Carney: There Won’t Be a Mid-Winter Reopening for New York City Offices

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AP Photo/John Minchillo

Get ready to start hearing that offices in New York City will not fully reopen until at least March 2021.

Many of the big businesses operating out of midtown New York, including investment banks and law firms, told employees this summer that they would not have to return to their offices full time until January. Now it looks like that day will be pushed back until the end of the first quarter of 2021.

New coronavirus cases are up 34 percent around the country compared with two weeks ago but up just 5 percent in New York City. Cases are not rising in Westchester, the county just north of New York City that typically supplies many commuters to the city’s office towers. Similarly, the counties out on Long Island that serve as commuter towns have had stable numbers of cases.

That would be a good sign that the city’s offices could move ahead with reopening plans in January except for two other big sources of commuters: New Jersey and Connecticut.

Cases in New Jersey are up 54 percent from two weeks ago. If it were not a neighbor of New York’s and its economic ties were not so extensive, residents of New Jersey would be ordered to quarantine when coming to New York. In fact, New Jersey now meets the thresholds that have led New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo (D) to issue orders to quarantine for visitors coming from 43 other states.

Connecticut cases are up 34 percent. It also meets the requirement for quarantine but that isn’t practical for the same reasons as New Jersey.

“Neighboring states Connecticut, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania now meet the criteria for the travel advisory — however, given the interconnected nature of the region and mode of transport between us, a quarantine on these states is not practically viable,” New York state’s government said Tuesday.

“There is no practical way to quarantine New York from Pennsylvania, New Jersey, and Connecticut,” Cuomo said. “There are just too many interchanges, interconnections, and people who live in one place and work in the other. It would have a disastrous effect on the economy, and remember while we’re fighting this public health pandemic we’re also fighting to open up the economy. ”

Then Cuomo added that “to the extent travel between the states is not essential, it should be avoided.”

There’s no way to fully reopen offices while New York’s governor is discouraging non-essential travel from New Jersey and Connecticut. If anything, this will likely lead to businesses cutting back on the number of employees coming into the office. Some of the investment banks which have assigned employees to cohorts that report in on alternating weeks are likely to rethink the strategy if cases keep increasing in the neighboring states.

Since it is already nearing the end of October, businesses will have to start announcing their plans for the new year soon. Reopening offices to thousands of workers is not something that can happen without a huge amount of logistical work. Given the surging cases, I expect we’ll soon be getting word that the January opening is being pushed back toward the end of winter.

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