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How hard would it be to convert that building to residential, and sell each floor as an unfinished apartment or two? (With ground floor for retail businesses t
by neilv 3y ago
How hard would it be to convert that building to residential, and sell each floor as an unfinished apartment or two?
(With ground floor for retail businesses that are generally appealing to residents of the building, such as a cafe.)
- jdlshore 3y agoMy understanding is that office buildings don’t usually have the windows, ventilation, or plumbing required to support apartments. A retrofit would be expensive and would leave you with a ton of cave-like rooms in the interior.
- JumpCrisscross 3y ago> would leave you with a ton of cave-like rooms in the interior I get into this debate every time this comes up, but this was my (illegal) first apartment in New York. It was great. It’s prudish tendencies like outlawing apartments with no windows that force folks like me, who would put black-out curtains anyway, to compete for housing with families who do need natural light. All while an office building lies vacant.
- alex_lav 3y agoYes, simply rollback habitability requirements for tech workers. What could go wrong?
- MenhirMike 3y agoCould name the building "Grenfell Tower S.F.".
- closeparen 3y agoYou do not ever, under any circumstances, get to credit yourself for promoting "habitability" in a city where adults routinely need roommates.
- alex_lav 3y agoNo...I don't think this logic really holds... Laws around habitability have nothing to do with price. If you want to make the race to the bottom worse, remove habitability requirements and observe actual dystopia.
- nylonstrung 3y agoWindows are legally required for safety purposes, not for sunlight
- xvedejas 3y agoIt’s prudish tendencies like outlawing apartments with no windows that force folks like me, who don't care for safety anyway, to compete for housing with families who do need safety. but unironically; it'd be much safer than the street
- acchow 3y agoIt’s preferable to have safety standards on general housing stock, instead of asking individuals to figure out safety levels. I imagine there are plenty of people out there that aren’t aware that windows are for safety and might find out in the worst way possible.
- throwaway11460 3y agoWhat safety? This makes no sense. Am I supposed to jump out of 20th floor or what?
- kkfx 3y agoIn case of ventilation fail an openable window allow for emergency manual ventilation, beside that being exposed to a bit of sunlight is needed for a good health, artificial lights can't do the same.
- throwaway11460 3y agoMany flats here in Europe have windows that don't open. Don't tell me I can open the windows in a NYC skyscraper
- kkfx 3y agoWell, at least in Italy (where I was born) and France it's not allowed to have civil accommodations without openable windows. In Italy at all, in France you are allowed for non-living areas (bathroom and kitchens essentially) as long as another form of ventilation is present. Limits I know are 1/8 of the flat surface you can march on must be openable windows, 1 complete air change per hour (you have a 50m³ room, you must change at least 50m³ of air per hour. There are some tolerance for historic buildings down to 1/12 of the flat surface, below that the accommodation can't be used to live in. While for offices there is only an natural illumination requirement, and a ventilation NOT necessarily bound to openable windows. I do not know for the rest of the EU.
- znpy 3y agoOr maybe raise the requirements for office buildings so that they’re more easily convertible to housing purposes?
- jdlshore 3y agoI’d guess that your preference for windowless rooms is out of the norm, and that most people do want windows. Or at least enough do that it doesn’t make financial sense to convert office buildings. Or maybe I’m wrong! Maybe the reason that we haven’t seen a rash of converted office buildings is that property owners are holding out hope for return to office, and desperately avoiding writing down their properties. That’s pretty plausible too.
- renewiltord 3y agoYeah, Munger Hall was a good design. It's all right, though. I outcompete practically anyone for the homes I care about. They complain on the Internet and I live in the homes they want because they won't let me live in these things. I go on the Internet and it's people saying stuff like "Everyone worries about rent these days" and I really don't.
- seanmcdirmid 3y agoIn china where legal compliance is more loose, a lot of people live in windowless sub basement rooms (called the ant tribe in Beijing at least). Mold is an issue, so these are even less habital than what you are looking for probably. I once spent the night in a windowless hotel room in Xi’an. It freaked me out so I moved hotels the next day.
- renewiltord 3y agoIn America, they who could live there live on the street instead. I suppose one could argue which is better. But most seem to prefer the windowless room over the street.
- seanmcdirmid 3y agoThat's true. But note that these dwellings are also illegal in China, just that rule of law in China is not as strong as it is in America. Anyways, American moral standards prevent us from just giving people window less rooms to live in, it has to be $100k/tiny home that will last only a few years, or something else crazy like that.
- renewiltord 3y agoIt's true. I have noticed this. I think it's because American moral standards conform to the Copenhagen interpretation of ethics. Pareto improvements are insufficient. Interaction implies that some high standard must be met. Therefore, if we give someone something it is insufficient that it is better. It must be good.
- iancmceachern 3y agoI live in one. I think it's less about the pragmatics of the things you list, and more about the permits. I could walk into a lot of commercial spaces, including my office and turn it into a code compliant dwelling myself with stuff from Home Depot I can fit in my truck. I can't get it approved, permitted , by the city of SF, even if I did it by the books. There are literally people who show up to the permit office with wheelbarrows. If you want to fix housing in SF, fix the permit office.
- appplication 3y agoDidn’t we just pass a ballot measure to make this less headache?
- iancmceachern 3y agoI honestly don't know, I expect they can only improve it by 10% or so without drastically changing things.
- closeparen 3y agoEach floor has got to be worth at least a million as one big apartment with its existing office bathrooms, no?
- readthenotes1 3y agoAnd in San Francisco, there is also a requirement for new multi-family dwelling to set aside a certain percent for low rent use. I only know that because it tanked a developer from doing the conversion on a downtown SF property last year, and that made hacker News.
- sakopov 3y agoNot sure if it's hard but it's definitely costly. Looks like average renovation costs (after some quick googling) $100-$200/sqft and with an average office tower floor size of 25000sqft it's going to be at least $2.5M per floor.