Safely Repopulating 28.7 Million Square Feet of Manhattan Buildings

CHALLENGE

COVID-19 assaulted New York City in March, causing the state to shutter all non-essential businesses. After three months of office closures and a seismic shift to remote work, New York began reopening. The city’s largest owner of office real estate was faced with a massive challenge as landlord and employer: How to welcome workers back safely to the office environment?

OPPORTUNITY

Seyfarth worked with our client to develop and implement a series of customized initiatives that would allow tenants and their employees to safely repopulate 28.7 million square feet of Manhattan buildings:

• Safe Workforce Planning: A plan to promote safety, cleanliness, and wellness for tenants that describes new policies and procedures, hygiene protocols, building enhancements, and signage key to ensuring a healthy environment for the returning workforce. Seyfarth lawyers also confirmed the legality of the client’s state-of-the-art temperature detection system.
• Return to Work Training: Working with Seyfarth at Work, the firm's dedicated training subsidiary, Seyfarth developed a comprehensive eLearning solution to assist the client and its tenants as they reopened their workplaces. The course contains information regarding COVID-19 and best practices for protecting one's self and others from the virus.
• Tutoring Program: With employees struggling to navigate remote schooling and work obligations, Seyfarth supported the client in its development of an on-site tutoring service for the school-age children of their employees.

RESULTS

Navigating dozens of federal, state, and local directives for returning workers to NY offices, Seyfarth and the client created a best-in-class operating plan allowing for the safe return of more than 3,000 tenants within the client’s huge portfolio.