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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

#311

Post by thinkcontext »

eagleinparadise wrote: post #119
thinkcontext wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Office space rents for more per SQ ft than residential, so landlords have incentive to keep it vacant in the hopes that markets come back.

I work in CRE - anyone reading this completely disregard this silly comment. it is laughably stupid

> Couple that with the fact that office rents are higher per square foot than residential rents are, and you see why developers aren’t champing at the bit to get new projects underway. Van Nieuwerburgh gave me an example from San Francisco, where Juul’s old headquarters—down the block from Twitter’s improvised dormitory—is for sale for $150 million. That’s a lot less than the $397 million the embattled nicotine vape company paid for it in 2019. But at $400 a square foot to buy and another $400 a square foot to renovate, he said, the conversion would still produce a building with rents too high even for San Francisco. In other words, offices may be down, but they’ll have to fall a lot further before adaptive reuse becomes a bargain.

https://slate.com/business/2022/12/office-housing-conversion...

Re: Boston mayor announces residential conversion program for office buildings

#312

Post by bregma »

WarOnPrivacy wrote: post #52
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…

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.

The uses need to be kept separate. Separate but equal.

Re: Boston mayor announces residential conversion program for office buildings

#313

Post by LUmBULtERA »

smt88 wrote: post #293
tjmc wrote: post #204

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why not put edge datacentres in the middle? They could provide heating to perimeter apartments in cold climates and just imagine the ping!

Very few humans live in places that need heat all year round.

The heat could be used for water heating as well.

Re: Boston mayor announces residential conversion program for office buildings

#314

Post by IMTDb »

alexvoda wrote: post #304
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…

Of course this is only necessary because someone at some point decided it is ok for modern post-war offices to no longer have natural lighting and ventilation. Why would office workers ever need to see the sun? According to the article, the pre-war buildings are easy to convert.

It's not about "someone deciding that it is ok for modern post-war offices to no longer have natural lighting and ventilation".

It's that the open floor model gained popularity; and the building technique evolved. This allowed huge windows to cast light for everyone in one go, since people were not putting opaque wall everywhere which were restricting whatever light that came through "their" part of the building to reach anyone else. "My window" became "our window". Similarly HVAC system evolved to maintain equal temperature in the whole building; there was no longer a need to bring individual heating/cooling system in every single cell since carefully placing some element would let natural convection do the work.

Removing these walls allowed building to be built and heated/cooled with comparatively less material; something that was positive both economically and - dare I say it - ecologically. Converting these shared spaces into private requires to "undo" all these optimisations and will carry a significant cost. Just like converting a bus into several car is not easy because although the seats are there; you are going to need many engines.

Re: Boston mayor announces residential conversion program for office buildings

#315

Post by watwut »

eliasmacpherson wrote: post #297
TulliusCicero wrote: post #294

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, it's just basic supply and demand.

A definition of demand: Demand is an economic concept that relates to a consumer's desire to purchase goods and services and willingness to pay a specific price for them. The poor do not have the willingness to pay a whole category of prices, as they are unable to finance it. Creating luxury accommodation can increase supply, but as the decrease in price does not necessarily put the older accommodation within reach,…

Undesirable areas are full of cheap mansions, slowly decaying because no one wants to live in a place with no jobs.

Housing is not that special, when there is a lot of it, it gets cheap.

Re: Boston mayor announces residential conversion program for office buildings

#316

Post by londons_explore »

IMTDb wrote: post #314
alexvoda wrote: post #304

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Of course this is only necessary because someone at some point decided it is ok for modern post-war offices to no longer have natural lighting and ventilation. Why would office workers ever need to see the sun? According to the article, the pre-war buildings are easy to convert.

It's not about "someone deciding that it is ok for modern post-war offices to no longer have natural lighting and ventilation". It's that the open floor model gained popularity; and the building technique evolved. This allowed huge windows to cast light for everyone in one go, since people were not putting opaque wall everywhere which were restricting whatever light that came through "their" part of the building to r…

> Just like converting a bus into several car is not easy because although the seats are there; you are going to need many engines.

This is a great analogy.

Re: Boston mayor announces residential conversion program for office buildings

#317

Post by xyzelement »

I don't totally understand what drives people to project demand for urban residential when urban office is in decline and is being removed.

Historically people moved to the cities because that's where the work was. What will drive people to cities when that's no longer true?

Granted some people really enjoy "density" but I suspect most people prefer more space / a yard / etc if the lack of commute enables then to spread out.

Re: Boston mayor announces residential conversion program for office buildings

#318

Post by harambae »

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?

Well the T is as terrible as always, but until 2 weeks ago or so the motorcycle and moped parking situation was ok, if you were willing to do that.

But recently they started enforcing that very aggressively and requiring motorcycles to pay the same amount as cars and park in the same spots. Just a wave of orange envelopes on every motorbike I walked by.

Kind of an unfortunate move IMO - one of the things I like about European cities is not having to have 1 person per SUV clogging streets.

Re: Boston mayor announces residential conversion program for office buildings

#319

Post by gumballindie »

City management done right. Archaic methods of working that required people on site for jobs where it wasn't necessary are out the door. Would be great if uk’s London took the same path. Life there is atrocious, crime levels, pollution and prices are through the roof. Not to mention overcrowding and dirty public transport. Adjusting for more remote work would be game changing as people could live in the suburbs.

Re: Boston mayor announces residential conversion program for office buildings

#320

Post by aperson_hello »

steveBK123 wrote: post #309
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"

I dunno I think legal regulations on what is safe housing are pretty good, actually. For example, in the absence of good legal housing, many poor (mostly immigrant) people in NYC live in illegal basement apartments. Every time there's a flash flood warning with a storm in the city, 5x/year, some of them die in their homes. Ideally, poor people would also be able to live in legal apartments, provided we could actually…

Windows don't make you safe in a high rise. Especially ones in a donut hole in a structure - no way to escape through those!!
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