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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

#251

Post by doctorwho42 »

ke88y wrote: post #189
natdempk wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I toured a piece of property at the border of Charlestown and Somerville near a big T stop. There was an empty lot next to the tracks that was owned by the MBTA on paper. But de facto, the neighbor and was clearly using the entire massive lot as an extended back yard (they even had a garden shed and paved parking on the MBTA owned lot). Looked up the property records. Either a HIGHLY coincidental name clash, or there…

If you are talking about a triangle shaped lot on the corner, which is across the street from the lichmere stop of the green line...

That lot was the lichmere stop of the green line until about two years ago. And was the lichmere stop for decades. Once torn down it was used as a gravel pile and support area for MBTA work. Recently that corner had the traffic pattern altered a bit with a new light and cross street.

You gotta remember, in America city infrastructure takes time.

Lot in question: https://maps.app.goo.gl/4HSueRhVb8TPZNoZ7

Re: Boston mayor announces residential conversion program for office buildings

#253

Post by bmitc »

steveBK123 wrote: post #207
bmitc wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Under what conditions or reality will supply ever outpace demand in big cities like Boston or New York? I don't think it's physically, realistically, or pragmatically possible.

Well it happened to Commercial RE because of COVID, which was seemingly unthinkable. So now we want to convert some to residential. What other unthinkable future could lead to a change in net migration out of urban areas rather than into urban areas? Happened ~1950->1990s. Flipped 2000-2020s. Could flip back? Who knows!

Was the situation with retail real estate really unthinkable? Retail had been in decline several years prior to 2020.

Re: Boston mayor announces residential conversion program for office buildings

#254

Post by ocdtrekkie »

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…

It's a shame we don't have any sorts of things good at processing large amounts of detailed rules, and the ability to provide actionable insight based on input. I'd call them... computers!

Re: Boston mayor announces residential conversion program for office buildings

#255

Post by ves »

Arete314159 wrote: post #233
RC_ITR wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 off…

In addition, as climate change affects more and more places, I think SF will be the winner. It maintains a naturally air conditioned 65 degrees all summer long during a decade that has seen even Portland Oregon go into the high triple digits. Don't sleep on San Francisco.

Were we living in the same city? There were multiple heatwaves in the time I lived there, one so severe that Noe Valley got to 107.

And this isn’t to mention the wildfires or inevitable water issues.

Re: Boston mayor announces residential conversion program for office buildings

#256

Post by petre »

analog31 wrote: post #239
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…

Maybe I'd think differently if I actually saw the footprint of a large office building, but I'm thinking... My house has a basement and a garage, which are not approved as living space, and don't have proper windows or egress. Would it solve the problem to let the interior portions of buildings be designated as storage and utility space? I'd love to have more space for bikes and musical instruments. ;-)

They get to make two rows of apartments instead of one if they cut off the interior of the building. So better space usage = more $.

Re: Boston mayor announces residential conversion program for office buildings

#257

Post by temporalparts »

BenFranklin100 wrote: post #244

This is a poor use of time and resources. A much better - and likely cheaper solution in the long run - is to relax Boston’s onerous zoning laws that forbid the construction of most new apartments. The construction of plentiful new apartments near and in the urban core has the added benefit of increasing demand for existing urban office space. It also increases the city tax base and the subsequent short work commutes…

Nimby's have an easier time fighting new construction than conversions. I don't see this as a poor use of time if it can introduce hundreds of unit to a scarce and expensive market.

Also, the last sentence of the article:

> The Mayor also committed to update Boston’s zoning code to create thousands of additional housing units in Boston’s squares and corridors and reform the Article 80 process to increase speed and predictability for development.

Re: Boston mayor announces residential conversion program for office buildings

#258

Post by germinalphrase »

btbuildem wrote: post #246
ktosobcy wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I never understood the need to concentrate all the offices in the single focal point of the city. And currently with WFH it seems to make even more sense to distribute office spaces in local "co-working" spaces and in the end mix residential with work making it intertwined (zoning in the USA, from what I understand, is weird as hack…)

I think it's a hold-over from the age of factories and paper offices, when people had to be in one place to do the work. White collar work can now be mostly distributed, but light and heavy industry still needs groups of people working on site. Very different locations though, you don't see much manufacturing happening downtown.

I trace my American heritage to the Midwest and have plenty of industrial electricians, iron workers, farmers, etc in the family line. Traveling around the big Midwestern cities, there’s a part of me that longs for the old industrial downtown. Loud with machines, busy on the streets with laborers, dirty and dynamic. Now? It’s mostly cars, a few pedestrians, and a bunch of people who barely leave their desks (me included). Plenty of reasons why the times now are better, but there is some kind of a loss there.

Re: Boston mayor announces residential conversion program for office buildings

#259

Post by phantom784 »

ruined wrote: post #223
andromeduck wrote: post #222

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We could also just relax the window requirements for conversions.

this is how you end up with mass mortality events

In a high rise, are the windows really helping with egress? I'd think access to multiple stairwells is what'd be key for safety.

Re: Boston mayor announces residential conversion program for office buildings

#260

Post by shagie »

pimlottc wrote: post #41
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 looks like the episode of OddLots you're talking about: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2023-07-07/what-it-a... They talk about converting 180 Water St by adding an internal atrium; it's also one of the conversions illustrated in the recent NYT article about the difficulties of office-to-residential conversions: https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2023/03/11/upshot/office...

NYT article - gift link https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2023/03/11/upshot/office...

(The interactive nature doesn't quite get captured by archive correctly)

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