I know why (((they))) want it, it's control and the small minded "If I can't see your butt in a seat, you aren't working." Doesn't matter if 9 of your 8 hours are spent in zoom meetings.
If I had some sort of information business, I'd probably have a small office where people could come if they needed to get away from their house for a minute, or if they were meeting a client. Other than that, tell me if you need something and I'll see you at the Christmas dinner.
If needed, I would just get some sort of "we-work" kind of setup that employees could use if they wanted to have a non-home workspace. Why bother even with the infra for a static office unless you have really specific reasons to?
Though, I would be designing everything to be able to be done anywhere in the world as long as you had a good VPN so there is that.
I guess it really depends on what you want. I appreciate a stable place to go, something that's going to be the same when I go there. But if a rent-a-office works, then that's fine too.
Well, having remote workers I would assume that I am going to have them all over the country and unless most of them live in one city there would not be much of a reason to have a proper perm-office unless I personally wanted one to go to that others would also use.
That's just my view on it though.