This turned out to be a blue zone hack. A new open space working area was created and given many people were anxious about leaving the safety of their cubes, we decided to put a big visible (and anonymous!) feedback wall at the entrance of the space.
The problem with this space was that since people in multiple departments were sitting there, managers didn’t feel they were responsible for anyone except the people that reported to them. This feedback wall make it bluntly clear that people weren’t happy and one of the managers volunteered to manage all the feedback eventually. I got in trouble for this hack but it was worth it, people were extremely upset about having their cube taken away and being forced to sit in close proximity with people they didn’t know.