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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

#271

Post by nradov »

hedora wrote: post #183
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…

The main advantage of living in a converted factory (there are a lot of these in the rust belt) is that you end up with an absolutely enormous space made out of cool materials. I was finding it hard to imagine that there are inner-city office buildings (high rises) that have floors so large that they couldn't be cut into, say 1/4'ths, with four residences on each floor, and each unit having 50% windows along its peri…

Concrete and exposed metal are hardly what most of us think of as "cool materials". The notion of living in an abandoned factory is just dismal. Tear them down and start over.

Re: Boston mayor announces residential conversion program for office buildings

#272

Post by bob_theslob646 »

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

What do you mean? What does lack of windows have to do with anything?

Re: Boston mayor announces residential conversion program for office buildings

#273

Post by RC_ITR »

ves wrote: post #255
Arete314159 wrote: post #233

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Apparently not because these are the hottest days in sf history:

1. September 1, 2017 – 106 degrees T-2. June 14, 2000 – 103 degrees T-2. July 17, 1988 – 103 degrees T-4. September 2, 2017 – 102 degrees T-4. October 5, 1987 – 102 degrees T-6. September 14, 1971 – 101 degrees T-6. May 30, 2001 – 101 degrees T-6. June 14, 1961 – 101 degrees T-6. September 16, 1913 – 101 degrees T-6. September 8, 1904 – 101 degrees T-11. October 4, 1987 – 100 degrees T-11. September 8, 1984 – 100 degrees

9 of the next 10 days in Dallas would be on that list. 3 days from last year in Seattle would be in the top 5 days on that list.

We are comparable to the extremes of a coastal eastern city, with significantly lower temperatures between the peaks. There’s not many places in the US that have never seen 106.

As for water, 80%+ of it in California is used for food that is exported elsewhere.

Strawberries in December in New York are much more at risk than humans in CA.

As for fires, nowhere in the world is safe from that, as this summer is proving.

Re: Boston mayor announces residential conversion program for office buildings

#274

Post by TheBigSalad »

lotsoweiners wrote: post #238
carlosjobim wrote: post #155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Would you live in an apartment 15 feet wide and 50 feet deep? Yes, if that's the alternative to being enslaved for life. How can people still not understand that there is a massive part of the population who need to be able to purchase their living space to not have to rent for life or take on life-long debt that they can't afford. How can people not understand this? Yes, it's better for a young worker to be able t…

I definitely agree about this ownership vs rental dynamic and my first property was a long and narrow townhouse with 1 wall of windows and a couple of tiny ones on the other side (probably closer to more 25 x 75). My concern with these conversion proposals is that they will only be for rent and not ownership and that they will be priced the same as everything else…too damn high.

New high priced housing brings down the price of older places.

Re: Boston mayor announces residential conversion program for office buildings

#275

Post by RC_ITR »

bobthepanda wrote: post #267
aperson_hello wrote: post #263

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And my point is that desirable doesn't matter much if the goal is to get people housed. Yeah, you'll get less rent for the inner apartments, but that's how you make affordable housing - you make things cheaply and make sacrifices along the way to do so. Unless you don't want to live with the "poors"... Legality is also highly related to "keeping them separated"

The problem is that the rest of the conversion, namely bathrooms and kitchens per unit and the required pipes, are also not cheap, to the point where if you wanted to rent out a lot of cheap units it would be easier to knock the building down and start anew.

> it would be easier to knock the building down and start anew.

Idk where this meme started but it’s very far from reality. We as a species have only ever voluntarily demolished like 30 or so building above 35 stories because it’s insanely expensive to do so (most buildings were knocked down to make significantly larger ones in their place).

In no world is it ever cheaper to tear down a high rise and start over.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_tallest_voluntarily_de...

Re: Boston mayor announces residential conversion program for office buildings

#276

Post by vkou »

stathibus wrote: post #45
fasthands9 wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah. I realize there are tax breaks in her bill but in theory getting more people living in these dense areas will raise ridership on the subway a lot and raise taxes as a whole - which would pay for things like repairs which the OP complains about.

No amount of ridership or city tax revenue would make the MBTA solvent. It's a sinking ship that is beyond rescue without massive federal intervention. Nobody in MA wants to say that though, because it's an admission of failure.

why is MBTA's solvency relevant to anything? Nobody expects the DOT, or any of the roads and highways they build and maintain to be solvent, or for the police department, or the firefighters to be a profit center for the city.

But as soon as we start talking about public transit, everyone's counting coppers and wringing their hands about the system's solvency.

Re: Boston mayor announces residential conversion program for office buildings

#277

Post by [deleted] »

twelvechairs wrote: post #165
worik wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Residential brings life to the monotonous business areas and helps to improve housing supply (often not by an awful lot) but on the other hand, once you lose office sites they are generally gone forever I am not a town planner, but this makes little sense to me. Can you not have mixed use?

There's a range of factors for why not endless mixed use. A few of the big ones: The clustering nature of businesses wanting to be close to each other. Most commercial areas are limited in expansion and a big 'critical mass' helps to drive the success of all the businesses. Office workers dont like to look out at residential uses (hanging laundry etc.). On the economic side its important to note that office-only zoni…

[deleted]

Re: Boston mayor announces residential conversion program for office buildings

#278

Post by dirtyid »

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…

Seems like you can trivially get around HVAC issue by just having individual units like in hotels or split units like many parts of the world (new builts and retrofits) and pare back existing HVAC / ducts for hallways/common space which are hooked up anyways. There's ways to do it cheap, but these not retrofitting nice office towers to be cheap units.

Re: Boston mayor announces residential conversion program for office buildings

#279

Post by xg15 »

RC_ITR wrote: post #90
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 off…

> (the dog whistle used to be 'we don't want a skyline of cereal boxes')

Out of curiosity, what was the actual reason behind the dog whistle? "Segregate black people by... having smaller floorplates"? That doesn't make much sense to me.

Re: Boston mayor announces residential conversion program for office buildings

#280

Post by gnulinux »

worthless-trash wrote: post #227
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.

What is T ? google isnt helping.

Boston people call public transportation "T". It's an abbreviation of "MBTA" which stands for "Massachusetts Bay Transport Authority".
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