Your link is broken. I do know that Mr. Schultz has given lip-service to the fact that Starbucks is no longer a third place, but in the other column I present the fact that there are no longer any comfortable chairs at my nearest Starbucks and the next one by distance is Drive-Thru only.
Updated my comment with the original source. What kinds of chairs are those? Maybe it's me but I found my Starbucks pretty bustling, people gathering, the chairs fairly comfortable for even long periods of time working on a laptop for example. Hell, we even have several single seater couches and that's been fairly standard since I can remember.
When I was in a suburb we still had that sort of seating, and I recently went back and I see those couches still. Maybe they don't put them in new stores, I'm not sure, but I don't think they remove them if they're already there. These are the kinds I'm talking about and seeing [0].
Another source on couches returning [1], maybe in the suburbs too.
