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The American office building, where millions of white-collar employees have headed to work for more than a century, is in a state of reckoning, the Wall Street Journal reported. Newly built skyscrapers in central business districts are still filling up and charging top rents, even during the pandemic, but thousands of older buildings across the U.S. face an uncertain future. As more companies elect to make remote work or a hybrid model a permanent part of their corporate culture, they are looking to cut costs on real estate. An outdated office makes the decision to end a lease or sell a building easier. In New York and San Francisco, more than 80% of all office space is more than 30 years old, and Chicago isn’t far behind, according to Phil Ryan, director of U.S. office research at Jones Lang LaSalle Inc. These three cities also have some of the lowest office occupancy rates in the country: Less than 40% of the workforce was back in the office as of early December, according to Kastle Systems, which tracks how many people swipe into buildings.

Imagine 16 deserted Mall of Americas. That’s how much space battered mall owners need to fill heading into 2022, more than 90 million square feet, Bloomberg News reported. It’s no easy task, with dozens of retail chains already cutting back or shutting down, and it won’t get any better if the newest pandemic wave scares off shoppers. So landlords are wooing businesses that have little or nothing to do with shopping. Casinos, amusement parks, medical facilities, storage units, hotels, schools, offices and residences are fair game, as even healthy shopping centers are forced to rethink their game plans for next year and beyond. “In 2030, you’re going to see most malls are going to be not considered a mall anymore,” said Greg Maloney, chief executive for Americas retail at real estate services firm JLL. “They’re going to be considered a mixed-use asset.” They might wind up looking like Mall of America, the biggest one in the U.S. whose layout includes Nickelodeon Universe and an aquarium, or like Chattanooga, Tenn.-based CBL Properties. Last August, this owner of about 100 less-prestigious malls and shopping centers added the 80,000-square-foot Hollywood Casino on an old Sears site at its York Galleria in Pennsylvania. It brought in industry giant Penn National Gaming Inc. with 500 high-tech slots, two dozen table games and a Barstool Sportsbook.

The Arizona Coyotes are all caught up on their bills, so an eviction will not be necessary, the Associated Press reported. The hockey team in the desert paid off its overdue taxes and other bills yesterday, a day after receiving word that the city of Glendale, Ariz., was going to lock the Coyotes out of Gila River Arena if all outstanding debts to the city and the management company for the arena are not paid. Glendale city manager Kevin Phelps sent a letter Wednesday informing the Coyotes they owed $1.3 million in taxes, including $250,000 to the city. Phelps told the Coyotes that the Arizona Department of Revenue had filed a notice of tax lien for unpaid state and city taxes owed by IceArizona, the Coyotes’ ownership company. Phelps also said in his letter that he had instructed ASM Global, which manages Gila River Arena, to not allow the Coyotes in the arena if the bills were not paid by 5 p.m. on Dec. 20. The Coyotes issued a statement late Wednesday saying that the unpaid bills were an unfortunate human error and that they would rectify the situation quickly. They did so on Thursday, avoiding what would have been an awkward turn in the franchise’s long journey to find a permanent home.

Better HoldCo Inc., a mortgage and real estate startup backed by SoftBank Group Corp., is pushing back its public listing through a merger with a blank-check firm, according to people with knowledge of the matter, after amending the deal a day before it terminated 9% of its workforce, Bloomberg News reported. The company will seek new regulatory approval after revising the terms of the merger with Aurora Acquisition Corp., a special purpose acquisition company. That will push back the closing of the transaction, which the companies had previously announced was likely to happen in the fourth quarter. Better offers mortgage, real estate and homeowners’ insurance products online and eliminates origination fees and commissions. On Nov. 30, Better and Aurora announced that the new agreement would include $750 million of bridge financing that Better would receive immediately. An additional $750 million of the equity placement will be replaced by a more structured convertible note. Under its previous terms, a subsidiary of SoftBank had committed to a $1.5 billion private investment in public equity, or Pipe, when the deal is completed. The day after the new terms were announced, Chief Executive Officer Vishal Garg fired 900 employees in the U.S. and India via Zoom.

A state agency approved $700 million in bonds to refinance debt used for One World Trade Center, the tallest building in New York City, located on the site of the towers destroyed on Sept. 11, 2001, Bloomberg News reported. New York Liberty Development Corp., created in 2002 to help rebuild lower Manhattan after the terrorist attacks, plans to issue the bonds this month on behalf of the Port Authority of New York & New Jersey. Proceeds will redeem securities sold in 2011 to help finance the 1,776-foot structure. Siebert Williams Shank & Co. and Goldman Sachs Group Inc. will manage the deal. Separately, the agency approved developer Larry Silverstein’s selection of Goldman to manage a $525 million refinancing for nearby 7 World Trade Center. The building opened in May 2006, the first in the new complex. Silverstein last refinanced the municipal bonds for the 52-story building in 2012. The date of the bond sale wasn’t immediately available. Market prices for trophy office buildings in lower Manhattan have suffered more than those in midtown during the coronavirus pandemic. The valuation of the World Trade Center complex and Goldman’s headquarters at 200 West Street fell by about 23%, compared with a 14% median decline for landmark buildings in midtown for the fiscal year beginning July 1, according to the city’s Department of Finance.

The Treasury Department is redirecting rental-assistance money from some states and localities that haven’t used the bulk of their funds to others facing backlogs of aid requests, according to administration officials, the Wall Street Journal reported. The officials said they couldn’t specify which jurisdictions would lose and gain funds. But they said those with large amounts of unused funds include rural states — like Montana and North Dakota — while local officials in several more populous states — like New York and Texas — are expected to exhaust their rental-assistance money over the coming week and months. Officials said an initial reallocation, set to be unveiled in early December, could exceed $800 million and come at the request of states and localities that acknowledge they have more money than they can spend. Much of that money may be moved within states, rather than from one state to another — for instance, from a state-run program to a city-run program, or vice versa. By the end of the year, the administration expects as much as $20 billion of the $47 billion in rental-assistance funding Congress authorized to be spent. An additional $5 billion to $10 billion will be committed to a specific tenant or landlord but not yet distributed.