Crain’s New York Business: Real estate industry rejoices over CDC’s easing of social distance and mask restrictions
By Natalie Sachmechi and Eddie Small
May 13, 2021
The city’s real estate community found cause to celebrate on Thursday after the CDC issued new guidelines that those who were fully vaccinated were not required to wear masks or maintain a six-foot social distance indoors.
Until then, masks had been required within all indoor spaces, including restaurants, residential apartment buildings, offices, retail stores and museums. The CDC had also recommended a six-foot social distance to avoid infection of Covid-19. Now, the vaccinated population is excused from wearing them, except while traveling, in a healthcare setting, correctional facility or in homeless shelters. There is no social distance recommendation for working indoors.
The new rules spell good news for the industry, which has been suffering through a lull of office renters, buyers and tourists over the last fourteen months.
“It likely will have a dramatically positive effect on the city, particularly for food and beverage and event spaces both within hotels and freestanding sites,” said Vijay Dandapani, chief executive of the Hotel Association of New York City. “The appearance of near normalcy is a very important signal to prospective tourists.”
And as tourism picks up, the city’s 200 closed hotels will have a reason to reopen, he added.
Office landlords, whose buildings are mostly empty, were also pleased with the announcement.
“It’s great news,” said Durst Organization spokesman Jordan Barowitz. The company is currently at about 11% occupancy for its commercial tenants but expects this number to increase following the new CDC guidelines.
Gov. Andrew Cuomo has yet to update the state’s regulations requiring mask-wearing and social distancing in office buildings. Easing state regulations will be key to helping New York move forward in the wake of the new CDC guidance, according to Barowitz.
“In New York, we have always relied on the facts and the science to guide us throughout the worst of this pandemic and in our successful reopening,” Cuomo said. “We have received the newly revised guidance from the CDC regarding mask wearing and social distancing for those with vaccinations and are reviewing them in consultation with Dr. Zucker and our partners and health experts in surrounding states.”
But what will drive people back to the office is not necessarily that they don’t have to wear a mask but the feeling that they’re safer than they were before, said Savills broker Gabe Marans. “This is mostly psychological,” he said.
“We cannot get to a point where not wearing masks indoors is okay on a mass scale without the CDC’s announcement,” he added. “This announcement might allow a company to say, ‘Okay, you can not wear your mask if you’re in a certain area or in our office and vaccinated.'”
While mask-wearing has allowed people to return to the office feeling safe, things could reach a point where mask-wearing might scare people away from coming to the office because it’s uncomfortable or stirs a degree of anxiety, he said.
Somerset Partners co-founder Keith Rubenstein framed the updated CDC guidance as good news for the office sector but echoed Marans’ point that this guidance alone would likely not be enough to immediately bring workers flooding back to their offices.
“I don’t think masks were the thing that was keeping people away from the office. I think it was a couple of things,” he said. “One is fear in general of getting the virus, and also the fact that people got used to not coming into the office.”
Rubenstein did view the relaxed mask requirements as an important step toward making going into an office feel normal again.
“It’ll take time, but walking around the streets, I’m seeing people everywhere,” he said, “and I think we’re on our way to normality, whatever that normality is.”