“Without question, there is an ongoing trend to migrate from the suburban office buildings, many of which are becoming less and less inviting to corporations because of the new densification modeling that most companies are considering when looking for a new potential office facility,” says Foley. “The old model of four parking spots per thousand and not necessarily great access to the public transportation network makes it very difficult for a lot of corporations to implement an ongoing strategy in these buildings.”

Attracting and retaining the best people in an increasingly competitive employment environment is also a consideration, Foley explains.

“It's getting progressively more difficult to do that in a suburban environment without phenomenal access to the public transportation network,” he says. “It's much more convenient for so many people to utilize public transportation than to deal with the congestion you have along the roads in the nation's most densely populated state, so that is becoming a larger part of the decision-making in the office market these days.”

Indeed, the overall conceptual design of the modern office environment is changing radically from the “cubicle farms” familiar to Baby Boom office workers.

“The office spaces that we're looking at would embrace telecommuting, where companies could share some space and collaborate,” says Avi Benamou, president of Winchester Equities. “The benefits to companies: they don't have to pay as much lease, they can reduce the office space they take, they can give the flexibility to let people be more productive, you don't need as many computers and networking, travel expenses are reduced,” he says. “You are not limited to hiring people who are local; you can hire people in other, cheaper places.”

The modern office environment will continue to reduce the number of private offices and increase the number of meeting rooms and collaboration spaces, Benamou says.

Although there always will be a need for face-to-face networking and collaboration, Benamou says, developers cannot leave existing buildings as they are. “If these office buildings, shopping malls and universities want to survive, they are going to have to make themselves into a destination with other services and benefits that they provide in the building.”

A September research report, “The Receding Metropolitan Perimeter: A New Postsuburban Demographic Normal?” authored by James W. Hughes, dean, and Joseph J. Seneca, professor, both at the Edward J. Bloustein School of Planning and Public Policy at Rutgers University, suggests that Millennials, the children of the Baby Boom generation, find life in the suburbs far less attractive than their parents and grandparents did. Millennials are flocking to the regional core where rental housing is dominant, and they are able to “live, work, play” within a walkable neighborhood environment that supports the amenities they expect, such as coffee shops, small retail, and open work space arrangements.

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“We've had more than half a century of what we originally called the tidal wave of metropolitan expansion, starting after World War II and lasting through the end of the 20th Century,” Hughes explains. Growth was pushed ever outward from the historic center of the metropolitan area.”

“All of a sudden, post-Great Recession, what we've seen is the ebb tide of that tidal wave. Growth is moving in another direction,” says Hughes.

The most intense period of residential suburbanization was 1950 to 1980, Hughes says. The report compared that era to the post-recession period of 2010 to 2013, and found surprising results.

In that early period from 1950 to 1980, the regional core—which broadly included Manhattan, the Bronx, Brooklyn and Essex and Hudson Counties in New Jersey—lost almost one million people. At the same time the suburban ring added five million.

In 2010, for the first time, the metropolitan perimeter experienced losses. In the westernmost part of New Jersey, Hunterdon, Warren and Sussex Counties, which had fast growth from 1970 to 1990, experienced a population decline between 2010 and 2013. Perimeter counties in Pennsylvania, New York and Connecticut also slipped into decline in the period.

“The half-century of unrelenting suburbanization is over,” Hughes says.

The most suburban-centric generation in history, the Baby Boom, led the tidal wave outward. Now all are between 50 and 68 and many are empty nesters, Hughes explains, noting that 10 years ago, Baby Boomer-led households typically had four people in them. Now, the children have grown up, shrinking that household size.

The changing thinking of the Boomers' children hit home, Hughes recalls, when one of his colleagues told him that his children had thanked him for bringing them up in the suburbs, but proudly announced they were going to live in Brooklyn.

“The Baby Boom generation saw urban decay, public mass transportation slipping very badly, crime, riots, and the like, so that was their image” of urban core areas, says Hughes. However, in the 1980s and 1990s, urban environments improved, more amenities were created and Millennials didn't experience the urban decline their parents had seen.

“They want that 24/7 activity environment, they don't want to be stuck in the middle of tract-house New Jersey suburbs,” Hughes says.

Coinciding with this shifting taste for the urban experience among Millennials, companies are relocating large blocks of their functions to the urban core, Hughes notes.

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“We have a new corporate urbanism. The era when they wanted isolated suburban fortresses and insulated corporate campuses is over,” he says.

The future for these office parks is redevelopment where the office piece is de-emphasized or eliminated entirely, Savills Studley's Foley agrees.

“The office component is either being eliminated totally or greatly reduced and they are being replaced with a retail component, hotel component, apartments, but there is a much more viable development potential for other uses besides office,” Foley says.

The modern office will need to encourage collaboration while preserving privacy, says Benamou. “You get your own privacy, you get your own office space, but it's still open enough that you are in front of other people and have the chance to collaborate and share resources, therefore reducing expenses,” he says. “Because of the openness of our space, we've done quite a few deals, just from being on a platform where we can go bounce ideas off other professionals from different industries.”

Says Hughes: “The symbol of the new reality is 111 Eighth Ave. in Manhattan—the old Port Authority Building, Inland Freight Terminal No. 1—which is now the Google Building.”

Hughes points to the changing design of university dormitories for clues to what will be attractive to the children of Millennials. University bedrooms no longer include desks and students routinely work in teams and groups in common lounge areas.

“If they're used to living in neighborhoods where they can walk to the coffee shop in the morning, and eat in restaurants at night, I find it hard to believe they will be very happy moving into the middle of a '70s subdivision where they are two miles from a store and have to drive to get there,” says Hughes.

If they do relocate as they age, the more affluent Millennials will probably aspire to upscale urban living in luxury multifamily space in areas like Hoboken and Jersey City, Hughes predicts.

“So if they suburbanize, it's going to be to a select suburb that has some kind of a downtown with an urban vibe to it,” Hughes says. He notes that Hopewell Borough in Mercer County, NJ, has worked hard at creating a successful suburban revitalization. “There are seven or eight places to eat there,” he says, adding, “it's like a little Brooklyn.”

You can hear more from our interviews with Hughes, Foley and Benamou in the audio podcast associated with this article, available on GlobeSt.com.