Conor Sen, Columnist

IMAX Has Already Solved the Return-to-Office Problem

As technology gave consumers more choices, movie theaters had to evolve to keep customers coming through the door. Employers should take note.

It’s about lifestyle.

Photographer: Jason Henry/Bloomberg

City leaders are trying to figure out what the future looks like for their downtowns full of half-empty office buildings. Here in the middle of 2023, the speed of the return-to-office movement is somewhere between a trickle and a stall .

But office isn't a dead asset class — the question is what kind of office product will thrive in the future, and what to do with the buildings that don't make the cut. I've got a vision of how this will play out, inspired by the shift in the movie theater business over the past few decades.