They Want You Back at the Office

How to coax corporate America to return to work? First, get rid of the dead plants.

When Alice Fair flaunted north-facing views from the 48th floor of a skyscraper in Lower Manhattan, her audience was quiet. Most were on mute. Ms. Fair, a commercial real estate broker, was seeking subletters at 3 World Trade Center on behalf of Uber, offering up more than 80,000 square feet of office space — a speck of the 103 million square feet now on the Manhattan market. She made it clear there was room to negotiate. This year, Ms. Fair, who works at CBRE and has also represented Pinterest, TikTok and Time Inc., has returned to left-behind offices, disposing of dead plants and dead fish for clients, forwarding their mail and leading prospective subletters on virtual tours via Zoom.