Empty Office Buildings Are Being Turned Into Vertical Farms

Yesterday, I blogged here about the negative impact high energy costs on vertical farming. Here is more about this fascinating subject! Even the McKinsey Global Institute can not resist it.

What to do with all this office space now that the home office is so convenient?  A challenge for business/management consultancies like McKinsey! Here comes the multiuse office! What a brilliant idea! 😊

The urbanization of agriculture thanks to human ingenuity! From cubicles to cucumbers! 😊 As they say, no army in the world can stop an idea whose time has come (Victor Hugo)!

"... According to data gathered in 10 major cities, office usage rates just crossed 50 percent of pre-pandemic levels in late January, and these numbers seem to be stalling only a few months later. Nearly 20 percent of office space is empty across the United States, and some projections suggest that more than 300 million square feet of U.S. office space could be obsolete by 2030. ...
when designing Area 2’s growing apparatus, Silo. Silo is a multilevel conveyor belt system that moves vertically throughout the day to replicate a plant’s natural circadian rhythm. Since the system moves automatically, Silo’s conveyor belt cuts down on some of the backbreaking work that accompanies traditional vertical farming methods, such as climbing up and down ladders. Also, Silo requires no modifications to the existing building before installation. Area 2 Farms plans on building a model of Silo in Union Station in Washington later this year to showcase its growing technology and advocate for local food systems. ...
In Calgary, Alberta, AgriPlay Ventures transformed part of underutilized office space in Calgary Tower Center into one of Canada’s largest indoor urban farms earlier this year. ...
The farm at Calgary Tower produces tomatoes, strawberries, cucumbers, greens and much more for the local community, with some crops offering 30 harvests a year. Although only one floor of the approximately 262,500-square-foot building is currently being utilized for food production, AgriPlay wants to expand to another two floors in the coming months and years."

"At a glance

Hybrid work is here to stay. As a result, office attendance has stabilized at 30 percent below prepandemic norms.

... residents have left urban cores and shifted their shopping elsewhere. For example, New York City’s urban core lost 5 percent of its population from mid-2020 to mid-2022, and San Francisco’s lost 6 percent. Urban vacancy rates have shot up. Foot traffic near stores in metropolitan areas remains 10 to 20 percent below prepandemic levels. 

Demand for office and retail space ... will remain below prepandemic levels. In a moderate scenario that we modeled, demand for office space is 13 percent lower in 2030 than it was in 2019 for the median city in our study. In a severe scenario, demand falls by 38 percent in the most heavily affected city.

...

Cities and buildings can adapt and thrive by taking hybrid approaches themselves. Priorities might include developing mixed-use neighborhoods, constructing more adaptable buildings, and designing multiuse office and retail space. ..."

Empty Office Buildings Are Being Turned Into Vertical Farms | Innovation| Smithsonian Magazine With office usage hovering near 50 percent of pre-pandemic levels, cities are putting the underutilized space to new use growing food

Empty spaces and hybrid places: The pandemic’s lasting impact on real estate Real estate in the world’s superstar cities has not kept up with shifts in behavior caused by the pandemic. The cities’ vibrancy is at risk, and they will have to adapt.