Mayor Touts City Safety After Flynn Flags “Significant” Challenges
BOSTON, SEPT. 25, 2024…..The number of workers returning to Boston offices in person increased 10 percentage points this year, nearly double the national average, Mayor Michelle Wu announced at a business breakfast Wednesday morning.
The return to the office — and the use of unused office space in the wake of a pandemic that accelerated a culture of working from home — was a consistent theme in Wu’s speech, as her tenure as mayor has been marked by recovery from the pandemic.
The mayor’s speech comes as she continues to lobby Beacon Hill to allow her to temporarily restructure city property tax burdens to offset a dip in values for office buildings, as demand for them has lessened, and experts anticipate that residents’ taxes will increase to balance the city’s budget in the face of more exposure to lower commercial values.
“Among major American cities, Boston is leading the way on the return to office. The very nature of our city — and the work we do — is driving the speed of our recovery. As a global hub of innovation, being together in person fuels our creativity,” Wu said during remarks delivered at the Boston Renaissance Hotel. “When you’re in the business of doing what’s never been done before, people want to be there when it happens — for proximity, connection, and collaboration.”
The mayor spoke at the Greater Boston Chamber of Commerce government affairs forum to about 700 guests from the region’s business community, pushing an optimistic narrative of a rebound.
She said she recently attended a presentation by Bryan Koop, senior vice president and regional manager at Boston Properties, a firm that’s a major landlord of commercial properties in the city.
Boston Properties estimates that Boston’s occupancy of Class A office buildings, which represent the newest and highest quality buildings on the market, outperformed national levels in both 2023 and 2024 by as much as 20 percent. In the first quarter of 2024, data showed that occupancy was as high as 96 percent of pre-pandemic levels.
There’s a different story on Mondays and Fridays, however, as most office jobs have shifted to a hybrid model. For Boston’s Class A buildings, they were only 66 percent as full as they were before COVID on Mondays and just 36 percent as full on Fridays.
“Most of all, he flagged what I’ve heard from so many in our business community: this is a major shift in the very nature of our economy that we are still in the process of navigating. To ensure that we emerge in a position of strength, we’ve been focused on protecting the stability and achieving predictability across every metric for families and businesses all over our city,” Wu said.
Wu also announced that as of last month, Boston’s employment rate is at a five-year high.
“We’re seeing promising growth across key sectors with employment up 3 percent from last year in health care, more than 3 percent in real estate, and nearly 5 percent in food and hospitality,” Wu said.
Retail vacancy rates in Boston are substantially lower in Boston than other major cities, she said, comparing the Hub to Chicago, San Francisco and New York. The number of empty retail spaces in Boston was between 2.3 percent and 3 percent in 2024, according to Marcus & Millchap, she said.
Comparatively, Chicago’s vacancy rate was 5 percent — 30 percent within the Chicago Loop; SanFrancisco’s was 7.7 percent, and New York’s was 11 percent at the beginning of 2024.
“Retailers have shown confidence in downtown consumer activity, signaling a promising future. Boston’s retail market continues its strong trajectory, drawing from robust remote work trends and a dearth of new development, keeping the vacancy rate low,” Thomas Shihadeh, vice president and regional manager at Marcus & Millichap, told Forbes of the findings earlier this year.
The report attributes some of those low vacancy rates to high foot traffic in downtown Boston — something that other cities have not yet recovered, since new social and working habits were created during COVID-19 shutdowns.
“Our downtown foot traffic numbers continue to rebound from just 39 percent of pre-pandemic in 2020, to 75 percent in 2020, 82 percent last year, and — as of August — we’re on track to close out even higher this year,” Wu said Wednesday.
Wu also said Boston has defied the odds of the post-pandemic “urban doom loop” and “cycle of disinvestment” when it comes to the “clear deterioration in public safety.”
City Councilor Ed Flynn, a former council president who has previously floated running for mayor, has been in headlines recently for calling parts of downtown Boston unsafe.
Flynn called last month for a pause in permitted events around the Boston Common after a stabbing in the area left a man injured.
He said Boston needs to acknowledge “significant public safety challenges in Downtown Crossing and Boston Common and along Tremont Street.”
“Residents,workers & tourists continue to tell me they no longer feel safe in Downtown Crossing & Boston Common. With several permitted events already scheduled in Boston Common, I’m recommending these events not take place. Many parts of Boston Common are no longer safe! #bospoli,” he posted on X.
The statement prompted debate among public and private Boston residents about whether the area is safe.
“Just recently, I was with my kids on Boston Common for hours after dark enjoying Shakespeare on the Common alongside hundreds of other attendees on the grass. On Tuesday evening, we held the annual Mayor’s Garden Contest awards night right in the area too,” the mayor said in a statement in response to Flynn. “We’ve had parades and festivals, a climate tech showcase on City Hall Plaza, and many other community gatherings.”
During Wednesday’s speech, Wu again touted the city’s safety.
“Across almost every category, violent crime in our city is down; and under our administration, this focused partnership approach has reduced gun violence to the lowest levels on record, year after year,” she said.
