6 ms·

There are issues with crime of course, but aren't these "vacant" downtowns ripe for a transformation with mixed use living, etc? I see a lot of new apartments

by xrd 4y ago

There are issues with crime of course, but aren't these "vacant" downtowns ripe for a transformation with mixed use living, etc? I see a lot of new apartments (I shudder to mention Adam Neuman's new venture Flow as an example: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flow_(real_estate_company) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flow_(real_estate_company)) that are combinations of work and life and after-work life. People won't be building those in the suburbs, can you imagine the NIMBY fights? It will take a little bit of time to convert them, but aren't dense cities going to come out in an interesting way? SF has so much to offer geographically.

tedivm 4y ago
This is what Chicago is doing. They're converting a ton of office space into housing. https://www.marketplace.org/2022/10/04/chicago-iconic-office-buildings-apartment-conversions/ https://www.marketplace.org/2022/10/04/chicago-iconic-office... San Francisco hates housing though, so it doesn't seem like anyone is actually considering this there.
- marcinzm 4y ago
  >They're converting a ton of office space into housing. From that article if I read correctly, they're trying to see if it's possible to convert a lot of existing office space into housing. Not yet at the actually doing it phase.
  - tedivm 4y ago
    They're planning on approving the first projects this quarter. https://www.costar.com/article/666325850/over-12-billion-in-office-to-residential-conversions-proposed-for-chicagos-lasalle-street-corridor https://www.costar.com/article/666325850/over-12-billion-in-...
    - vuln 4y ago
      Let’s just wait to see what actually gets approved and if the actual projects are completed on time and on budget.
      - Kon-Peki 4y ago
        Not only is my employer's office lease not being renewed, but we're going to get paid to vacate early. This is happening.
    - red-iron-pine 4y ago
      "planning on approving" =/= approved. and we'll see what gets a greenlight; could be one or two pet projects, and after those crash and burn nothing else happens.
- BurningFrog 4y ago
  San Francisco took 20 years to build a bus line. It's very much a "let's never change anything" place.
  - xrd 4y ago
    Yes, and in this case there are property owners who stand to lose hundreds of millions. They need to get permits to convert, but they can apply political pressure. I think things are different in that there are some powerful forces aligned to make this work, rather than just government ineptitude. Andy Jassy, as example, who owns part of the Mariners and a new NHL team. He's going to be motivated to protect that wealth by protecting downtown Seattle.
  - m0llusk 4y ago
    That is a highly inaccurate description of what happened. When the bus rapid transit lane was approve inspection showed that the infrastructure underneath was in dire need of maintenance, so the project attended that first in order to avoid simply digging up the newly built lane in the short term as old infrastructure failed. San Francisco has many problems and has made many mistakes recently, but this is an example of taking the time and money to get things right.
- rhaway84773 4y ago
  NYC has some useful history here. The entire downtown area was expected to become a ghost town after 9/11 because companies fled from there and it was entirely an office district. Office to residential conversions and new residential towers have completely transformed the area, arguably making it much better than what it was before. And the largest office to residential conversion in America was just green lighted there. https://nypost.com/2023/04/24/longtime-nyc-home-of-the-daily-news-to-convert-to-residential/ https://nypost.com/2023/04/24/longtime-nyc-home-of-the-daily...
- m0llusk 4y ago
  That is terribly political and ignorant. San Francisco has a great deal of commercial space that has been converted to either pure residential or live/work. One potentially interesting recent example is the tower on Van Ness which was empty and abandoned for many years. That enabled it to be sold at an extremely low price which still did not make the renovations pencil out for anything except high end luxury apartments. Commercial to residential conversions tend to be expensive and complex and political convenience is not much help for that.
bhouston 4y ago
> There are issues with crime of course Here is the crime stats for SF, more property crime in SF and less violent crime in SF compared to there cities, and it seemed to peak in 2020 decreasing since then: https://www.sfchronicle.com/projects/2022/fixing-san-francisco-problems/crime https://www.sfchronicle.com/projects/2022/fixing-san-francis...
- zaroth 4y ago
  Do the stats tell the full story? If you stop prosecuting crime, and cops then stop arresting criminals, the stats go down and the crime goes up.
  - bhouston 4y ago
    > Do the stats tell the full story? If you stop prosecuting crime, and cops then stop arresting criminals, the stats go down and the crime goes up. Do you have any stats to share? I think another telling part in that article I linked to is that survey respondents in SF in July 2022 said the biggest issue for them, by almost a factor of 2, is homelessness and not crime. That stat appears to have a long-term upward trend: https://sfgov.org/scorecards/safety-net/homeless-population#:~:text=Number%20of%20People%20Experiencing%20Homelessness%20during%20each%20PIT%20Count%2C%202005%2D2022,-Sheltered%2FUnsheltered%3A&text=Under%20the%202022%20PIT%20Count,homeless%20population%20from%202019%20–%202022 https://sfgov.org/scorecards/safety-net/homeless-population#....
    - ETH_start 4y ago
      The homelessness issue is mostly people with severe substance abuse problems, and concurrently brain-damage/mental-illness, roaming the streets, making people feel uneasy.
  - gumby 4y ago
    Violent crime is a useful metric because it’s generally reported and followed. Property crime is what’s more likely to languish, leading to underreporting. So ppl who study crime incidence use violent crime as the like-to-like bellwether.
raybb 4y ago
I don't have a good source for this but my understanding is that converting offices to residential is quite expensive, sometimes not far off from the cost of building from scratch. Also if you're the building owner it might be worth more as vacant office space than spending the money to covert it.
ethagknight 4y ago
I do this for a living and no, most office towers from the last 50 years are not ripe for mixed use living. It can be done, but the unit economics are sobering. Historic buildings lay out well, but it's still very expensive. We are converting a historic building in downtown St Louis right now opening in June, and it is very expensive, historic tax credits mandatory to make the numbers work. Shameless plug: www.victorstl.com Very expensive to convert the space, different utility demands (many more bathrooms), mechanical ventilation needs are very different, office towers have very high opex, requires a team to run them, and typically have exorbitant RE taxes. All that for the privilege of a sub-par living experience, i.e. rents will be low relative to market. severely limited daylight, no balcony or fresh air (windows aren't operable). Many office towers and their associated leases were vanity projects for corporations wanting high profile space in a high profile areas to attract employees and prestige, but business culture has, in large part, moved on. My small business moved from the "elite" downtown high rise to a boring little office park closer to our team's homes, and nearly every aspect is significantly comparatively better. Shorter commute, no high-rise elevator wait, no walk to the garage (and another elevator and wait to congestion to exit at quittin' time), no panhandling when you want to step outside for fresh air. I do miss the high rise view, but otherwise my office and business functions exactly the same, with the added perk of being able to make it to my kids' activities whenever I want. Elite is no longer "main and main hi-rise" but working wherever you want whenever you want. Elite is Zooming in from an Aspen CO ski lodge. Has been for some time, but the daily expectation for in-person meetings has been cut. Now, revisit the high rise calculus again...
- ghaff 4y ago
  Yeah, our Boston office in the Seaport is great for the (mostly younger) employees who live in the city and can walk or take public transit. And, for our customers coming in for a day or two meeting--which is the main reason we have an office there. For everyone else, our office in the suburbs is much handier. Not that I or a lot of people regularly go into an office any longer, but I'm a pretty easy 30 minute drive to our suburban office or a 2 hour trip into the city (whether I take the train/transit or just drive in).
  - 4y ago

by xrd 4y ago

tedivm 4y ago

This is what Chicago is doing. They're converting a ton of office space into housing. https://www.marketplace.org/2022/10/04/chicago-iconic-office-buildings-apartment-conversions/ https://www.marketplace.org/2022/10/04/chicago-iconic-office... San Francisco hates housing though, so it doesn't seem like anyone is actually considering this there.

marcinzm 4y ago
>They're converting a ton of office space into housing. From that article if I read correctly, they're trying to see if it's possible to convert a lot of existing office space into housing. Not yet at the actually doing it phase.
- tedivm 4y ago
  They're planning on approving the first projects this quarter. https://www.costar.com/article/666325850/over-12-billion-in-office-to-residential-conversions-proposed-for-chicagos-lasalle-street-corridor https://www.costar.com/article/666325850/over-12-billion-in-...
  - vuln 4y ago
    Let’s just wait to see what actually gets approved and if the actual projects are completed on time and on budget.
    - Kon-Peki 4y ago
      Not only is my employer's office lease not being renewed, but we're going to get paid to vacate early. This is happening.
  - red-iron-pine 4y ago
    "planning on approving" =/= approved. and we'll see what gets a greenlight; could be one or two pet projects, and after those crash and burn nothing else happens.
BurningFrog 4y ago
San Francisco took 20 years to build a bus line. It's very much a "let's never change anything" place.
- xrd 4y ago
  Yes, and in this case there are property owners who stand to lose hundreds of millions. They need to get permits to convert, but they can apply political pressure. I think things are different in that there are some powerful forces aligned to make this work, rather than just government ineptitude. Andy Jassy, as example, who owns part of the Mariners and a new NHL team. He's going to be motivated to protect that wealth by protecting downtown Seattle.
- m0llusk 4y ago
  That is a highly inaccurate description of what happened. When the bus rapid transit lane was approve inspection showed that the infrastructure underneath was in dire need of maintenance, so the project attended that first in order to avoid simply digging up the newly built lane in the short term as old infrastructure failed. San Francisco has many problems and has made many mistakes recently, but this is an example of taking the time and money to get things right.
rhaway84773 4y ago
NYC has some useful history here. The entire downtown area was expected to become a ghost town after 9/11 because companies fled from there and it was entirely an office district. Office to residential conversions and new residential towers have completely transformed the area, arguably making it much better than what it was before. And the largest office to residential conversion in America was just green lighted there. https://nypost.com/2023/04/24/longtime-nyc-home-of-the-daily-news-to-convert-to-residential/ https://nypost.com/2023/04/24/longtime-nyc-home-of-the-daily...
m0llusk 4y ago
That is terribly political and ignorant. San Francisco has a great deal of commercial space that has been converted to either pure residential or live/work. One potentially interesting recent example is the tower on Van Ness which was empty and abandoned for many years. That enabled it to be sold at an extremely low price which still did not make the renovations pencil out for anything except high end luxury apartments. Commercial to residential conversions tend to be expensive and complex and political convenience is not much help for that.

bhouston 4y ago

> There are issues with crime of course Here is the crime stats for SF, more property crime in SF and less violent crime in SF compared to there cities, and it seemed to peak in 2020 decreasing since then: https://www.sfchronicle.com/projects/2022/fixing-san-francisco-problems/crime https://www.sfchronicle.com/projects/2022/fixing-san-francis...

zaroth 4y ago
Do the stats tell the full story? If you stop prosecuting crime, and cops then stop arresting criminals, the stats go down and the crime goes up.
- bhouston 4y ago
  > Do the stats tell the full story? If you stop prosecuting crime, and cops then stop arresting criminals, the stats go down and the crime goes up. Do you have any stats to share? I think another telling part in that article I linked to is that survey respondents in SF in July 2022 said the biggest issue for them, by almost a factor of 2, is homelessness and not crime. That stat appears to have a long-term upward trend: https://sfgov.org/scorecards/safety-net/homeless-population#:~:text=Number%20of%20People%20Experiencing%20Homelessness%20during%20each%20PIT%20Count%2C%202005%2D2022,-Sheltered%2FUnsheltered%3A&text=Under%20the%202022%20PIT%20Count,homeless%20population%20from%202019%20–%202022 https://sfgov.org/scorecards/safety-net/homeless-population#....
  - ETH_start 4y ago
    The homelessness issue is mostly people with severe substance abuse problems, and concurrently brain-damage/mental-illness, roaming the streets, making people feel uneasy.
- gumby 4y ago
  Violent crime is a useful metric because it’s generally reported and followed. Property crime is what’s more likely to languish, leading to underreporting. So ppl who study crime incidence use violent crime as the like-to-like bellwether.

raybb 4y ago

I don't have a good source for this but my understanding is that converting offices to residential is quite expensive, sometimes not far off from the cost of building from scratch. Also if you're the building owner it might be worth more as vacant office space than spending the money to covert it.

ethagknight 4y ago

I do this for a living and no, most office towers from the last 50 years are not ripe for mixed use living. It can be done, but the unit economics are sobering. Historic buildings lay out well, but it's still very expensive. We are converting a historic building in downtown St Louis right now opening in June, and it is very expensive, historic tax credits mandatory to make the numbers work. Shameless plug: www.victorstl.com Very expensive to convert the space, different utility demands (many more bathrooms), mechanical ventilation needs are very different, office towers have very high opex, requires a team to run them, and typically have exorbitant RE taxes. All that for the privilege of a sub-par living experience, i.e. rents will be low relative to market. severely limited daylight, no balcony or fresh air (windows aren't operable). Many office towers and their associated leases were vanity projects for corporations wanting high profile space in a high profile areas to attract employees and prestige, but business culture has, in large part, moved on. My small business moved from the "elite" downtown high rise to a boring little office park closer to our team's homes, and nearly every aspect is significantly comparatively better. Shorter commute, no high-rise elevator wait, no walk to the garage (and another elevator and wait to congestion to exit at quittin' time), no panhandling when you want to step outside for fresh air. I do miss the high rise view, but otherwise my office and business functions exactly the same, with the added perk of being able to make it to my kids' activities whenever I want. Elite is no longer "main and main hi-rise" but working wherever you want whenever you want. Elite is Zooming in from an Aspen CO ski lodge. Has been for some time, but the daily expectation for in-person meetings has been cut. Now, revisit the high rise calculus again...

ghaff 4y ago
Yeah, our Boston office in the Seaport is great for the (mostly younger) employees who live in the city and can walk or take public transit. And, for our customers coming in for a day or two meeting--which is the main reason we have an office there. For everyone else, our office in the suburbs is much handier. Not that I or a lot of people regularly go into an office any longer, but I'm a pretty easy 30 minute drive to our suburban office or a 2 hour trip into the city (whether I take the train/transit or just drive in).
- 4y ago