Editorial: State government office-space glut requires attention

Michigan’s state government is sitting on a massive real estate empire: 49 million square feet in 5,000 buildings.

And most of the state’s office workers have been in the office less than half-time, and many have been remote employees since the pandemic.

So the state’s Department of Technology, Management and Budget paid $500,000 for a study of its office space usage.

Spoiler: It’s underused.

We’re being flip, but the study by real estate brokerage CBRE tells us what was obvious to anyone walking through downtown Lansing or past Cadillac Place in Detroit: Too much of the time, those offices are ghost towns.

At Cadillac Place, which can house over 3,000 workers, barely 58% of seats are currently assigned to a worker. Grand Tower in Lansing manages an even more impressive feat of emptiness with just 35% of its seats assigned.

The message for Gov. Gretchen Whitmer and her department heads is clear: It’s time to right-size the state’s office footprint. And the state says it’s working on that goal.

In the process, a focus on how and when state employees use that space can pay off for the Michigan taxpayers who foot the bill.

We’re sympathetic to the realities of post-pandemic office work. The state notes that some level of flexible work is the expectation of workers and eliminating it entirely would make recruiting good people more difficult.

But the private sector still typically uses 80% to 90% of its office space. Getting the state up to par with the business world is a logical goal.

Taxpayers shouldn’t be subsidizing an office empire designed for an era of five-days-a-week office attendance. Just like the private sector has been doing, figuring out the right mix is necessary. It’s clear from the numbers that the right mix should include less space.

When only one in four workers shows up four or more days a week, maintaining facilities designed for full-time occupancy becomes an expensive exercise in denial.

To reverse that will require consolidating operations, eliminating redundant facilities, and repurposing or selling buildings that no longer serve their intended function.

We very much believe that for most office work, some level of in-person collaboration is not only advantageous but necessary. It gets better results. And that’s before you account for all of the spinoff effects of that in-person work on downtown areas, businesses and the economy writ large.

That means, for most departments, more – or more regimented – requirements for in-office work. Not only to cut office space, but to promote more effective performance of state departments.

And after all, cops, firefighters and many other government employees don’t get to work from home.

Government often moves slowly, but the state’s office footprint – and the functional efficiencies that come with getting it right – are something in which everyone in the state has a stake.