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Boston mayor announces residential conversion program for office buildings

bostonplans.org

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Re: Boston mayor announces residential conversion program for office buildings

#71

Post by Vvector »

steveBK123 wrote: post #36
mlyle wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> This is necessary because many office floorplans are huge with modern HVAC and when converted into residential you end up with either undesirable or illegal apartments due to lack of windows/egress/etc. Couldn't you just wall off the middle? I mean, you do get another set of windows on the inner courtyard, but it seems expensive to perform such major surgery on a building.

Depending on local laws.. windowless apartments are illegal. windowless bedrooms are illegal. etc.

It's legal, in most cases, to omit an egress window in bedrooms in high-rise buildings—but only because the building includes fire-safety features (for example, sprinklers, fire alarm systems, and egress stairways)

https://www.greenbuildingadvisor.com/article/bedrooms-withou...

Re: Boston mayor announces residential conversion program for office buildings

#72

Post by caycep »

micromacrofoot wrote: post #44
tiedieconderoga wrote: post #18

It's a fine idea if good candidates for conversion can be found, but shouldn't they fix up their dilapidated public transit system before inviting more density into their urban core? Just today, one of their rail cars caught fire at an elevated station, and their broken fire suppression system did nothing but flood the ground floor when the firefighters tried to use it. Wu's push for more housing density along the ci…

There's a new general manager, Phillip Eng, who's actually a transit enthusiast rather than some random bureaucrat... if he can't fix the issues plaguing the MBTA no general manager can. This is a long problem though, they're trying to fix decades of unaddressed maintenance issues.

He may be an enthusiast, but one also needs to be a Lyndon Johnson level of bureaucratic bulldozer, I suspect...

Re: Boston mayor announces residential conversion program for office buildings

#73

Post by AlbertCory »

xattt wrote: post #19
mlyle wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> This is necessary because many office floorplans are huge with modern HVAC and when converted into residential you end up with either undesirable or illegal apartments due to lack of windows/egress/etc. Couldn't you just wall off the middle? I mean, you do get another set of windows on the inner courtyard, but it seems expensive to perform such major surgery on a building.

Donuted buildings will forever remind me of the Ponte Tower building. (1) https://www.theatlantic.com/entertainment/archive/2017/02/th...

In Hong Kong, pre-handover, I stayed in a windowless hotel room.

Re: Boston mayor announces residential conversion program for office buildings

#74

Post by stephenr »

mlyle wrote: post #14
steveBK123 wrote: post #7

There was a cool OddLots episode recently where they talked to a guy who does Office to Residential work and some of the complexity. One thing he talked about, which I didn't know anyone did, was to actually cut through the ceiling/floorplate of buildings to basically "donut" them. This is necessary because many office floorplans are huge with modern HVAC and when converted into residential you end up with either und…

> This is necessary because many office floorplans are huge with modern HVAC and when converted into residential you end up with either undesirable or illegal apartments due to lack of windows/egress/etc. Couldn't you just wall off the middle? I mean, you do get another set of windows on the inner courtyard, but it seems expensive to perform such major surgery on a building.

I would have thought it would make perfect storage space.

Re: Boston mayor announces residential conversion program for office buildings

#75

Post by HWR_14 »

ethanbond wrote: post #47
steveBK123 wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Depending on local laws.. windowless apartments are illegal. windowless bedrooms are illegal. etc.

I think they’re suggesting just having dead space in the middle.

Because that would convert space really badly. If you're making 10'x10' rooms out of a 100'x100' space, it's 74% dead space. If a floor is more than 10,000 sq feet, maybe 40,000 sq feet, it goes up to to 90%.

I mean, numbers are made up, but the point holds.

Re: Boston mayor announces residential conversion program for office buildings

#76

Post by HWR_14 »

skwirl wrote: post #65
TimTheTinker wrote: post #49

IMO, they should consider banning cars in downtown areas (and adding large parking garages just outside them) while they're at it.

They will have to fix Boston’s horribly broken subway system first.

Easier to do if you stop having to maintain tons of roadway and can move that money into mass transit.

Re: Boston mayor announces residential conversion program for office buildings

#77

Post by larubbio »

thfuran wrote: post #42
kibwen wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you don't use the center of the building, then you only have room for one "ring" of residential units, whose windows face the exterior of the building. If you cut a donut hole down the center of the building, now you have room for two rings of units. Furthermore, in places like NYC, developers are allowed to "bank" the floorspace that comprised the donut hole and add new construction on top of the building so that…

They have limits on building square footage but not height? Or is that a weird loophole in a height restriction?

I think there are limits on both. Floor area ratio (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Floor_area_ratio) is how it is coded into regulations. The lot size and the height restrictions create a bounding box that the building needs to fit within.

Re: Boston mayor announces residential conversion program for office buildings

#78

Post by bee_rider »

How is Boston doing nowadays, overall?

As an Masshole, but not a city one, I’ve always kinda admired the job they do in Boston. At least, you don’t get the big dramatic narratives about it crumbling, like California cities, and NYC seems to be a bit boom-bust.

Boston seems to always be doing fine. The Big Dig was a ripoff but that was ages ago, and the T smells like piss but that’s par for the course, right?

Re: Boston mayor announces residential conversion program for office buildings

#79

Post by caditinpiscinam »

skwirl wrote: post #65
TimTheTinker wrote: post #49

IMO, they should consider banning cars in downtown areas (and adding large parking garages just outside them) while they're at it.

They will have to fix Boston’s horribly broken subway system first.

When I lived in Boston I used the subway a lot and though it was ok. What makes you say it's broken? Has it gotten worse recently?

Re: Boston mayor announces residential conversion program for office buildings

#80

Post by HWR_14 »

steveBK123 wrote: post #9
lusus_naturae wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It depends. If everything is owned by the same management or equity firm, then no.

Sure less owners is bad for competition, but more supply itself creates competition in a sense. Let's say theres 100 apartments in the entire town, and they are all owned by the same company. Next let's say they build 50 more apartments and theres now 1000 apartments still all owned by the same company. Given the number of apartments has increased, renters now have more power to negotiate as the owners have more unit…

> as the owners have more units they need to fill.

Or they can leave the units empty. There's no reason all units must be filled.

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