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New York city officials are facing up to the reality that midtown Manhattan, a party of the city that is made up of office commuters, may never be the same. Offices in midtown are attracting about one third of their pre-pandemic workforces. Midtown is home to about 11% of all office inventory in the US, employing 1.6 million workers, a third of all New York city jobs and contributed two thirds of the city's gross product. Before the pandemic three years ago, an estimated 2.6 million worked in the borough of Manhattan, 70% of whom commuted from other parts of the city or suburbs.

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A survey of 11,000 Japanese companies shows remote work continuing to be supported by about 38% of companies, an almost equal number of 39% support workers going back to the office. In the US major cities downtowns have high vacancies for office space with a strong tendency of some companies to keep practice of remote work or only 2-3 days in office from the pandemic period. About 23% of companies say they are undecided.

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Office buildings are being turned into apartments in large American cities like this one at 55 Broad Street in New York City. Hybrid work has made the huge office space of daily commuters obsolete. Subways and transport is also used at a fraction of its capacity. The remote working trend is sending vacancies soaring in office markets in the US and in the big cities. Businesses using hybrid work are leasing less space and migrating to newer buildings with modern designs, good locations, outdoorsy feeling, and abundant amenities.

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The coronavirus is changing the office that people were used to and changing how many days they spend in the office. Hybrid scheduling is a new term that means workers can combine say 2 days working from home with three days in the office.

This will be an acceptable way for companies to operate. Companies are finding out that it is not necessary for employees to spend all their time 8 to 5 in offices to be productive. In fact studies have shown even in offices the distractions of meetings and other distractions on the phone cuts into productivity, so that some time or days need to be set aside to work without such distractions. 

Internet companies and software companies in particular are finding that it is not necessary to have employees work from offices. Another change is that smaller satellite offices could open up in less expensive locations and the workforce becomes less centralized.

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Landlords and real estate brokers say only 10% to 20% of workers will return to their office when New York offices reopen after 3 months on June 22. Most companies are taking a careful approach and letting employees work from home or opening offices at reduced occupancy. Gradually this will increase from 20%. Yet offices are not expected to have a more normal look till Labor Day with people returning to work, and that too if schools have reopened.

There are concerns about public transit how many people it can accomodate with social distancing guidelines, and if more drivers lead to traffic jams.

Except for traders financial service companies employees are staying away from office. Tech and creative companies are taking their time and letting people work from home.

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George Washington shown in the early parts of the Seven Years War (1756-1763) that drove the French from Quebec and North America. In these early battles Washington fought in the Pennsylvania country near Pittsburgh under the British commanders against the Indians and the French. This taught George Washington many things about a war in America's vast forests, the risks and dangers, the best way to keep on fighting a long war in which the British would eventually fail to prevail. After defeat on 2 nights on frozen ice on a lake fleeing French and Indian forces Washington survives, and grasps the idea of divine providence in the struggle against colonial powers France and then Britain. This prepared Washington for a different strategy in the war against the British, learning from the defeats of the British by Indians in forest conditions with quick offense and quick retreats and no large engagements. The entire war was characterized by this quick offense, strategic retreats, and preserving the American army's strengths, as an approach to conduct the fight. Montgomery tried a direct march on Quebec and failed in the early days of the war of independence against British forces. This also reinforced Washington's strategic approach that the British would only lose in a long drawn out war under certain conditions, to avoid direct engagement with large armies or decisive battles till the right moment. Washington enlisted a young French officer Lafayette as a commander in his army knowing the importance of the French to neutralize the British naval power on the seas. When this stage was reached Washington could quickly move his army north to surprise the British by surrounding their forces under Lord Cornwallis resting at Yorktown, Virginia after being harassed in small engagements by American forces in the South. For that to happen Washington had the logistics feat to accomplish of moving cannon and forces up rivers and forests to the north, something practiced in the Pennsylvania region in the fight against the French and their Indian allies. The early part of the war the engagement with the French and Indians was formative for Washington and is the experience that is covered in the book "Young Washington," now made into a movie. The night spent on the frozen river in Pennsylvania country fleeing the Indians and French and surviving was always for Washington an act of divine protection. It may be also the reason why Washington saw his role not as his own but for a larger purpose, leading to handing over his appointment as commander in chief back to Congress in Annapolis in 1783 after the war had ended and peace treaty was signed. We refer to this as a defining moment in The First Letter from the Editor for Lyrarc.com, reflecting on divine protection and the responsibility that goes with it for the Nation that should never be forgotten. ...

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This WSJ report looks at the complex legal liability issues companies face as they get employees to return to offices. Some of these legal liability issues existed previously in manufacturing plants. New safety laws and regulations to keep employees safe have been enacted at the state and local level that companies have to comply with. 17 states in the U.S. have laws that assume an employee who gets coronavirus was infected in the office and calls for workers compensation. 

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Overdevelopment of the office market in Dallas, Houston, and Austin, cities in Texas, presents a problem in combination with the increase in remote work. The office vacancy rate in Texas is 25% in the third quarter of 2023, according to Moody's Analytics, compared to 12% for New York and 17% for San Francisco. The oversupply of buildings for office space was decades in the making, says WSJ.

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Efforts to defuse the standoff between Immigration enforcement agents and local government in Minneapolis. DJT talks to governor Walz on the phone.

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Tips from executives for designing home offices which inspire, promote creativity, are energizing, and have the technology to get things done. Here Joann Lublin provides examples of two fulltime commuters, a TV producer and a private equity executive who get a lot of work done from home offices, and a executive who uses the home office for creative work. The space uses the right colors, decor and pieces that bring out good memories, are energizing, and recreate the kind of natural environment the person feels most comfortable in.

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For the 100,000 employees of Vodafone the pandemic has lessons for creativity, flexibility and innovating in work habits. In 2 weeks 95% of the employees worked remotely. Now Vodafone experts say that individual projects and tasks make up 60% of work which can be done remotely. Only 40% of tasks require working in a team setting with other people. The 60% done individually can be done in a remote setting making it necessary to to adopt a flexible approach for best results. Here Nick Read, Vodafone CEO, says because of London's unique setting and exceptional access to the talent pool this will always be a good office location as a central office. Yet the new concept is for hubs all over the country so that Vodafone can tap into talent across the nation in diverse parts of the UK. Mr. Read looks at the views of employees and says this period has shown enhanced productivity with remote working. The additional challenge of balancing family and work can create some stress, and Vodafone has taken some steps to tackle this. It provides guidance to employees on how to handle work in a remote setting, limits meetings to 20 minutes with long separation between meetings. Vodafone is now designing offices in European locations based on what it has learned during the pandemic. In the Netherlands it is splitting the office and remote work 50-50 based on Vodafone's new understanding of the value of remote work. The expansion of the work day as employees handle other tasks, has to be handled well with some structure. The German idea of Feierabend, or end of working day, calling for a set time to disconnect the work day and do something else cycling, exercizing, something fun and relaxing to disconnect, is shown in Lyrarc. Other articles on working remotely in Lyrarc show that limiting intense concentration work to 4-5 hours is a good way to be at your best in productive work. This is because an 8 hour work day at the office has many distractions, meetings and interactions. The office work day has much shorter stretches of concentrated work than we think. ...

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Recovery of New York office space as vacancy drops to 15% in Manhattan office buildings from the 8% before the pandemic in 2019's final quarter. The Park Avenue $60 story tower that has head offices of Chase Bank is one of the recovery spots. The return ot office attendance is back up to levels before the pandemic in 2019, slightly higher by 1.3%. A younger workforce is attracted to work in Manhattan with short commutes from the suburbs around it.  The Park Avenue Corridor near the Grand Central Terminal Building is  another one of the areas with easy commute into New York City from suburbs.

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Iran War and rescue of pilot of downed F15-E in mountainous terrain in southern Iran April 4 2026. CSAR or Search and Rescue Missions become a critical part of the war. The pilot was a colonel trained for the mission and spent 24 hours in mountainous terrain which was monitored by US forces, after intelligence located him in a mountain crevice. For this to be possible unlike in the Vietnam War and Korean War other nations are not involved as in the earlier Cold War.  The US under DJT as president has shifted to respecting Russia as a Northern European power that it can talk with (meetings with Putin in Alaska 2025) and China as a trade partner (planned meeting in Beijing in April 2026) that it can talk with unlike with previous administrations of Biden, Obama and Bush where China had afree hand in economic matters and global trade and Russia was shut out of the world economic system by elites who ran the government in the US at that time. Russia seeks reintegration in the world political and economic systems, and China seeks acceptance as an economic power which the US respects, both points in which the US has offered to accept. US has also repeated the line to China that it was not going to do the job of keeping Hormuz open for China and Japan to get 90% of oil imports, and in oding so risk losing its soldier's lives, while China and Japan can quietly watch doing nothing to help free navigation of international waters. Note that the narrowest strip of water of 13 miles separates Oman from Iran so that a part of these waters are on the Omani side and not on the Iranian side making free use of that Omani part under international law possible- in which sense Iranian hostile activity closing the Omani side also is a violation of free navigation. This is not pointed out by Iran or Japan or even Britain who are benefitting from US action and remaining silent or being ambivalent or accusing US of being interventionist even when everyone knows MAGA base rejected Bush in the Republican party and the elites and embraced DJT for great part because they want nothing to do with interventionist adventures in the Middle East for certain. US is getting a bum rap from European allies and from China, India, Japan and the media inside the US and in those countries as if the US seeks oil from the Middle East. It was Britain where a lot of the posturing goes on about non intervention that started this oil based intervention since 1900 in Iran itself, and in artificial states of Iraq, Syria, that it created out of the collapsed Ottoman Empire in World War 1. Sykes and Picot were the US and French diplomats who set that up. US under DJT has accomplished self sufficiency in oil and US has no need for anything from the Middle East, no desire to even get involved, and MAGA well grasps that fact and wants to keep it that way. Only nuclear weapons and ballistic missiles with long range to hit US and EU are reason for US action, which is reason enough for EU, China, Russia to set their own goals so that non proliferation in dangerous areas is prevented. So that the people of China, Russia, India, Europe and the rest of the world can enjoy the fruits of their own labors after a century of severe hardships and struggles which the American people if not their elites respect, and the fruits of peaceful cooperation which the American people extend to the World, and to China, Russia and India. ...

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A sign of how high rise office building prices fell in 2024 in big cities in the US is the price of 135 West 50th Street 23 floor office building in New York City that sold for $332 million in 2006 and now sells for $8.2 million in an unusual online auction.

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Remote work and fewer people commuting to work is leading to large vacant office space in American cities. In San Francisco about 30% of office space is vacant. One building in the financial district 350 California Street is selling for 20% of its pre-pandemic price.

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The old Fifth Avenue NYC building that Lord & Taylor department store opened in 1914 is remodeled by Amazon for offices that will have 2000 employees or a fifth of its New York workforce. Konrad Putzier of the WSJ looks at the problems of renovating old spaces in cities across the US. The cost is a factor as it cost Amazon $978 million. Renovating it means staying within what the old Italian Renaissance based design would allow without too much cost. This means less natural lighting, putting more interior meeting space which does not require windows. Only the new rooftop 2 floors have flexibility to put in modern windows. 

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The White House is expecting the half of the 2.2 million federal government workers who do not work out of their government offices to show up at offices and use them with "enhanced flexibilities." A GAO report shows that 17 out of 24 federal agency headquarters buildings in Washington D.C. had an utilization rate of 25%.

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Useful tips as people go back to the office, from a number of experts in the WSJ. Walking, biking to work or driving to work is safest. Use of public transit requires masks, sanitizer, frequent hand washing afterwards and caution. Surfaces such as elevator buttons, doorknobs and printer or device buttons should be disinfected regularly- use a tissue paper or paper towel to handle them and then use hand sanitizer. Meetings should be done with social distancing of six feet distance, and reduced number of participants. All should wear masks. Taking meetings outside where airflow is more is a good idea. Reduce number of meetings, as the meetings have not been very productive ways to get work done and many workplaces already have too many meetings. Avoid lunch dates outside, even in the open, with colleagues. A better way is to eat on your own and then take a masked or socially distanced walk with a colleague afterwards, say experts. High touch communal items should be replaced in offices such as coffeepots water coolers, and bulk snacks and this should be done by the companies as they prepare the new layout and arrangements.   ...

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A post office in the Azores in the middle of the Atlantic, which is now on a Portuguese stamp.

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Chief Risk Officers join senior management ranks by joining the senior management committee at banks such as Goldman Sachs. The change is part of the effort to make operations safer and simpler and avoid the huge legal settlements banks have faced in 2012-2014.