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Boston mayor announces residential conversion program for office buildings

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Re: Boston mayor announces residential conversion program for office buildings

#81

Post by t3rabytes »

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?

Common in NYC to do that to say you have the tallest building by height even if you were only approved to build X floors (your service floors don’t count) — from the couple videos I’ve watched about it over the years (see 432 Park Ave).

Re: Boston mayor announces residential conversion program for office buildings

#83

Post by cs702 »

Great news -- especially for the investors who own all those office buildings, and the banks that lent money to them.

Their government in Boston has just announced it's about to save them from otherwise certain financial distress.

The polite term they're using to describe such generous government help is "public-private partnership."

Re: Boston mayor announces residential conversion program for office buildings

#84

Post by afavour »

HWR_14 wrote: post #75
ethanbond wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I’d be interested to see people get really creative with it. Throw a gym in on one floor. Cinema room on another. Storage units in a few more. Probably difficult to structurally support a pool on a floor not already designed for one but sure, let’s throw one in there too. A kids playroom is maybe a little depressing with no natural light but it could work. Hell: keep the middle commercial space and put a grocery store in.

Obviously once you’re talking about true high rises you’re going to run out of possibilities and I know the maths is still very rough. But it’s an interesting thought exercise to think about just how many amenities you could pack into a building.

Re: Boston mayor announces residential conversion program for office buildings

#85

Post by jimt1234 »

I'm confused. Why is this program necessary? If building owners are sitting on vacant space because the demand for office space has dropped, while the demand for housing continues to rise, aren't they already incentivized to convert to residential space just based on the market conditions? Not sure why the city has to subsidize the property owners.

Re: Boston mayor announces residential conversion program for office buildings

#86

Post by ollien »

bee_rider wrote: post #78

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?

It's fine. The T is as bad as ever, shutting off sections for weeks on end for repairs. Rents are through the roof. But things aren't all bad, it's still a fun city.

Re: Boston mayor announces residential conversion program for office buildings

#87

Post by another_story »

WJW wrote: post #67
WarOnPrivacy wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wonder if some interior spaces could be preserved for commercial, some reallocated for retail, some set aside for tenant mixed use areas. I don't get why one area can only ever be for one kind of use.

If you really want to know, I can't recommend the book "Seeing like a state" enough. TL;DR: For government officials who are charged with supervising regulations over tens of thousands of areas, it's already more than complicated enough if each of those areas has a single use designation. If you allow all of those to have multiple designations, it becomes too complex for humans to administer and so they don't allow m…

There are so many cities (I'd say it's the majority in the world), with mixed use zoning which work wonderfully. Lower floors are offices or businesses and upper floors are apartments. Why is this so difficult?

Re: Boston mayor announces residential conversion program for office buildings

#88

Post by whymauri »

bee_rider wrote: post #78

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?

My favorite thing about the MBTA is it's one of the least piss-smelling subway system in the U.S.

I wish it moved like the MTA, though lol. I might be willing to make that tradeoff... maybe.

Re: Boston mayor announces residential conversion program for office buildings

#89

Post by spacephysics »

caditinpiscinam wrote: post #79
skwirl wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

Red line and blue line don’t connect. You need to take a bus to “connect” them

Re: Boston mayor announces residential conversion program for office buildings

#90

Post by RC_ITR »

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…

It's against narrative, but this is one of the ways SF's downtown is actually extremely well positioned, assuming the trend of office conversions actually takes off.

SF floorplates are usually tiny due to historic biases of our Planning Commission (the dog whistle used to be 'we don't want a skyline of cereal boxes').

In fact, looking at the data [0] most of SF's residential tower floorplates are bigger than SF's office floorplates.

[0]https://data.sfgov.org/Housing-and-Buildings/Map-of-Tall-Bui...

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