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Empty offices are becoming apartments in Texas’s big cities
- vwoolf 4y agoCalifornia cities should take note.
- buzzert 4y agoThey can’t. Texas has much looser zoning laws, California has some of the strictest in the nation.
- asdff 4y agoThey've been doing this in LA for years already https://la.urbanize.city/post/another-koreatown-office-building-become-apartments https://la.urbanize.city/post/another-koreatown-office-build... (2017)
- AmericanChopper 4y agoIf only there were a group of people responsible for making sure that the laws served the interests of the people. Perhaps California will establish such a system one day.
- rahimnathwani 4y agoI guess you're talking about laws being designed to serve the interests of certain groups (e.g. teachers' unions) at the expense of everyone else. If so, is that problem unique to California? If the problem is worse in California than elsewhere in the US, then what about the design of the system could be changed to improve the situation?
- kevingadd 4y agoCalifornia lets ordinary voters permanently amend the constitution without the intervention of any Evil Lawmakers, which has worked out Great(tm) so far.
- epistasis 4y agoPeople are working on it! Join CA YIMBY and help change the laws to work for the people, rather than wealthy homeowners.
- barbacoa 4y agoHouston doesn't even HAVE zoning laws. Companies in Houston can and do build industries like petrochemical processing plants in or near residential neighborhoods. For example: https://www.cbsnews.com/philadelphia/news/arkema-explosion-risk/ https://www.cbsnews.com/philadelphia/news/arkema-explosion-r... You can do almost anything you'd like since it is your land. Very different culture to California.
- astrange 4y agoIt has everything but zoning laws; parking minimums are enough to ruin a city's land use.
- ericmay 4y agoI think the OP was just pointing out that Houston doesn’t have zoning laws (in comparison to California). Note that this has not stopped Houston from becoming a sprawling suburb with massive amounts of parking lots. Houston didn’t build good density (or even a city really) despite the lack of zoning laws. I don’t think zoning is the culprit here but it’s difficult to compare cities and compare them across different states. Also I’m not sure there’s a meaningful distinction between zoning laws and a local regulation like parking minimums. The effect is the same so zoning laws as a concept becomes a bit of a red herring unless we take zoning to include all general rules and regulations that govern how buildings can be built, transit, etc.
- colinmhayes 4y agoHouston's parking minimums are absolutely the main culprit for the amount of sprawl it has even in its downtown areas. Every single business needs a parking lot so everything is in a strip mall and therefore unwalkable.
- ericmay 4y agoSure but I don’t think it’s helpful to try and separate those from zoning regulations here. Also I think even without those mandatory minimums a city like Houston is dead set on cars at all cost. Frankly, all of America is this way too it’s just that there are a few cities where geography has constrained sprawl. I fear for my own city, Columbus. The state, county, and city governments just do not understand that car-first infrastructure is a failed policy and will bankrupt us.
- fells 4y ago> California has some of the strictest in the nation. Typically to stop the encroachment of commercial or industrial buildings into residential areas? Wouldn't this, offices into apartments, be rather amenable?
- tzs 4y agoAren't those looser zoning laws supposed to make it so they don't need to do things like this in Texas?
- conductr 4y agoI like this trend for Dallas and think it is long overdue. Covid made it very obvious. The city has grown a ton in recent history but has had a hard time bringing people to downtown for anything other than work. It's usually dead in evenings and on weekends. Restaurants struggle unless they cater to the lunch crowd, etc. While it's improved in the past ~5 years or so versus the previous ~10; I've seen recent numbers that say there are only about 10000-12000 residents in the Downtown area. Anyways, I've been reading a lot on the local happenings and am interesting into how this trend will reshape the area culturally/economically. For example, Texan's don't tend to put up with homeless issues like they exist and the city really needs to figure that out or this could be a wasted opportunity. These are all new "luxury apartments" and those folks aren't going to tolerate the homeless issues but even that's hard to say since we've gotten such an influx of more liberal minded folks that are more compassionate on those issues.
- tjr225 4y agoHomelessness persists for reasons outside of local attitudes. The weather can kill you in Dallas. Political opinion does not care.
- jmugan 4y agoMaybe, but the weather in Austin is similar to Dallas.
- hadlock 4y agoAustin might get freezes periodically, but they do not get the same ice storms that Dallas gets, certainly not as frequently. The blizzards that Oklahoma and Kansas deal with, Dallas gets a taste of that for 2-3 days a year, but that 200 mile north-south buffer between Dallas and Austin is a significant one.
- Pxtl 4y agoYou know we have homeless people in Canada, right? Like there's a lot of them in Montreal which gets a fair bit colder than Dallas.
- rgblambda 4y agoI had heard that office buildings were unsuitable for converting to apartments. But it looks like they're completely gutting the interiors.
- WaxProlix 4y agoAgreed, I'd be much more interested in the How than the Why.
- jnwatson 4y agoI am interested in the engineering of such a conversion. The biggest issue has got to be plumbing.
- gwbrooks 4y agoThat's the biggest issue once you get to conversion. Before conversion? The two biggest obstacles are: * Commercial mortgages make it nearly impossible to change a property in this manner, so you're usually limited to buildings owned free and clear. * In most cities, zoning/planning would push back on this; I suspect the most interesting part of the Texas story is how they routed around that.
- simfree 4y agoZoning generally can be modified either by the local planning department, or by ballot measure.
- dan-robertson 4y agoIn practice it seems very hard to make such changes happen in US cities. I think Texas doesn’t really do zoning the same way so there’s not so much of an issue.
- chii 4y ago> Commercial mortgages make it nearly impossible to change a property in this manner that's a contractual issue, rather than an engineering issue. This can be fixed with a stroke of the pen.
- brettgooo 4y agoI can’t wait to move into the Salesforce Tower
- spookthesunset 4y agoApartments full of people sitting in some tiny room all day zooming into their meetings. Imagine allocating 25% of your expensive 1200sqft apartment for your work from home office. 25% allocated to the sole use of your employer. And it isn’t even tax deductible because you are a w2. It’s like Uber only instead of people using their own property to drive other people around they are using their own home to benefit your employer. Behold the brave new dystopian future. This stuff is a fad. I don’t care what people say. Sitting on some tiny urban apartment working at home all day makes zero sense. Neither does paying for some co-working space to escape said tiny apartment. Might as well go to the office… oh wait… same thing in this brave “new normal” All we are seeing is the rebirth of white flight to the suburbs branded as some kind of new revolution in tech work. It’s a fad. Covid mitigations we’re temporary. Pendulum is gonna swing back. It’s just a matter of time.
- Terr_ 4y ago"Sole use"? I can't imagine any remote-work job that forces you to have a work-only-desk and work-only-chair. Outside work hours I use the same floor space for private stuff, like gaming on my PC with too many fans and lights. Oh, sure, having a separate dedicated work-space is nice, cognitively speaking, but it's a wild exaggeration to claim it can't ever be dual-use.
- Tade0 4y ago> Imagine allocating 25% of your expensive 1200sqft apartment for your work from home office I'm not American, so aside from the unit conversions I'm having trouble reading the sentiment. Is a 1200sq ft apartment considered large in the US? Are rooms normally 300sq ft? I' asking because I live and work on around 700sq ft, of which 150sq ft is my office.
- manfre 4y agoThey likely do not live in an apartment and are trying to apply their home office square footage to an apartment. Based upon the many zoom backgrounds of coworkers and interview candidates, many set at most a desk as a permanent WFH space. The more common is not having any exclusively WFH spaces and using the work laptop in various sources throughout their apartments.
- dustractor 4y agoHaving lived in many an unconventional domicile over the years, it seems to me that there is an untapped market for the type of furniture solutions that you only need when you're living somewhere not designed for living. I lived in a hotel for a while. White carpet! White marble sink! Don't drink any grape juice or wine! When your kitchen is just a mini-fridge, hot-plate, electric kettle, and a toaster, everything takes so many extra steps to protect your environment from any possible spills. Had to do dishes in the tub, and while the laundry was broken, also did laundry there and then turned the whole room into a drying area. Things like this are going to be happening with increasing frequency. Landlords and property managers are going to get mad or at least very stressed about %$#@# dangit these &@#^@# people how can they live like this!? Meanwhile the tenants will be pissed about living in the converse situation wondering @#$@#$ dangit how are we supposed to live any other way if the facilities are built for other activities!?!
- baby 4y agoHave you heard of airbnb?
- soggylaundry 4y agohm we call them "office-tels" here there are ultra-premium variants
- TedShiller 4y agoterrible idea. more pollution, overcrowding, noise
- diordiderot 4y ago1. Higher density = less driving = less Less pollution 2. Overcrowding doesn't even make sense. Thats just a subjective opinion. 3. Cities aren't loud cars are loud[0] [0]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CTV-wwszGw8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CTV-wwszGw8
- kory 4y agoOvercrowding isn’t an issue because it’s a subjective opinion? What? By every measure cities are more crowded than suburban areas. Every big city I’ve been too has been dirtier than low density suburban areas of equivalent wealth. Cities are definitely louder than suburban streets, if they’re in cul de sacs and not next to a main throughway.
- dvdkon 4y agoYes, cities are (almost by definition) more crowded. What is subjective is when they become overcrowded. By a pragmatic metric (say, infrastructure spending per capita) that's not happening in cities even most Europeans would consider overcrowded. They're also louder, but that noise is contained within relatively small pockets. Fans of quiet suburbia need not worry.
- baby 4y agoI was wondering why people don’t do that in sf
- mariojv 4y agoAs a resident of San Antonio, I was happy to see one of the projects here featured in the article. I've been happy living here, with among other things, the low cost of living, great parks, unique culture, nearby beaches and wine country, plus a few options for gigabit fiber internet. However, the city's never had a lot of tech employers, and the vacant office space downtown seems like such a waste. It is good to see it being put to use. As an aside: with the expansion of major tech employers in Austin and pervasiveness of remote work, I wonder if there is much demand for optional hybrid setups like teams from in the region going into the office once a month or so for collaboration. I am not sure if I'd prefer it to full remote, but in person meetings with coworkers can be quite enjoyable. Allowing people to live a little further from Austin while commuting in occasionally seems like a good way to get some of the benefits of in person work while letting people choose locales with a lower cost of living.
- pfdietz 4y agoSan Antonio is a huge spread out metropolitan area, so this can't be that much of a problem there. I like your semi-remote idea. May I suggest everyone get together at a resort-like area, not at an office?
- zibby8 4y ago> May I suggest everyone get together at a resort-like area It would have to be nearby if people on the team have kids. It's hard to get away for any extended period of time as a parent.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- swozey 4y agoRackspace had a ton of commuters going either direction since they had an ATX and SATX office
- mariojv 4y ago
- woofyman 4y agoI live in a converted 1953 8 story office building. The interior was gutted.
- LatteLazy 4y agoIf only London would follow.
- MomoXenosaga 4y agoMaybe one day America will turn churches into apartments.
- settrans 4y agoI wouldn't hold your breath, at least in San Francisco: https://sf.curbed.com/2019/8/2/20751966/dolores-651-lighthouse-ryan-allis-sale-hive-surrender-developer https://sf.curbed.com/2019/8/2/20751966/dolores-651-lighthou...
- eschulz 4y agoThere already are some cases, and there will be many more in the future I presume https://blockclubchicago.org/2021/03/04/another-century-old-logan-square-church-transformed-into-luxury-apartments/ https://blockclubchicago.org/2021/03/04/another-century-old-...
- jandrewrogers 4y agoThere have been a number of church to condo (and house!) conversions in Seattle and other parts of the Pacific Northwest. They have pretty unique interiors due to the architectural constraints put on them by the original building and the prodigious quantities of vertical space.
- arbuge 4y ago> The trend seems tailor-made for Texas. Office-vacancy rates in most of the state’s major downtowns are high (roughly 25 percent in Dallas and Houston, in the teens in Fort Worth and San Antonio). The cost of single-family homes has skyrocketed and interest rates have risen, making many would-be buyers renters. And relatively few apartments are available, with vacancy levels in the single digits and pricey monthly rents expected to get even pricier Similar trends and numbers apply nationwide, if not worldwide. You could certainly say all of this (indeed, to an even greater extent) for places like San Francisco and New York City.
- black_13 4y ago
- rr808 4y agoNot for me. One of the reasons to live downtown is to be close to the office, and to benefit from other people being around. If you dont have an office and the local shops and restaurants are closing, why live downtown?
- Gareth321 4y ago> and to benefit from other people being around. If this trend continues, you'll be around even more people, and even more amenities will spring up to accommodate all the new people. The only catch is that your next job might not be close by in the city. Perhaps it'll be remote, or you'll be commuting out of the city. Thankfully, logistically, this is far preferable to the inverse.
- humanrebar 4y agoIf you live in downtown Dallas, it's generally easy to drive out in arbitrary directions because you're going the other direction from all of the people sitting (literally) in the opening traffic jam from Office Space.
- unethical_ban 4y agoI'd love it if these developments would grant equity to its tenants. But then they'd just squat on the land, making it useless. Is this really the best of all possible worlds, where a small number of investment groups with vast wealth can keep accumulating the core real estate of cities, to extract wealth from its citizens?
- stillbourne 4y agoThis needs to be done everywhere. Move as much people to remote as physically possible, which is basically everyone who works in an office, and change all that into residential real estate.
- hwestiii 4y agoI would certainly welcome some life returning to downtown Dallas. When I worked there in the aughts it looked more or less indistinguishable from a lot of the Rust Belt downtowns I visited during the same period. Skyrocketing vacancies and anemic accommodations because of all the the companies who fled to real estate deals in the burbs.