Communication is Key for Office Tenants

Don’t ask Marty Burger, CEO of Silverstein Properties, when he started reopening his New York area buildings after the COVID-19 shutdowns.

Burger will tell you that Silverstein, which develops, owns and operates office and residential projects in New York, never fully closed down. “We operated our buildings right through from the very beginning,” Burger says. “We have almost 500 employees at Silverstein Properties and more than 200 of those employees have been working since day one in our buildings keeping them going, whether they’re engineers or porters or concierge.”

Still, Silverstein’s office tenants sent their workers home. “At the beginning of the COVID pandemic, we wanted to figure out how to make all of our buildings safe and accessible to our tenants,” Burger says.

Silverstein recently finalized its plans to welcome workers back to its office buildings across the city, including those at the World Trade Center campus, for a limited number of employees. The company looked to Asia for tips about how to reopen safely.

“We watched what they did with elevators,” Burger says. “We watched what they did with access to the buildings. We have antimicrobial tape in high-touch areas. We watched what they did with constant cleaning. So we started doing that very early on in March and just kept doing that.”

Silverstein also tested HVAC systems and air quality in its buildings. When tenants came back into their properties, Silverstein wanted to make sure they could move through the buildings in an efficient, socially distanced manner. “Once people are up in their own suite, each tenant is in charge of their own space,” Burger says.

Silverstein met with each of its tenants in a “town hall manner” and told them how the company was approaching reopening. It also gave them some ideas to make their employees feel safe. “We consider both our residential and office tenants to be like family,” Burger says. “We reached out to not just the CEOs, but the facilities folks and anyone else.”

Silverstein also relies on technology to communicate with tenants. Its systems include Dojo, a software that ensures that employees are seated at a safe distance from each other from their desks. The company also relies upon Backtrack, a contact tracing software to monitor their employees’ health as they return to work, and Inspire, an app that reports real-time building updates.

“We don’t really consider ourselves in the office business anymore, but we’re really in the hospitality business,” Burger says. “We really cater to our tenant’s employees more than to just the tenant because the employees have to live in a building every single day.”