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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

#111

Post by 0cf8612b2e1e »

mlyle wrote: post #99
HWR_14 wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 know your numbers are made up but presumably an apartment is much deeper than 10'. You'd want to make it as narrow and deep as practical. 20x45'? 25x36'? I get that you get (almost) twice as many apartments (presuming you don't build up higher), but you also get a massive and complicated one time cost. It surprises me that it could ever be worth it.

I call this the Chicago layout -many apartments are long and narrow. I have assumed it was to ensure access to two fire escapes. To hazard a guess, I have seen some that might only be 15’ wide, supporting a 10x10 room with a hallway to access it.

Re: Boston mayor announces residential conversion program for office buildings

#112

Post by twelvechairs »

Its a delicate balance with these things. 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 (because of multiple ownership you can almost never convert from residential back to office) and even though the office market is taking a big hit from working from home / remote, the broader trend of the past 100 years is more and more jobs being concentrated into fewer and fewer office district that have to be larger and larger in critical mass.

Sydney, Australia is a good example. They introduced residential floorspace bonuses 10-20 years ago which have changed the city for the better. Pre-covid they wanted to shut this lever off as it almost flipped the other way where they were running out of land for offices to keep up with demand. Now its a bit of a lull on how to respond to the new environment though.

Re: Boston mayor announces residential conversion program for office buildings

#113

Post by adgjlsfhk1 »

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?

the subway only runs from 5:30 to 1am (so good luck getting to the airport for a morning flight). also it's been on fire and slow and often down for maintenance

Re: Boston mayor announces residential conversion program for office buildings

#114

Post by delecti »

steveBK123 wrote: post #20
alephnerd wrote: post #4

> a rate reduction by up to 75% of the standard tax rate for residential for up to 29 years could provide a strong incentive to encourage conversion. This would be implemented through a public-private partnership that will enable the BPDA, the City, and the proponent to enter into a payment in lieu of taxes (PILOT) agreement This is actually a pretty nice rebate (similar to the one Ed Lee and Willie Brown proposed fo…

Yes. Left wing politicians need to remember a rising tide lifts all boats. We need to stop treating things like zero sum games and that we need to take things away or redistribute finite goods. Subsidizing things like education, housing, and healthcare.. without corresponding encouraging increases in SUPPLY.. just gives more dollars to the demand side to chase the same stuff. Yes, typically the market responds, but i…

Yeah, it's a good thing we have a famously right-wing bastion like Boston to lead the way with good old fashioned conservative policies like more housing and less commercial real estate. /s

Re: Boston mayor announces residential conversion program for office buildings

#115

Post by lokar »

Vvector wrote: post #71
steveBK123 wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Depending on local laws.. windowless apartments are illegal. windowless bedrooms are illegal. etc.

It's legal, in most cases, to omit an egress window in bedrooms in high-rise buildings—but only because the building includes fire-safety features (for example, sprinklers, fire alarm systems, and egress stairways) https://www.greenbuildingadvisor.com/article/bedrooms-withou...

Two different rules

Bedrooms have egress requirements

Apartments have window requirements (eg natural light)

Re: Boston mayor announces residential conversion program for office buildings

#116

Post by dv_dt »

ethanbond wrote: post #47
steveBK123 wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Depending on local laws.. windowless apartments are illegal. windowless bedrooms are illegal. etc.

I think they’re suggesting just having dead space in the middle.

Why not make storage spaces?

Re: Boston mayor announces residential conversion program for office buildings

#117

Post by pcurve »

marcosfelt wrote: post #105
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!

WSJ recently had a good video on challenge of converting office building into condo.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nTKjwWlhcLM

Re: Boston mayor announces residential conversion program for office buildings

#118

Post by chewmieser »

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, this was interesting! If anyone is blocked by the paywall use this:

https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2023/03/11/upshot/office...

Re: Boston mayor announces residential conversion program for office buildings

#119

Post by eagleinparadise »

thinkcontext wrote: post #94
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.

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

Re: Boston mayor announces residential conversion program for office buildings

#120

Post by wonder_er »

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?

part of the reason this is so bad in the USA is indeed what OP named, the concept of 'legibility', as explained in 'seeing like a state'.

In the case of the USA, though, another 'lens' on the legibility is that overall the people making the laws were neurotically concerned with keeping black people away from white people and enforcing segregation.

'separating uses' was a good way to also 'separate users', and a little barely-that-creative law-writing lets someone keep black people quite removed from the white people.

I found a document from 1922 that is upstream of all american zoning codes - it's what got ratified in Euclid v. Ambler circa 1926.

It's explicit goal was:

"To maintain harmonious relations between the races, care has been given to ensure adequate separation between the two, with room to grow without encroaching on the other"

The race-based zoning designations are gold:

"R1 - white, R2 - colored, R3 - undecided"

Here's a deep link straight to that portion of the document: https://josh.works/full-copy-of-1922-atlanta-zone-plan#race-...

Oh, it also says:

"The ordinary two or three story store and dwelling building is not a desirable type of construction from a public stand point. The regulations as applied will tend to reduce the number of flats that would otherwise be located over stores."

So - there it is. The goal of American zoning was, in part, to eliminate 'the ordinary two or three story store and dwelling building'.

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