#Office building inside with workers full

“Maybe if you demolished and started fresh you could build some townhomes. “A good amount of our office space is in suburban office parks that aren’t really attractive as a place for high density apartments,” said Theodos. In other cities, though, there may be no nearby stores, no schools, no public transit. Sometimes former office locations can be good places to live, especially in high-density cities and areas with soaring demand for residential housing like Manhattan. Offices often aren’t located where people want to live That means fewer people on the street, fewer people at lunch spots and, for cities, less tax revenue. Often cities cannot afford to lose the tax base of large office buildings.Īnd an apartment building, even if it’s full, is lower density use than an office. They are trying very hard to make their downtowns viable, and this is something they can do.”Ĭities have to worry about the tax revenue implications, though, since a decent share of revenue comes from commercial property taxes. “But mayors are tripping over themselves trying to remove that problem. But when you say to a developer that the process is going to be slow and there’s a risk of litigation – that will make it more expensive.”Ĭonceptual renderings of 1633 Broadway in Manhattan by architecture firm SGA studying ways convert the office building to allow light and air to the interior. “Real estate is an open public process, as it should be. “There are lawsuits, politics, and other property owners who will have a say,” Bordwin said. But unwinding those restrictions isn’t easy.įor builders, overturning zoning laws, on top of complying with dozens of building codes, can be a time-consuming and cost-prohibitive process. Such laws grew up in the post-World War II era and paved the way for the 1950’s American ideal, the home with a front porch and backyard a drive away from work. Urban construction is ruled by zoning laws, which, at their most basic, follow a simple concept: only one kind of building – such as factories, apartment buildings, single-family homes – per part of town. “Every project has to reinvent the wheel,” he said, calling it “much harder than building from scratch.”

There’s no formula or scalable model for turning an office into a home, said Brett Theodos, a senior fellow with the Metropolitan Housing and Communities Policy Center, part of the Urban Institute. “Unfortunately, there are a whole range of hurdles.” “If only it were so easy,” said Harold Bordwin, principal and co-president of Keen-Summit Capital Partners, which handles commercial real estate restructurings. So can we just convert the excess offices into needed apartments? Meanwhile, the US has lagged behind by about 5.5 million housing units over the past 20 years, according to the National Association of Realtors, as builders failed to keep up with housing needs.

#Office building inside with workers full

It’s all a hangover from the Covid-19 pandemic employees started working remotely and never came back in full force, creating “ zombie towers.” More office space is sitting empty in the United States than at any point since 1979, Moody’s Analytics reported earlier this week. Local leaders are accelerating changes to zoning and construction restrictions.īut will turning offices into homes actually work? And would you want to live in one?Įxperts in housing, building, and urban planning say it may be difficult to convert office space to livable, likeable residential housing, but there’s an urgent reason they’re trying. The Biden administration is easing the way with federal programs and tax breaks. There’s a dream solution to America’s housing crisis and to its increasingly deserted downtowns: Convert the empty offices into homes.Īcross the country, cities like New York, Boston and Cleveland are embracing the idea of residential retrofitting and providing incentives to do so.