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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

#101

Post by natdempk »

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?

We're not building enough housing, COL/rent is high to the point where it makes it hard for many smaller businesses to thrive, the MBTA is an embarrassment, we're not laying enough fiber, the roads could use some work, but overall things are stable and fine. I just wish there was more of a standard of excellence all around.

Re: Boston mayor announces residential conversion program for office buildings

#102

Post by mc32 »

another_story wrote: post #87
WJW wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

I swear, it's impossible to please people. People are complaining that mixed use zoning on Taraval street in SF is wasting space because the street-level floors are wasted and they should be converted into apartments (many business have shuttered and ground floors remain empty in some mixed use buildings).

Re: Boston mayor announces residential conversion program for office buildings

#103

Post by natdempk »

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?

TransitMatters has a nice graph of the problem: https://dashboard.transitmatters.org/slowzones?startDate=202...

Re: Boston mayor announces residential conversion program for office buildings

#104

Post by superfrank »

jimt1234 wrote: post #85

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.

I've read that one of the biggest problems is that while the demand for office space has dropped, the cost to convert to residential is so high that building owners can't break even on a reasonable timeline so they have little incentive to convert. I'm not an expert at all, but I think that in addition to building out the new floor plans you pretty much have to redo all the plumbing and electrical and I believe in many places the rules for emergency exits are different between the two building types. I think in some cases it would actually just be cheaper to tear the entire building down and build a new one from the ground up.

I think many owners have the mindset that if they're going to lose money either way they'll stick with the devil they know and hope for a miracle rebound. It sounds like this program is offering tax incentives to help offset those conversion costs to make it much easier for building owners to break even after a conversion.

Re: Boston mayor announces residential conversion program for office buildings

#105

Post by marcosfelt »

kibwen wrote: post #26

There's a very good NYT article with great visualizations on the process of and obstacles to converting office buildings to residential: https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2023/03/11/upshot/office...

Thanks for sharing this!

Re: Boston mayor announces residential conversion program for office buildings

#106

Post by natdempk »

MildRant wrote: post #5

I think this is fantastic. Boston desperately needs more housing. Let's get some increased funding for the T as well while we are at it.

I will probably get sniped by someone who actually knows what they're talking about (please correct me if I'm wrong :D), but my impression of the T issues is less a funding issue, and more a competency/corruption issue. We're building above-ground rail at underground rail prices for one example problem.

Re: Boston mayor announces residential conversion program for office buildings

#107

Post by kbos87 »

cs702 wrote: post #83

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."

It’s far and away in the best interests of the people who live in these cities for these spaces to be repurposed. Wouldn’t want to cut off our nose to spite our face.

Re: Boston mayor announces residential conversion program for office buildings

#108

Post by nix0n »

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…

It will reduce the strain on transportation infrastructure if more people can live close to where they work, or have "reverse" commutes.

Re: Boston mayor announces residential conversion program for office buildings

#109

Post by pivo »

doctoboggan wrote: post #91
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?

I lived in Cambridge/Somerville from 2013 - 2019 and always had the feeling that downtown was only for office workers during business hours. There never seemed to be anything to do after hours as all the workers left downtown at 5pm. If this proposal takes off it would be really nice to see a lively downtown on the evenings and weekends.

I live downtown (Leather District) and work downtown (Post Office Sq.) I think there's really quite a bit of stuff to do. Not NYC stuff to do level, sure, but definitely not a wasteland after dark either.

I do agree, there are some beautiful old office buildings around here that would probably make great residential buildings. That would be even better for the area.

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