Boston mayor announces residential conversion program for office buildings • Hacker News Board

Re: Boston mayor announces residential conversion program for office buildings

#211

Post by rexf » Fri, Jul 14, 2023, 2:20 AM UTC

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...

The NYT article does a really good job explaining the difference between converting a prewar and a modern building.

Also, TIL about loss factor:

> As offices, these buildings can also rent 100 percent (or even more) of their total square footage, according to the quirky math of commercial real estate.

https://therealdeal.com/magazine/new-york-february-2014/lies...

Re: Boston mayor announces residential conversion program for office buildings

#212

Post by jnwatson » Fri, Jul 14, 2023, 2:24 AM UTC

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…

Many buildings have retail on the ground floor. This isn’t much different.

Re: Boston mayor announces residential conversion program for office buildings

#213

Post by mcmoor » Fri, Jul 14, 2023, 2:33 AM UTC

mkoubaa wrote: post #169

01100011 wrote: post #161

I hope we don't just settle for substandard housing cobbled together from ADUs and converted office buildings... I would like to see governments stepping up to raise the funds to buy out neighborhoods at a fair price and converting them into efficient, humane urban areas. You take what you can get, but in my area it seems most new housing is either smashed up against a freeway or a mish-mash of car-dependent ADUs. Fu…

converting office buildings do not preclude designing humane urban areas

Given some other comments that say that "it's better than eternal slavery", I'd hope that it truly doesn't end in another brutalism hell.

Re: Boston mayor announces residential conversion program for office buildings

#214

Post by kaashif » Fri, Jul 14, 2023, 2:40 AM UTC

whatatita wrote: post #163

mc32 wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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).

It would be terrible loss to convert those business spaces into residential. One or two could be changed, as retail needs change over time, but removing possible retail and third space from near people's homes means less walkable neighborhoods. Where I live, we have short term reuse laws that allow retail spaces to be used for residential, social, or other uses on a fixed basis. Typically a few years. The idea being…

Why do the ground floors have to be designated by the government as retail or residential? Is it impossible to say it can be either, as long as the requirements for whichever one (e.g. ventilation, fire safety) are met?

Re: Boston mayor announces residential conversion program for office buildings

#215

Post by Panzer04 » Fri, Jul 14, 2023, 2:43 AM UTC

01100011 wrote: post #161

I hope we don't just settle for substandard housing cobbled together from ADUs and converted office buildings... I would like to see governments stepping up to raise the funds to buy out neighborhoods at a fair price and converting them into efficient, humane urban areas. You take what you can get, but in my area it seems most new housing is either smashed up against a freeway or a mish-mash of car-dependent ADUs. Fu…

Given government regulations are the reason many neighbourhoods turn into the things you dislike, I sincerely doubt giving them yet more responsibility and control would help.

Re: Boston mayor announces residential conversion program for office buildings

#216

Post by TheBigSalad » Fri, Jul 14, 2023, 2:45 AM UTC

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…

At 10k square feet you can safely drop the Mc.

Re: Boston mayor announces residential conversion program for office buildings

#217

Post by lotsoweiners » Fri, Jul 14, 2023, 2:46 AM UTC

midoridensha wrote: post #182

wonder_er wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 littl…

So many awful things in America are the legacy of slavery and racism, and now it's all coming together to make the country an unlivable mess.

A little hyperbolic there my friend.

Re: Boston mayor announces residential conversion program for office buildings

#218

Post by NovemberWhiskey » Fri, Jul 14, 2023, 2:50 AM UTC

onlyrealcuzzo wrote: post #210

hedora wrote: post #183

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Due to fire code, to divide a high-rise into 4 corner units, you need to take up almost ~50% of the space for elevators, stairs and hallways. So you'd probably end up with close to 5k square foot condos - which isn't too ridiculous. You'd probably do 4 corner units and 4 non-corner units for a total of eight, and end up with each being between 2000 and 2500. The problem is, they'd be ridiculously expensive for a numb…

>The problem is, they'd be ridiculously expensive for a number of reasons. And when you're paying that much money, you probably don't want to live in a building that wasn't even designed to be lived in...

Re: Boston mayor announces residential conversion program for office buildings

#219

Post by SantalBlush » Fri, Jul 14, 2023, 2:51 AM UTC

loco5niner wrote: post #145

eagleinparadise wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

not exactly a thoughtful and interesting commentary, regardless of correctness.

I'll take correctness over thoughtful or interesting. Maybe I don't fit in here.

Re: Boston mayor announces residential conversion program for office buildings

#220

Post by lotsoweiners » Fri, Jul 14, 2023, 2:58 AM UTC

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…

> If the market swings back towards office over time it will be harder to respond to. As I say also its easy to convert office to residential but almost impossible to convert back.

Additional complexities of a return to office mandate that some management blowhards want seems like a win for office to residential conversions in my opinion.