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I think this article perhaps misses the real story. That being, office parks first built in 25+ years ago are reaching an age where their long term leases are

• jonknee 11y ago
  Except there aren't tenants to renovate for which is why they are sitting empty and not being renovated. The long term tenants don't want new paint and carpeting, they want to be in the city.
  • deleted 11y ago
    [deleted]
• hiou 11y ago
  Exactly, I see this as the same situation as shopping centers and big box retailers. The cost of renovation etc, is not low enough compared to the cost of building a new building in a better location for the current times. On top of that, the DC metro area is becoming very public transit oriented. Most employers consider good access via public transit an important feature when looking for office space. Being in an outside suburb based upon the current design of the metro transit system means that someone from northern VA will have to travel all the way into DC then transfer back out the Maryland which makes for a significantly longer commute as opposed to an office more centrally located along the metro lines.
  • vonmoltke 11y ago
    > On top of that, the DC metro area is becoming very public transit oriented. Most employers consider good access via public transit an important feature when looking for office space. While at the same time the Metro is going to hell.
    • tbirdz 11y ago
      I disagree. With the new funds coming in, improvements are being done on the metro constantly, they seem to be rebuilding tracks every weekend. On top of that, the new 7000 series train cars are a BIG step up from the old ones. I had a chance to ride in one the other day, and it addressed many of he problems of the older cars. Once the roll out of the 7000-series cars is complete and they take the old cars offline, there should be a big reduction in the amount of delays (which are mostly due to cars having issues).
      • epascarello 11y ago
        Got kicked off two trains yesterday for doors that would not close and just bout missed my MARC train. I rather walk the 2 miles to Union Station than ride the METRO.
      • GVIrish 11y ago
        WMATA is improving in some spots but there are still A LOT of problems with the metro as it stands. There are regularly major delays, they still haven't fixed the automated control since the fatal accident in 2009, there have been more reports of smoke in the tunnels since the fatal incident this year, and they're having to deal with a a bunch of financial irregularities. I hope things improve but as of right now it doesn't look like they've turned the corner.
  • hodwik 11y ago
    Exactly, DC is quickly becoming a public transit city. In this case the building was more than a mile from the closest metro station. Doesn't sound like a lot, but try walking it every day in DC summer heat. Not fun.
• Shivetya 11y ago
  One common occurrence where I live is that county and cities are buying up the old office parks and even strip malls to convert them into government buildings. Most are ideally located as well as being offered up for sale cheaply. Seen even a few charitable organizations buy up parts of a strip mall for the cheap space by square foot. Besides the age a lot of REITs cashed out awhile ago and I am not sure the market is there. Plus people are even further out and those who tended to move had the means to do so and their spending went with them. Suburbia certainly isn't dieing.
  • wh-uws 11y ago
    I've seen this also. Also community colleges (for example Austin community college in Austin Texas) are doing the same.
  • termain 11y ago
    Medical malls, too, perhaps?
  • ChuckMcM 11y ago
    Unfortunately for some zoning prevents you from living in those spaces. A friend of mine tried to get a zone variance to turn an office building into essentially a multifamily dwelling and the city turned him down flat. They suggested he could buy the property, tear down the building, get it rezoned, and then build dwellings there. But not go in and convert a perfectly usable space into a livable space. Sigh.
    • spiritplumber 11y ago
      Similar issue here. What I wanted to do was take a warehouse (zoned light industrial), essentially cut it in half, and live next to my workshop. Explaining that this is common in my home country, it'd take at least one car off the road during commute hours (mine), etc. was in vain.
      • djrogers 11y ago
        Lots of people do that type of thing here too, but un-permitted. If you wanted to be really particular, you could probably get a permit for the work itself (plumbing, kitchen, etc) as long as it wasn't specified as residential. This is what we've come to though - the government has taken away our rights and sell them back to us with permits.
• enjo 11y ago
  Maybe it's hard to see, but these things have a way of coming back around. In 50-60 years the office parks that still exist might very well be where all the hip YC startups of 2066 want to be.
  • toomuchtodo 11y ago
    Or they'll be vast wastelands, with YC startups employing remote workers scattered across the globe working from their homes over their high speed Internet connections.
    • stephancoral 11y ago
      Maybe they will bulldoze them and build parks in their place. I can dream.
      • toomuchtodo 11y ago
        I too hope for that future. Megacities for some, sustainable homes for others, the rest of the world returned to the wild.
        • mgolawala 11y ago
          Unfortunately, I think the more realistic outcome would be that the rest of the world would be turned into farmland or pastureland.
          • toomuchtodo 11y ago
            Possibly. We're already providing more than enough food in the US with existing farmland (although the problem is it isn't distributed properly to people who need said food). Pastureland could be reduced with meat grown in vats instead of raised on farms (or people simply shifting from a meat-heavy diet). The population trajectory appears to be ballistic, with us hitting the apex in the next 5-15 years (educated women have less children and prolong having children until later in life; almost all first world countries are already below replacement rate, India and China won't be far behind).
• ken-far 11y ago
  I don't think so. This quote is key: “I now say that brainy youngsters are trending urban and urbane, away from your grandfather’s office parks.” Real estate analysis is showing that for the first time since it's been measuring more people are looking for housing in denser, more urban environments than in the traditional suburbs. An enormous number of people, especially young people, are looking to avoid spending their lives in cars. Comparing these quiet & dull campuses to a vibrant city really makes it hard to imagine working in them any more.
  • panzagl 11y ago
    People follow the jobs, jobs don't follow people. A more likely scenario is that those jobs are just gone, not that they moved downtown to catch the special snowflakes. Or downtown addresses have replaced campuses whenever executives get together to dick wave.
    • deleted 11y ago
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  • tsotha 11y ago
    >An enormous number of people, especially young people, are looking to avoid spending their lives in cars. Young people never wanted to spend their lives in cars. What's different with this generation is they don't seem to have much interest in forming families, so they move to the trendier areas and spend all their money instead of living in a cheaper area, commuting, and saving for a situation that would be good for raising children. The other difference is big US cities are quite a bit cleaner and safer than they were a generation ago. In the last few years the federal government has been moving subsidized housing to he suburbs, and with it has gone a lot of the crime.
    • nilkn 11y ago
      > What's different with this generation is they don't seem to have much interest in forming families, so they move to the trendier areas and spend all their money instead of living in a cheaper area, commuting, and saving for a situation that would be good for raising children. I think it might be simpler than this. They just can't afford to raise a family as easily as their parents and grandparents could, so many choose not to, not because they legitimately have no interest but because they don't see the numbers adding up. On top of that, it's often no more expensive to rent a small apartment in the city vs. a large house in a suburb. And that large house with its tiring commute is just a burden to someone without kids.
• Apocryphon 11y ago
  Could they be converted into cheap housing?
  • acomjean 11y ago
    I've seen one building like this in watertown ma. I think it was converted during a downturn. I used to walk by it, "riverbank lofts" https://www.google.com/maps/@42.368276,-71.198303,3a,90y,169.43h,92.54t/data=!3m6!1e1!3m4!1soXpfusxJZVCB7t7jxfJTgw!2e0!7i13312!8i6656!6m1!1e1 https://www.google.com/maps/@42.368276,-71.198303,3a,90y,169... But while it could be done, most offices don't have the insides separated out (wiring,plumbing) installed and non-opening windows. And zoning. It can be done, but it might not end up being cheap.
  • riskable 11y ago
    This is not usually possible because of the cost to run plumbing. You have to gut the entire facility in order to put kitchens and bathrooms in every apartment and it just isn't (usually) cost effective.
    • DominikPeters 11y ago
      True in practice, though shared bathrooms & kitchens are no impossibility.
    • waterlesscloud 11y ago
      Yes, it costs some money, but it's been done countless times in old warehouses in cities and towns around the world. Of course, I don't think modern office buildings will have the appeal of "exposed brick" and "thick wooden support beams", but maybe the people of 100 years ago would have thought the same about those buildings.
    • jessaustin 11y ago
      These places have slab floors, and jackhammering sucks, but that isn't the end of the discussion. They typically have really high ceilings, so false floors aren't impossible. Clever architecting can group plumbing-required rooms together. Also, if we're talking about low-income, alternative housing for singles and couples, is a janitor-included shared bathroom down the hall even a problem? Many of the old hotels that are used for this purpose also have this.
• drzaiusapelord 11y ago
  >old factory and turn it into trendy office space with exposed brick and vintage architectural details That's not why we renovate factories. We renovate them because they are in a location we desire (big city centers). The suburbs are a cultural and transportation wasteland for the most part and have nothing but cheap land. Its just unpleasant real estate. Sadly, a lot of smaller companies migrated out to the suburbs because the CEO could simply make a call to move the business closer to his house. This land just makes more sense as residential, or at best retail, and really should have never been turned into offices in the first place.
  • pmorici 11y ago
    Yeah it is. If there weren't anything desirable about the existing structure it would just be torn down and rebuilt. You are confusing the location decision with the decision to demolish vs. renovate.
  • ghaff 11y ago
    >Sadly, a lot of smaller companies migrated out to the suburbs because the CEO could simply make a call to move the business closer to his house. Perhaps. But it's probably also where most of the employees lived. If you're talking the 80s, for example, very few of my co-workers lived in Boston/Cambridge and commuted out to our offices on 495 about an hour away. I'm quite confident that, had there been a vote to move the company offices into the city, the answer would have been a resounding no.
• joeldg 11y ago
  I work in tech and a larger office needs fiber these days, it is a cost consideration when looking for new offices. Many of these older buildings are not wired correctly and would require expensive renovation to get them where they need to be.
• relet 11y ago
  I think it is all about location. East German concrete slab highrisers[0] are being renovated into fashionable lofts, despite their unfashionable image and continuous deterioration - where they are placed in the city centers that is. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plattenbau https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plattenbau
• bane 11y ago
  I've noticed that many buildings built during particularly faddish architectural trends tend to very quickly become maintenance nightmares, with repairs costing more than a tear-down and rebuild. It seems lots of these office buildings all over the country were built quickly, to low quality and now nobody wants to move into them. It's not just SV that has this problem. The J. Edgar Hoover Building the FBI is currently HQ'd out of is 40 years old, and by all accounts should have been razed to the ground 10-15 years ago, only slow government processes keeping the Bureau in it at all. It's expected to cost $850m-$1.1b to renovate and fix all the problems in the building and bring it up to Class A space (with inflation over time the total number would creep towards $2b). The government has decided that it would be cheaper to move the entire Bureau HQ to another site and build an entirely new building than fix this one.