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A few years ago before the oil boom in west Texas, I was going to run a camera through some of the towns that were off major highways, and compare them with som

A few years ago before the oil boom in west Texas, I was going to run a camera through some of the towns that were off major highways, and compare them with some of the little towns in a Mexico or some other place we consider poor. In many ways the ones in Texas look worse because the population was dying as well, houses with the roof caving in, main streets without a single open business, etc. I'm often surprised by the ways businesses behave. I was in northern MA last month at a tech company that had recently built a new office building. Not 5 miles away was the town center, which was once a manufacturing hub. In town there were a couple old brick textile factories that were absolutely beautiful old buildings sitting vacant. Those building seem like the exact thing i've seen a couple startups trying to simulate in an office building (hard wood floors, retro lamps, etc with modern open floor plan). Running a medium sized tech company out of a 200 year old textile factory says something, but no one apparently wants to say it. Sure there would be some remodeling expense putting in power/etc but I can't imagine its a huge fraction more than long term rental/ownership/maint of the crap buildings being thrown up that start to fall apart after 10 years.

toomuchtodo 11y ago
> I was going to run a camera through some of the towns that were off major highways Is this a project you'd still be interested in?
ecopoesis 11y ago
The environmental cleanup is probably a huge part of the reason companies don't invest in the old mills. Besides the mundane things like lead and asbestos, they are also probably all sort of nasties left over from the dyes and other chemicals used in the old mills.
- fludlight 11y ago
  These old factories are sometimes also designated as "historical", which limits the modifications that new tenants can make and greatly increases TI costs.
samstave 11y ago
Brick and timber buildings would be beautiful I. California, and may even be affordable to literally deconstruct them and move them. Look at the last sale price of this building, $535.00 five hundred!! http://www.zillow.com/homedetails/530-Kenilworth-St-Detroit-MI-48202/88723118_zpid/ http://www.zillow.com/homedetails/530-Kenilworth-St-Detroit-...
- thephyber 11y ago
  Unreinforced mortar doesn't cut it in California building codes. It would crumble in either a moderate earthquake or over time during lots of small ones. Sale prices obscure some of the more expensive parts of a sale -- leins on the title and back taxes. Sometimes you do get a property for cheap, but always do your due diligence.
scarecrowbob 11y ago
Yup... it's kinda creepy. I've spent a lot of time driving between Lubbock and Fredericksburg, TX and it's really quite sad to see the kind of decay that you find in that area of the world. I keep thinking that if I could figure out how to get enough remote development business, it'd be interesting to buy up a chunk of old buildings in Ballenger or Menard (home of 3 cemeteries and a historic "ditch walk")... but then I think about how far you are from a city and think it would be a tough sell for most folks.
eanzenberg 11y ago
Why's that surprising? I'm not surprised it is cheaper to build a new office unit than to renovate an existing dilapidated one and bring it up to 2015 code.
ghaff 11y ago
In the Northeast at least, there are a fair number of old brick mill buildings that have been renovated and have tech and other tenants. I worked in one in Nashua NH for a few years and there was an apartment complex just down the street in another former textile mill. However, as someone else said, you don't renovate these kind of properties because it's cheaper than building a generic business park. You do it because you're willing to spend extra for something with history and character.
non-prophet 11y ago
I suspect the choice to build new may be due to remodeling costs that exceed new construction costs. Abatement of asbestos and lead paint along with bringing electrical, etc up to code is expensive. This may be a case where regulation results in government failure by constraining economic development opportunities. Anyone have any experience bringing a multi-hundred year old industrial facility up to office space code?
shostack 11y ago
Something tells me the remodeling isn't the reason nobody wants to build a startup there.
TYPE_FASTER 11y ago
They definitely exist, I used to work in this building: http://www.americantwine.com http://www.americantwine.com Here's another example: http://www.thecmaninn.com/claremont/about-us/history.aspx http://www.thecmaninn.com/claremont/about-us/history.aspx Here's an older paper from the state of RI: http://www.planning.ri.gov/documents/tp/TP%20150.pdf http://www.planning.ri.gov/documents/tp/TP%20150.pdf So one note from that paper: northern RI alone had 10mil sq ft of vacant mill building space. That's a lot. It will take a lot of rebuilding to come close to reclaiming all the space in those old buildings. Also, those old buildings didn't always take into account things like, say, HVAC efficiency. That kind of retrofitting takes money.

toomuchtodo 11y ago

> I was going to run a camera through some of the towns that were off major highways Is this a project you'd still be interested in?

ecopoesis 11y ago

The environmental cleanup is probably a huge part of the reason companies don't invest in the old mills. Besides the mundane things like lead and asbestos, they are also probably all sort of nasties left over from the dyes and other chemicals used in the old mills.

fludlight 11y ago
These old factories are sometimes also designated as "historical", which limits the modifications that new tenants can make and greatly increases TI costs.

samstave 11y ago

Brick and timber buildings would be beautiful I. California, and may even be affordable to literally deconstruct them and move them. Look at the last sale price of this building, $535.00 five hundred!! http://www.zillow.com/homedetails/530-Kenilworth-St-Detroit-MI-48202/88723118_zpid/ http://www.zillow.com/homedetails/530-Kenilworth-St-Detroit-...

thephyber 11y ago
Unreinforced mortar doesn't cut it in California building codes. It would crumble in either a moderate earthquake or over time during lots of small ones. Sale prices obscure some of the more expensive parts of a sale -- leins on the title and back taxes. Sometimes you do get a property for cheap, but always do your due diligence.

scarecrowbob 11y ago

Yup... it's kinda creepy. I've spent a lot of time driving between Lubbock and Fredericksburg, TX and it's really quite sad to see the kind of decay that you find in that area of the world. I keep thinking that if I could figure out how to get enough remote development business, it'd be interesting to buy up a chunk of old buildings in Ballenger or Menard (home of 3 cemeteries and a historic "ditch walk")... but then I think about how far you are from a city and think it would be a tough sell for most folks.

eanzenberg 11y ago

Why's that surprising? I'm not surprised it is cheaper to build a new office unit than to renovate an existing dilapidated one and bring it up to 2015 code.

ghaff 11y ago

In the Northeast at least, there are a fair number of old brick mill buildings that have been renovated and have tech and other tenants. I worked in one in Nashua NH for a few years and there was an apartment complex just down the street in another former textile mill. However, as someone else said, you don't renovate these kind of properties because it's cheaper than building a generic business park. You do it because you're willing to spend extra for something with history and character.

non-prophet 11y ago

I suspect the choice to build new may be due to remodeling costs that exceed new construction costs. Abatement of asbestos and lead paint along with bringing electrical, etc up to code is expensive. This may be a case where regulation results in government failure by constraining economic development opportunities. Anyone have any experience bringing a multi-hundred year old industrial facility up to office space code?

shostack 11y ago

Something tells me the remodeling isn't the reason nobody wants to build a startup there.

TYPE_FASTER 11y ago

They definitely exist, I used to work in this building: http://www.americantwine.com http://www.americantwine.com Here's another example: http://www.thecmaninn.com/claremont/about-us/history.aspx http://www.thecmaninn.com/claremont/about-us/history.aspx Here's an older paper from the state of RI: http://www.planning.ri.gov/documents/tp/TP%20150.pdf http://www.planning.ri.gov/documents/tp/TP%20150.pdf So one note from that paper: northern RI alone had 10mil sq ft of vacant mill building space. That's a lot. It will take a lot of rebuilding to come close to reclaiming all the space in those old buildings. Also, those old buildings didn't always take into account things like, say, HVAC efficiency. That kind of retrofitting takes money.