February 2020 levels. It dropped again when the city’s gradual reopening was put on hold by the surge in Covid cases last fall and winter.Vacant storefronts are noticeable, and average asking rents have declined six percent since 2019, according to a report from the Real Estate Board of New York. Some landlords are trying to hang onto the tenants they have. Leah Abraham, the founder of Settepani and the owner of a building on 125th Street, has lost a tenant and cut the rent of others, with her eye on better days to come. “Harlem has such a strong cachet,” Ms. Abraham said. “I am sure it will rebound.” One promising sign: Trader Joe’s and Target will be coming to a 17-story mixed-use development on 125th Street at Malcolm X Boulevard that is slated to open in 2023 and will also include some affordable housing, the headquarters for the National Urban League and New York’s first civil rights museum.Some retailers on Fordham Road in the Bronx say sales are nearing pre-pandemic levels.Karsten Moran for The New York TimesThe Bronx: Fordham Road Fordham Road, the biggest shopping district in the Bronx, an open-air bazaar strung along a major east-west transportation corridor, went into the pandemic with a three percent vacancy rate, according to the Fordham Road Business Improvement District. Today, the vacancy rate is still three percent. And asking rents, after declining slightly last year, are back up to prepandemic levels, said Scott Silverstein, a broker with Colliers.All this says something about the staying power of the historic shopping corridor, especially after a year that saw the loss of 40 percent of the borough’s businesses, not to mention the highest Covid death rates in the city and an increase in the unemployment rate to nearly 18 percent.While some businesses have closed during the pandemic, street vendors have proliferated.Karsten Moran for The New York TimesIt also says something about the demographics of the area around Fordham Road. Many people who live nearby are essential workers who continued to commute to work, providing foot traffic to the businesses that occupy 175 storefronts between Jerome and Washington Avenues, the core of the district.Businesses hustled to survive — adding masks and hand sanitizer to their offerings, shifting to online sales and banding together in what Wilma Alonso, executive director of the Fordham Road BID, called a “mini mall” trend. Where a single establishment might previously have occupied a storefront, now there could be multiple businesses in one location. “It looks like one store,” Ms. Alonso said, “but when you go inside there’s an eyebrow place, a jewelry store and a lingerie person.”City Jeans, a Bronx-born chain started in 1993, has a store on Fordham Road — one of many sneaker outlets here. Sales are 80 to 85 percent of prepandemic levels, said Marko Majic, community coordinator for the chain. The City Point shopping center, just off Downtown Brooklyn’s Fulton Mall, draws shoppers from a wide swath of Brooklyn.Stefano Ukmar for The New York TimesBrooklyn: Fulton Mall As in Midtown Manhattan, the office buildings of Downtown Brooklyn have been largely empty during the pandemic. Ditto the courthouses.The absence of commuters has been felt on Fulton Mall, the eight-block stretch of Fulton Street that is closed to cars and normally sees some 77,000 people a day, according to the Downtown Brooklyn Partnership, a local development corporation. In 2020 foot traffic dropped by 48 percent to less than 41,000.But there has been a boom in residential development in the area in recent years, with new towers rising around the mostly low-rise buildings on Fulton Mall. And with people sheltering in place and shopping locally, this has helped balance things out, said Regina Myer, president of the development corporation.City Point, a multilevel indoor shopping mall just off Fulton, has drawn people from a wider swath of Brooklyn to its stores, which include anchor tenants Target and Trader Joe’s. This has benefited Fulton Mall as a whole, said Ms. Myer, pointing to pedestrian counts that reached 91 percent of 2019 levels on the corner of Fulton and Hanover Place in December.But it’s unclear whether Brooklynites flocking to City Point are also shopping in the chain stores and at independents selling cellphones, children’s clothing, sneakers and flashy gold jewelry on Fulton Mall.Of the strip’s 83 storefronts, 11 are closed permanently, although some of the closings predated the pandemic and some inactive sites are being marketed for redevelopment.The historic Gage & Tollner restaurant opens for indoor dining April 15 on a block where some vacant storefronts have been identified for redevelopment.Stefano Ukmar for The New York TimesGage & Tollner, the recently revived Victorian-era restaurant on the strip, has been doing takeout business since February but will open for indoor dining April 15. On a recent visit, its ornate white-painted facade stood out on a block lined with gated storefronts. “We have no neighbors here,” said St. John Frizell, a partner in the restaurant.Gage & Tollner is a landmark and by law must be preserved, but other sites on the block are slated for redevelopment, according to Claire Holmes, a spokeswoman for the Downtown Brooklyn Partnership.Rents on sites not up for redevelopment range from $125 to $250 per square foot, according to brokers, reflecting a slight drop from prepandemic highs. “They were hitting $300 per square foot at one point,” said Peter Ripka, co-founder of Ripco Real Estate.But Mr. Ripka was bullish about what he called “one of the granddaddies of the great borough streets.” “Fulton Mall will come back,” he added.Shoppers have returned to downtown Flushing, but storefront vacancies have increased and rents have fallen.Tom Sibley for The New York TimesQueens: Main Street in FlushingFlushing’s Chinatown is typically teeming, especially on weekends when people who live outside Downtown Flushing make pilgrimages to its dim sum restaurants and Asian specialty stores. The neighborhood is a major shopping district and transportation hub.The district went uncharacteristically quiet in early 2020, long before other parts of the city shut down, when many Chinese business owners here recognized the seriousness of the pandemic, and hostility directed at Asian-americans became more overt. Area residents were among the first to don face masks, shelter at home — and close stores and restaurants.Many of these businesses have not survived the year since then. Nearly half of the barbershops and hair and nail salons, many of which had been situated on side streets, have closed. So have about 35 restaurants, including longtime favorites like Joe’s Shanghai and Good Kitchen. Banks, medical offices and grocery stores, on the other hand, have done well, and a new supermarket has just opened in a space Modell’s previously occupied.There has been a 16 percent increase in consumer interest for shopping, restaurant and food categories in the Main Street corridor since the beginning of the pandemic, according to Yelp, at the same time that the share of consumer interest declined 49 percent for Midtown.These days the street feels as busy as ever, but the vacancy rate has risen to five or six percent from less than one percent, said Dian Song Yu, executive director of the Downtown Flushing Transit Hub BID. “We’ve never seen that before,” he added. Rents have dropped about 15 percent, said Michael Wang, founding partner of Project Queens, a brokerage. But deals are being made.In response to anti-Asian hate crimes, a volunteer patrol has sprung up to help keep local streets safe.Tom Sibley for The New York Times“Pre-Covid, if you had a retail store in the main strip you would have 30 offers,” Mr. Wang said. “Now the demand is much lower, but you still have five people very serious about moving in.”But anti-Asian racism that existed before the pandemic has flared up here, just as it has elsewhere, with people falsely blaming Asian-Americans for spreading the coronavirus. Earlier this year a woman was thrown against a row of newspaper stands and injured outside a bakery. Main Street Patrol, a volunteer group, has sprung up to document, record and, if necessary, intervene in hate crimes, as have other neighborhood watch groups around the city.Empire Outlets, an outdoor shopping mall in St. George, lost 65 to 70 percent of its foot traffic during the pandemic but visitors have recently increased.Erica Price for The New York TimesStaten Island: Bay Street The city’s most suburban-style, car-centric borough doesn’t have the density other parts of the city do, and many of its retailers line small commercial corridors and strip malls.The former have fared better than the latter during the pandemic, said Linda M. Baran, the president and chief executive of the Staten Island Chamber of Commerce. While most of the stores and restaurants along places like New Dorp Lane and Forest Avenue have been holding their own, the strip malls “are where I’m seeing vacancies,” she said. Six percent of the borough’s businesses have closed for good, according to a recent survey by the chamber.Bay Street, on the North Shore, is in its own category. It stretches from the Staten Island Ferry terminal south through three neighborhoods that together make up Downtown Staten Island: St. George, Tompkinsville and Stapleton.Home to mostly mom-and-pops, Bay Street was regarded as a work-in-progress before the pandemic. A 2017 city report counted 232 storefronts, many in poor condition, and put the vacancy rate at 21 percent. The rate had declined somewhat by early 2020, however.St. George, the neighborhood most familiar to day trippers who arrive by ferry, is the area that has seen the greatest falloff in foot traffic. This is where borough hall, courthouses and cultural institutions are clustered, and the businesses here have struggled ever since government workers were sent home, tourists stopped riding the ferry from Manhattan and the St. George Theater closed to visitors.Vacant storefronts have been a longstanding issue on Bay Street.Erica Price for The New York TimesSome restaurants have pivoted to takeout (and Enoteca Maria, famed for its rotating cast of chef grandmas, to selling bottled sauces). Some have opted to shut their doors and wait out the pandemic. But some new food purveyors have opened, including on Bay Street.Empire Outlets, an outdoor shopping mall near the ferry terminal, was still finding its footing before the pandemic. It has lost 65 to 70 percent of its visitors and four retailers, said Joseph Ferrara, a principal at BFC Partners, the mall’s developer. However, foot traffic increased 20 percent between February and March and parking jumped 140 percent.Empire Outlets and other area businesses are banking on the return of municipal workers, now scheduled for June 1. NYC Fast Ferry will start providing service to St. George from Battery Park City and Midtown Manhattan this summer. And on the horizon: the recently announced revival of the New York Wheel project, albeit in a scaled-down form and not until 2025.For weekly email updates on residential real estate news, sign up here. Follow us on Twitter: @nytrealestate. More