nyc economy during covid pandemic 2020 hotels restaurants entertainment in nyc suffer during covid pandemic 2020
CoVid NYC Economic Update
NYC Hotels, Restaurants & Entertainment Continue to Feel the CoVid Pain, Also Real Estate & Construction but Less so, and Things Should Gradually Improve in 2021
November 16, 2020 / NYC Neighborhoods / Business & Real Estate NYC / News Analysis & Opinion / Gotham Buzz NYC.
CoVid & Donald Continue Raging
So the CoVid pandemic is raging wildly in the nation, while the Demento in the White House is raging with reckless false claims about the 'rigged election'. The Donald also made these same false claims four years ago, when he won the electoral college contest, but failed to win the popular vote.
This time America's biggest loser lost both the electoral college vote contest and popular vote [by nearly six million], but the fraudster President has found his false claims of a stolen election, is a great way to raise funds from our nation's morons, who somehow still believe his lies. As the saying goes,
"We're all born ignorant. But you have to try really, really hard to remain so."
I consider Donald Trump losing the White House, to be the one silver lining coming out of the CoVid pandemic.
Meanwhile back in NYC, we continue to fare far better than the rest of the nation vis a vis CoVid, perhaps having learned our lessons last Spring. When I look at the CoVid map of the United States, I'm beginning to interpret it as a sort of national I.Q. test. Those places where it's raging most - almost a year since the pandora came out of the box - are states with slow learning media, slow learning government officials and slow learning populations. Otherwise, why would CoVid be raging again, after all that we have learned in the past year?
- CLICK here for the rest of our report on the NYC Economy during the CoVid pandemic in October / November of 2020.
CoVid NYC Economic Update
NYC Hotels, Restaurants & Entertainment Continue to Feel the CoVid Pain, Also Real Estate & Construction but Less so, and Things Should Gradually Improve in 2021
November 16, 2020 / NYC Neighborhoods / Business & Real Estate NYC / News Analysis & Opinion / Gotham Buzz NYC. Continued.
Economic Update - Post Election NYC
So the rest of this is a sort of catch up, post election, of some of the business news, in the same manner as I caught us up on some of the things to do changes in the prior weekend post.
Pfizer and Moderna, both pharmaceutical companies working on CoVid vaccines, announced far higher efficacy rates for their clinical trial test drugs, at 90% and 94% efficacy respectively. This is good news, as sometime over the course of the coming year, we might be able to mostly beat this thing. But like most things, seeing is believing.
Due to the increase in new CoVid cases, NYS has suspended all future jury and grand jury trials, pending better containment of the virus. Those trials already in process will continue. Bench trials and court trials will transition to virtual, but in-person court conferences will continue in person, with CDC Guidelines intact.
The Rockefeller Christmas tree arrived this past weekend from Oneota, NY. The tree stands 75 feet tall, 45 feet wide and weighs 11 tons. It will be lit on Thursday, December 2nd.
NYC normally averages about five million visitors each month and that has dropped to close to zero.
As of October, about 200 of 700 NYC hotels had closed or at least not reopened. The low point of the occupancy rate was about 10%, meaning that nine of ten rooms were open. So room prices fell from an average or median price of $336 to $136 / per room per night. The current NYC hotel occupany rate is estimated to be about 40%.
The Roosevelt Hotel, which opened in 1929, less than a block away from Grand Central Station, closed its doors on October 31, 2020. It is owned by Pakistan International Airlines, which said the CoVid pandemic drop in business made operating the hotel no longer feasible. The hotel has 18 floors and over 1,025 rooms.
Only about 20% - 25% of Chase white collar workforce had returned to their offices as of October. Citibank began inviting 5% of its workers back in July, and it was estimated that about 10% of its workforce had returned as of October. Building realtors now estimate that office space tenants may be able to reduce space needed by 10% to 20% by having staff work from home. According to an October 13, 2020 report by Reuters, a survey by Piper Sandler & Company showed that about 75% of employees believe they'll be working from home more often, compared with 59% saying so in July.
In a September Douglas Elliman report, they noted that the residential vacancy rate in Manhattan is 5.75% compared to a normal of 1.5%, so prices were declining and incentives being offered. In some instances we've seen price drops of 11% or more. It's a buyers' rental market compared to normal, which is very expensive.
The theater industry in NYC has been decimated. The industry generates $14.7 billion in revenue and employs about 97,000 people - most of whom have been unemployed since the pandemic outbreak here in mid March. As mentioned in the prior report, Broadway doesn't expect to reopen until June 2020.
According to NYC Councilmember Van Bramer there are 257,000 people employed in culturally related businesses in NYC. In addition to Broadway theater, the numbers include music, arts, history and other cultural venues. And about 70% of them have been inactive since the pandemic began.
The NY Philharmonic cancelled their entire 2020 - 2021 season in mid October. The cancellation amounts to losing an estimated $20 million in ticket sales.
AMC Theaters, the largest theater chain in the nation, was generating revenue of $3.5 million per week [down 85%] in mid October 2020. They said they can't continue operating on such small revenue beyond the end of the year. Governor Cuomo opened up movie theaters in all parts of NYS except NYC, with restrictions to the lower of 25% capacity / or limited to 50 people [since revised downward to 10?].
NYS construction is expected to be down 8% this year from $60 billion last year to $55 billion this year.
In mid October NYC Public Schools did 1751 CoVid tests and only 6 came back positive. That's a 0.3% positivity rate - well below the NYS and NYC norm.
New jobless claims have been declining, but remain at stubbornly high rates, but below one million.
One or more of the airlines tell us that their air is recycled and scrubbed every six minutes, making flying CoVid free 99.99% effective. United Airline had a $1.8 billion loss in Q3, but had $20 billion in cash on hand - probably from the federal government bailout funds. Do you think Trump's PPP stimulus bill was money intelligently spent?
Retail sales have been up beginning with a strong resurgence in May and June, but then followed by gains between 0.5% - 2% in the third quarter. October retail sales will be reported Tuesday, November 17.
Yelp reports that over 4,000 businesses in NYC have permanently closed their doors and Bloomberg reports that bankruptcies are up 40% to 610 in the third quarter according to a September 29, 2020 CNBC report. A third of restaurants in NYC may not survive the pandemic.
NYC Holiday parties plans are rumored to be down 90% vs year ago. Sad, but true, but not surprising. We're living through troubled times. There may be good news on the way next year.
NYS uses 23 BILLION plastic bags each year. On October 18, 2020 the plastic bag ban went back into effect. So far it seems unevenly enforced - at best.
Only 1 - 3% of a Million Men Marched & Republicans Reclaim House Seat on Staten Island
The Donald oversold his 'Steal the Election' march, calling it a Million Man March. Reports of the actual crowd sized ranged from 5,000 to 10,000 - with one somewhat unreliable outlier claiming 30,000 in attendance. As noted in a prior report, the Donald appears to be trying to use his phony claims of election fraud, to raise money to help him pay off his debts, as he'll no longer have the power of the office of the president for his family to exploit in their business dealings.
On Staten Island Nicole Malliotakis defeated Max Rose for a congressional seat he won two years ago from decades long domination by Republicans. Max Rose's campaign didn't just run against Malliotakis, he also ran against Mayor de Blasio, which seems a questionable campaign strategy.
I hope your week is off to a good start.