5 ms·

In Chicago, there are efforts to convert office buildings into residential units. https://www.costar.com/article/1334232190/chicagos-plans-for-office-to-reside

by clcaev 3y ago

In Chicago, there are efforts to convert office buildings into residential units. https://www.costar.com/article/1334232190/chicagos-plans-for-office-to-residential-conversions-take-shape-in-longtime-us-commodities-capital https://www.costar.com/article/1334232190/chicagos-plans-for...

davey48016 3y ago
I've read that the challenge with a lot of these conversion projects is plumbing. They only have pipes going up certain areas, and apparently that makes it pretty expensive to get a kitchen and bathroom in every unit when you convert it to apartments.
- ElfinTrousers 3y ago
  I've heard the same, to which I have two replies: (1) It might be expensive to add a lot of extra plumbing, but is it really more expensive than the revenue your building isn't generating as office space? (I imagine this will vary a lot from one building and owner to the next). (2) It's possible to have housing with shared bathrooms and kitchens. HN commenters sometimes ask "Yeah, but who wants to live in a place with a shared bathroom?" The answer: someone whose current housing is even worse, or nonexistent. Sleeping in a clean, safe bedroom with a door that locks but having to go down the hall to pee is a big improvement over sleeping on the street.
  - thedougd 3y ago
    I would think drop ceilings go a long way to providing the extra space and access needed to retrofit plumbing.
  - phpisthebest 3y ago
    >>It's possible to have housing with shared bathrooms and kitchens. not with current zoning laws... and good look changing them. never gonna happen. >> Sleeping in a clean, safe bedroom but having to go down the hall to pee is a big improvement over sleeping on the street. Now you are talking about people that likely have no money, and thus your profitability is out the window. There is a reason why most new housing in large cities are "luxury" and not "affordable"... Affordable housing does not make money
  - TedDoesntTalk 3y ago
    > It's possible to have housing with shared bathrooms and kitchens This used to be very popular 100 years ago. You could rent a room in a “boarding house” with shared bath and kitchen. I don’t know why that model failed and no longer exists.
    - Something1234 3y ago
      Sounds a lot like the informal roommates agreement where one of them is secretly the owner.
    - ElfinTrousers 3y ago
      I haven't been in SF in many years, but at least 15 years ago there were still loads of SRO (single-room occupancy) hotels that people lived in long-term. Typically you'd get a private room with a sink, a block of bathrooms per floor, and no kitchen facilities. Some of these hotels were straight-up crackhouses, but others were clean and peaceful places for people with very little money to live.
  - snarf21 3y ago
    These points are well said. It is easy to create a set of private but shared bathrooms around the existing plumbing blocks .. It could also let people have downtown apartments for 1/3 cost with a potentially great view .. We really need to do a better job of reimagining things into new and different things when the old is no longer wanted; don't get me started on malls...
- adamjcook 3y ago
  Not to challenge your comment, but we have been converting office high-rises into apartments all over Detroit seemingly quite successfully and tastefully - with buildings built in the 1920s no less. I am living in a converted office high-rise (built in 1914) right now in fact: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kales_Building https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kales_Building And there is another in the middle of conversion right next door: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Artists_Theatre_Building https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Artists_Theatre_Build... It is hard to generalize, but I would be willing to bet that it is cheaper to convert more modern, recently built or still under-construction office high-rises.
  - TMWNN 3y ago
    > It is hard to generalize, but I would be willing to bet that it is cheaper to convert more modern, recently built or still under-construction office high-rises. No, it's harder. As anyone who has visited a doctor's office or somesuch in an older office building knows, they tend to be already divided up into smaller, discrete spaces off hallways, like apartments, and often have individual plumbing into each space. Modern office buildings with big, open floors aren't like that.
    - adamjcook 3y ago
      In some cases, yes, but certainly not in all of them (or a majority of them) here in Detroit (based on photographs taken by urban explorers). There are many department stores and theaters, for example, that had wide open floors. Conversions of department stores to residential units is popular in Detroit since we had so many at one time. The United Artists Theatre high-rise I mentioned has no divided offices from the photos taken by urban explorers: http://www.detroiturbex.com/content/parksandrec/uat/index.html http://www.detroiturbex.com/content/parksandrec/uat/index.ht... I believe that the Kales Building did not as well. It is certainly not clear to me that, in many of these Detroit conversations, that just because the space was divided into discrete, smaller spaces that plumbing was run to them.
- hedora 3y ago
  When old rust belt factories got converted to residential, they often kept the old floor plan, and made huge luxury lofts out of them. I imagine there is a big market for 10,000 sq ft single room apartments with glass on four sides and hookups for a restroom+kitchen (or 2 x 5000 sq ft, 4x1250, etc). Of course those factories were sold at firesale prices. For commercial high-rises, to get a nice outcome like that, they’d need to sell the building off a floor at a time. Hopefully that will happen this time. Let the new residents figure out what to do with each floor. The result would probably be incredibly nice, but too quirky for a typical flipper to put in.
- yowzadave 3y ago
  Also for many office buildings, the lease span (the distance from the core of the building to the exterior) is much longer than that of a residential building. This means that your ratio of window to floor area is smaller than you'd want for a residence--you either have very long, narrow, awkward bedrooms, or a lot of unused space toward the interior of the building. You can't have a bedroom without a window. There have been some efforts in NYC to explore allowing "bedrooms" that don't have windows, probably because there's interest in making use of some of these spaces in this fashion.

by clcaev 3y ago

davey48016 3y ago

I've read that the challenge with a lot of these conversion projects is plumbing. They only have pipes going up certain areas, and apparently that makes it pretty expensive to get a kitchen and bathroom in every unit when you convert it to apartments.

ElfinTrousers 3y ago
I've heard the same, to which I have two replies: (1) It might be expensive to add a lot of extra plumbing, but is it really more expensive than the revenue your building isn't generating as office space? (I imagine this will vary a lot from one building and owner to the next). (2) It's possible to have housing with shared bathrooms and kitchens. HN commenters sometimes ask "Yeah, but who wants to live in a place with a shared bathroom?" The answer: someone whose current housing is even worse, or nonexistent. Sleeping in a clean, safe bedroom with a door that locks but having to go down the hall to pee is a big improvement over sleeping on the street.
- thedougd 3y ago
  I would think drop ceilings go a long way to providing the extra space and access needed to retrofit plumbing.
- phpisthebest 3y ago
  >>It's possible to have housing with shared bathrooms and kitchens. not with current zoning laws... and good look changing them. never gonna happen. >> Sleeping in a clean, safe bedroom but having to go down the hall to pee is a big improvement over sleeping on the street. Now you are talking about people that likely have no money, and thus your profitability is out the window. There is a reason why most new housing in large cities are "luxury" and not "affordable"... Affordable housing does not make money
- TedDoesntTalk 3y ago
  > It's possible to have housing with shared bathrooms and kitchens This used to be very popular 100 years ago. You could rent a room in a “boarding house” with shared bath and kitchen. I don’t know why that model failed and no longer exists.
  - Something1234 3y ago
    Sounds a lot like the informal roommates agreement where one of them is secretly the owner.
  - ElfinTrousers 3y ago
    I haven't been in SF in many years, but at least 15 years ago there were still loads of SRO (single-room occupancy) hotels that people lived in long-term. Typically you'd get a private room with a sink, a block of bathrooms per floor, and no kitchen facilities. Some of these hotels were straight-up crackhouses, but others were clean and peaceful places for people with very little money to live.
- snarf21 3y ago
  These points are well said. It is easy to create a set of private but shared bathrooms around the existing plumbing blocks .. It could also let people have downtown apartments for 1/3 cost with a potentially great view .. We really need to do a better job of reimagining things into new and different things when the old is no longer wanted; don't get me started on malls...
adamjcook 3y ago
Not to challenge your comment, but we have been converting office high-rises into apartments all over Detroit seemingly quite successfully and tastefully - with buildings built in the 1920s no less. I am living in a converted office high-rise (built in 1914) right now in fact: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kales_Building https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kales_Building And there is another in the middle of conversion right next door: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Artists_Theatre_Building https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Artists_Theatre_Build... It is hard to generalize, but I would be willing to bet that it is cheaper to convert more modern, recently built or still under-construction office high-rises.
- TMWNN 3y ago
  > It is hard to generalize, but I would be willing to bet that it is cheaper to convert more modern, recently built or still under-construction office high-rises. No, it's harder. As anyone who has visited a doctor's office or somesuch in an older office building knows, they tend to be already divided up into smaller, discrete spaces off hallways, like apartments, and often have individual plumbing into each space. Modern office buildings with big, open floors aren't like that.
  - adamjcook 3y ago
    In some cases, yes, but certainly not in all of them (or a majority of them) here in Detroit (based on photographs taken by urban explorers). There are many department stores and theaters, for example, that had wide open floors. Conversions of department stores to residential units is popular in Detroit since we had so many at one time. The United Artists Theatre high-rise I mentioned has no divided offices from the photos taken by urban explorers: http://www.detroiturbex.com/content/parksandrec/uat/index.html http://www.detroiturbex.com/content/parksandrec/uat/index.ht... I believe that the Kales Building did not as well. It is certainly not clear to me that, in many of these Detroit conversations, that just because the space was divided into discrete, smaller spaces that plumbing was run to them.
hedora 3y ago
When old rust belt factories got converted to residential, they often kept the old floor plan, and made huge luxury lofts out of them. I imagine there is a big market for 10,000 sq ft single room apartments with glass on four sides and hookups for a restroom+kitchen (or 2 x 5000 sq ft, 4x1250, etc). Of course those factories were sold at firesale prices. For commercial high-rises, to get a nice outcome like that, they’d need to sell the building off a floor at a time. Hopefully that will happen this time. Let the new residents figure out what to do with each floor. The result would probably be incredibly nice, but too quirky for a typical flipper to put in.
yowzadave 3y ago
Also for many office buildings, the lease span (the distance from the core of the building to the exterior) is much longer than that of a residential building. This means that your ratio of window to floor area is smaller than you'd want for a residence--you either have very long, narrow, awkward bedrooms, or a lot of unused space toward the interior of the building. You can't have a bedroom without a window. There have been some efforts in NYC to explore allowing "bedrooms" that don't have windows, probably because there's interest in making use of some of these spaces in this fashion.