Boston mayor announces residential conversion program for office buildings

https://www.bostonplans.org/news-calendar/news-updates/2023/07/10/mayor-wu-announces-residential-conversion-program

by toss1 • 3 years ago

493 397 3 years ago

I think this policy is incomplete without ensuring there is enough competition to ensure that rents stay relatively affordable.

steveBK12324• 3 years ago

more supply = more competition, no?

lusus_naturae2• 3 years ago

It depends. If everything is owned by the same management or equity firm, then no.

bmitc5• 3 years ago

I have never seen more supply of apartments make existing rents go down.

I had a friend's rent go up 25% in one year in an area that has seen a huge amount of apartment buildings go up. That's not rational. The companies that own these apartment buildings care about nothing more than more money and know that they'll be able to find someone to pay the exhorbant prices.

alephnerd• 3 years ago

a rate reduction by up to 75% of the standard tax rate for residential for up to 29 years could provide a strong incentive to encourage conversion. This would be implemented through a public-private partnership that will enable the BPDA, the City, and the proponent to enter into a payment in lieu of taxes (PILOT) agreement

This is actually a pretty nice rebate (similar to the one Ed Lee and Willie Brown proposed for Mid-Market redevelopment and Mission Bay's development respectively). I'd love for SF to use similar terms, but I doubt it's politically feasible anymore.

mholm• 3 years ago

Is this as good as I'm imagining? Almost feels like any office developer would be looking at their offices and thinking about it, even if they're currently rented.

mlyle5• 3 years ago

Property taxes are a big expense, but not as big as the debt on the construction costs. And you end up with massive additional construction costs for fewer square feet to lease.

So you only can do this if your bank decides to agree to take a haircut... which only happens if the bank is convinced you have no other options.

Reducing the property tax provides a sweetener that you and the bank can share to make it slightly more palatable.

steveBK12324• 3 years ago

Yes. Left wing politicians need to remember a rising tide lifts all boats. We need to stop treating things like zero sum games and that we need to take things away or redistribute finite goods.

Subsidizing things like education, housing, and healthcare.. without corresponding encouraging increases in SUPPLY.. just gives more dollars to the demand side to chase the same stuff.

Yes, typically the market responds, but in highly regulated markets the government needs to make sure they are encouraging rather than discouraging supply.

For example in NYC, an office-to-residential dev was talking about how depending on the neighborhood, there are basically cutoff dates of what construction year is eligible for conversion. In midtown it's something like 1960 whereas downtown it is the 70s or so. That is - nothing built after that date can be converted. And the dates are fixed, not changed in years, have to be renegotiated in zoning law periodically.

There's no fixed reason for this other than setting arbitrary numbers to limit the amount of conversions to residential.. that is.. reduce the ability to build housing!

When asked why, the developer basically said "it's sort of arbitrary but they do it so that a neighborhood doesn't get too much housing when it doesn't have enough schools or markets, etc".

Which is kind of crazy. Build the housing. Build the schools. Just.. build.

delecti• 3 years ago

Yeah, it's a good thing we have a famously right-wing bastion like Boston to lead the way with good old fashioned conservative policies like more housing and less commercial real estate. /s

bonestamp22• 3 years ago

This is a very nice rebate... maybe too nice? It's hard to say, but other cities might learn a lot from this experiment.

MildRant• 3 years ago

I think this is fantastic. Boston desperately needs more housing. Let's get some increased funding for the T as well while we are at it.

crmd2• 3 years ago

Property tax represents 72% of Boston's municipal revenue[0], and this initiative provides a property tax reduction of up to 75% for up to 29 years, so unfortunately this initiative will not help with T funding.

[0]https://data.boston.gov/dataset/revenue-budget

gbear605• 3 years ago

If it allows more people to move into the city and start working, that’s more income taxes that can go towards funding the T. Much of the T’s is at the state level anyway.

mkoubaa6• 3 years ago

I like to think that in a representative democracy, money finds its way to projects that the public find important

cowsandmilk2• 3 years ago

Since the MBTA is a state agency primarily funded by sales tax, Boston’s budget is highly irrelevant to its funding.

https://cdn.mbta.com/sites/default/files/2023-06/FY24%20Item...

natdempk3• 3 years ago

I will probably get sniped by someone who actually knows what they're talking about (please correct me if I'm wrong :D), but my impression of the T issues is less a funding issue, and more a competency/corruption issue. We're building above-ground rail at underground rail prices for one example problem.

ezfe• 3 years ago

It's certainly a mix of both, but the T has been underfunding maintenance and repair work in favor of the big capital projects that are demanded of it. That is a funding issue, even if there are many more issues to add to that.

ke88y5• 3 years ago

I toured a piece of property at the border of Charlestown and Somerville near a big T stop. There was an empty lot next to the tracks that was owned by the MBTA on paper. But de facto, the neighbor and was clearly using the entire massive lot as an extended back yard (they even had a garden shed and paved parking on the MBTA owned lot).

Looked up the property records. Either a HIGHLY coincidental name clash, or there's a recently retired T exec who has been using MBTA land as an extended back yard and off-street parking area.

That's the moment I gave up on Boston and the T, tbh. It's a small thing that doesn't really matter, but so ridiculously brazen and public and personal. If that sort of thing is what happens out in the open, can you imagine how many tens/hundreds of millions of taxpayer money is being funneled between friends and cousins via MBTA?

BenFranklin1003• 3 years ago

You’re not wrong. Public sector unions in MA are corrupt. It’s an unfortunate side effect of MA’s one party rule. Unions have the Democratic party in their hip pocket and no politician dare cross them.

worthless-trash2• 3 years ago

What is T ? google isnt helping.

scld• 3 years ago

The T is the nickname for Boston's MBTA (Train/bus)....The logo is a big "T".

kdmccormick• 3 years ago

MBTA -- Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority. The public transit agency in Boston. Their logo is an iconic black "T" so that's what everyone here calls the subway.

gnulinux3• 3 years ago

Boston people call public transportation "T". It's an abbreviation of "MBTA" which stands for "Massachusetts Bay Transport Authority".

gnulinux3• 3 years ago

Boston housing/rent is extraordinarily expensive. It's up there with SF, Manhattan, certain areas are even more expensive them. It's absolutely ridiculous. My girlfriend is from NYC and we both love the city, and visit it frequently. To our great astonishment Boston is oftentimes more expensive than NYC while being a fraction of the size. American big cities really can be enigmatic.

steveBK12324• 3 years ago

There was a cool OddLots episode recently where they talked to a guy who does Office to Residential work and some of the complexity.

One thing he talked about, which I didn't know anyone did, was to actually cut through the ceiling/floorplate of buildings to basically "donut" them.

This is necessary because many office floorplans are huge with modern HVAC and when converted into residential you end up with either undesirable or illegal apartments due to lack of windows/egress/etc.

Apparently they've done it a few times. Of course only some buildings can support this, given the layout of the supports, mechanicals, etc.

mlyle5• 3 years ago

This is necessary because many office floorplans are huge with modern HVAC and when converted into residential you end up with either undesirable or illegal apartments due to lack of windows/egress/etc.

Couldn't you just wall off the middle? I mean, you do get another set of windows on the inner courtyard, but it seems expensive to perform such major surgery on a building.

xattt• 3 years ago

Donuted buildings will forever remind me of the Ponte Tower building.

(1) https://www.theatlantic.com/entertainment/archive/2017/02/th...

kibwen4• 3 years ago

If you don't use the center of the building, then you only have room for one "ring" of residential units, whose windows face the exterior of the building. If you cut a donut hole down the center of the building, now you have room for two rings of units. Furthermore, in places like NYC, developers are allowed to "bank" the floorspace that comprised the donut hole and add new construction on top of the building so that overall square footage remains the same.

hardwaregeek• 3 years ago

But you effectively get another set of apartments that have interior windows. Sure they’re not gonna have a great view but they’re still rentable apartments

steveBK12324• 3 years ago

Depending on local laws.. windowless apartments are illegal. windowless bedrooms are illegal. etc.

jxramos• 3 years ago

turn it into storage space I'd say

stephenr• 3 years ago

I would have thought it would make perfect storage space.

pimlottc• 3 years ago

This looks like the episode of OddLots you're talking about:

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2023-07-07/what-it-a...

They talk about converting 180 Water St by adding an internal atrium; it's also one of the conversions illustrated in the recent NYT article about the difficulties of office-to-residential conversions:

https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2023/03/11/upshot/office...

tholman• 3 years ago

- [1] Bloomberg Article https://archive.is/eTpi5 - [2] NYT Article https://archive.is/fUtnl

dc_rog• 3 years ago

Related article from the prior day: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2023-07-06/why-conve...

rexf• 3 years ago

The NYT article does a really good job explaining the difference between converting a prewar and a modern building.

Also, TIL about loss factor:

As offices, these buildings can also rent 100 percent (or even more) of their total square footage, according to the quirky math of commercial real estate.

https://therealdeal.com/magazine/new-york-february-2014/lies...

shagie• 3 years ago

NYT article - gift link https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2023/03/11/upshot/office...

(The interactive nature doesn't quite get captured by archive correctly)

WarOnPrivacy• 3 years ago

I wonder if some interior spaces could be preserved for commercial, some reallocated for retail, some set aside for tenant mixed use areas.

I don't get why one area can only ever be for one kind of use.

WJW• 3 years ago

If you really want to know, I can't recommend the book "Seeing like a state" enough.

TL;DR: For government officials who are charged with supervising regulations over tens of thousands of areas, it's already more than complicated enough if each of those areas has a single use designation. If you allow all of those to have multiple designations, it becomes too complex for humans to administer and so they don't allow multiple designations.

bregma2• 3 years ago

The uses need to be kept separate. Separate but equal.

RC_ITR5• 3 years ago

It's against narrative, but this is one of the ways SF's downtown is actually extremely well positioned, assuming the trend of office conversions actually takes off.

SF floorplates are usually tiny due to historic biases of our Planning Commission (the dog whistle used to be 'we don't want a skyline of cereal boxes').

In fact, looking at the data [0] most of SF's residential tower floorplates are bigger than SF's office floorplates.

[0]https://data.sfgov.org/Housing-and-Buildings/Map-of-Tall-Bui...

Arete3141592• 3 years ago

In addition, as climate change affects more and more places, I think SF will be the winner. It maintains a naturally air conditioned 65 degrees all summer long during a decade that has seen even Portland Oregon go into the high triple digits.

Don't sleep on San Francisco.

xg15• 3 years ago

(the dog whistle used to be 'we don't want a skyline of cereal boxes')

Out of curiosity, what was the actual reason behind the dog whistle? "Segregate black people by... having smaller floorplates"? That doesn't make much sense to me.

bonestamp22• 3 years ago

For buildings where they can't cut the whole center of the building... maybe cutting more (but smaller) holes part way between the outside and the center would work. Then do vertical gardens up those shafts.

bloppe2• 3 years ago

The issue is emergency egress. You need those shafts to be able to support external staircases with many dozens of people rushing down simultaneously in the event of a fire.

INGSOCIALITE• 3 years ago

Typically switching from office to residential they will remove one elevator per bank and use the empty shaft for pipe/wiring riser

privatedan• 3 years ago

mmm… donuts…

mkoubaa6• 3 years ago

Seems to me like a failure of imagination to insist that some buildings can not support this

addisonl• 3 years ago

I mean with unlimited money anything is possible of course, but that’s not how these conversions work.

hedora• 3 years ago

The main advantage of living in a converted factory (there are a lot of these in the rust belt) is that you end up with an absolutely enormous space made out of cool materials.

I was finding it hard to imagine that there are inner-city office buildings (high rises) that have floors so large that they couldn't be cut into, say 1/4'ths, with four residences on each floor, and each unit having 50% windows along its perimeter.

People build McMansions that are > 10K square feet, so for a building footprint to be too big for this (i.e., so big that buyers would balk at the size), then you'd need a high-rise with ~40K sq ft floors before this became a problem.

A standard city block in Manhattan is apparently 237,000 square feet, so if you had a building that took up a whole block, there'd be a big problem.

Now I'm wondering how many office buildings there are in a typical city block.

bandyaboot• 3 years ago

I doubt that people in the market for a downtown apartment share the same priorities for selecting a home as people who would buy a McMansion. I also don’t think you can equate 10,000 sq ft over multiple floors with the same area on a single floor. I don’t know how that space would be designed in any practical manner that wouldn’t turn it into a labyrinth. I guess if someone wants a ballroom or a basketball court in their apartment?

onlyrealcuzzo• 3 years ago

Due to fire code, to divide a high-rise into 4 corner units, you need to take up almost ~50% of the space for elevators, stairs and hallways.

So you'd probably end up with close to 5k square foot condos - which isn't too ridiculous.

You'd probably do 4 corner units and 4 non-corner units for a total of eight, and end up with each being between 2000 and 2500.

The problem is, they'd be ridiculously expensive for a number of reasons. And when you're paying that much money, you probably don't want to live in a building that wasn't even designed to be lived in...

TheBigSalad2• 3 years ago

At 10k square feet you can safely drop the Mc.

nradov2• 3 years ago

Concrete and exposed metal are hardly what most of us think of as "cool materials". The notion of living in an abandoned factory is just dismal. Tear them down and start over.

emmelaich• 3 years ago

High-rises are not good for residential purposes. They are seriously isolating.

Projectiboga• 3 years ago

Very few whole block buildings in NYC. The street block length is ~250', with about 50' cross street & sidewalk. Avenue to avenue is closer to 1,000. A big building is usually 100×125. Even the Empire State Building isn't a full block.

Area of Site: 79,288 square feet (7,240m) or about two acres. East to west, 424 feet (129m), north to south, 187 feet (56.9m). Height: The base of building rises five floors above the street. The entrance is four floors high.

aperson_hello6• 3 years ago

Undesirable apartments sound like code for low income/affordable housing to me...

Add a few light pipes out to the outside walls and you can even get a bit of outside light inside!

steveBK12324• 3 years ago

Yes my point is that cutting the donut hole in is necessary to make them legal & desirable.

golem14• 3 years ago

(charlie Munger has entered the chat)

https://amp.cnn.com/cnn/2021/10/29/business/ucsb-munger-hall...

tjmc• 3 years ago

Why not put edge datacentres in the middle? They could provide heating to perimeter apartments in cold climates and just imagine the ping!

Arete3141592• 3 years ago

I love this idea!

smt88• 3 years ago

Very few humans live in places that need heat all year round.

andromeduck• 3 years ago

We could also just relax the window requirements for conversions.

ruined• 3 years ago

this is how you end up with mass mortality events

analog31• 3 years ago

Maybe I'd think differently if I actually saw the footprint of a large office building, but I'm thinking...

My house has a basement and a garage, which are not approved as living space, and don't have proper windows or egress. Would it solve the problem to let the interior portions of buildings be designated as storage and utility space?

I'd love to have more space for bikes and musical instruments. ;-)

petre• 3 years ago

They get to make two rows of apartments instead of one if they cut off the interior of the building. So better space usage = more $.

dirtyid• 3 years ago

Seems like you can trivially get around HVAC issue by just having individual units like in hotels or split units like many parts of the world (new builts and retrofits) and pare back existing HVAC / ducts for hallways/common space which are hooked up anyways. There's ways to do it cheap, but these not retrofitting nice office towers to be cheap units.

alexvoda• 3 years ago

Of course this is only necessary because someone at some point decided it is ok for modern post-war offices to no longer have natural lighting and ventilation. Why would office workers ever need to see the sun?

According to the article, the pre-war buildings are easy to convert.

IMTDb• 3 years ago

It's not about "someone deciding that it is ok for modern post-war offices to no longer have natural lighting and ventilation".

It's that the open floor model gained popularity; and the building technique evolved. This allowed huge windows to cast light for everyone in one go, since people were not putting opaque wall everywhere which were restricting whatever light that came through "their" part of the building to reach anyone else. "My window" became "our window". Similarly HVAC system evolved to maintain equal temperature in the whole building; there was no longer a need to bring individual heating/cooling system in every single cell since carefully placing some element would let natural convection do the work.

Removing these walls allowed building to be built and heated/cooled with comparatively less material; something that was positive both economically and - dare I say it - ecologically. Converting these shared spaces into private requires to "undo" all these optimisations and will carry a significant cost. Just like converting a bus into several car is not easy because although the seats are there; you are going to need many engines.

ilamont• 3 years ago

We need more creative thinking like this, not just in Boston, but in any city where there's a glut of office space. (In North America, that includes NYC, San Francisco, Toronto, Winnipeg ...)

The devil, of course, will be in the details. But incentives like this can really help get things moving in the right direction.

chiefalchemist2• 3 years ago

Speaking of "incentives" I wonder how much of this is city gov - via the mayor saying: Those of you who can and aren't making your residential stock available...well, we're going to leap frog you.

Certainly, if there are entities that are going to win from this, there are entities that are going to lose if they don't act.

ramesh31• 3 years ago

This could actually work in a city like Boston (almost uniquely in the US). Most of those low/midrise older buildings downtown were likely residential to begin with.

kibwen4• 3 years ago

almost uniquely in the US

Any east coast city should have an easier time of it, because the main determining factor for retrofitting office buildings into residential is the distance between the center of the building and the exterior, in order to make sure there's enough windows in each unit. Any office building built before the advent of the electric light should be just fine, so there's plenty of opportunity in places like Philadelphia.

glowingly• 3 years ago

I do not know if Boston is unique in this regard, but there was a lot of company housing in the region.

Where I worked in Longwood (Boston), the offices surrounding me were massive, historic buildings with plaques commemorating their origin. They were originally built for housing nurses and doctors who worked in the area's hospitals (there is a concentration of hospitals in Longwood).

So in this case, these were built and used as housing before a later conversion to office space.

These are currently utilized hospital buildings. IMO, they are unlikely to be converted back to residential at this time.

tiedieconderoga• 3 years ago

It's a fine idea if good candidates for conversion can be found, but shouldn't they fix up their dilapidated public transit system before inviting more density into their urban core?

Just today, one of their rail cars caught fire at an elevated station, and their broken fire suppression system did nothing but flood the ground floor when the firefighters tried to use it.

Wu's push for more housing density along the city's functioning arteries feels more realistic. Maybe they're realizing that plan could also suck a lot of property taxes out of the urban center.

beastman822• 3 years ago

These are not mutually exclusive

vkou3• 3 years ago

If you're going to hold solving the housing crisis hostage to having proper public transit infrastructure, we're never going to solve the housing crisis.

fasthands92• 3 years ago

Yeah. I realize there are tax breaks in her bill but in theory getting more people living in these dense areas will raise ridership on the subway a lot and raise taxes as a whole - which would pay for things like repairs which the OP complains about.

spywaregorilla3• 3 years ago

Feels more like a sensible compromise between a bailout for commercial real estate holders and helping the city to continue growing. In theory at least.

The T definitely needs some help. But if you're living downtown, it's a very walkable city fwiw.

tapoxi• 3 years ago

Boston isn't in charge of the MBTA, the state is, and the MBTA is mostly in a poor state because it was saddled with debt from the Big Dig.

abange• 3 years ago

I believe that part of the issue is the MBTA is a state level organization not city level. Wu doesn't have the power to fix the T. I agree that adding more load to an already crumbling system doesn't seem like a great idea but empty office buildings create their own problems by leaving "Dead" blocks or areas which can invite crime and decay.

micromacrofoot3• 3 years ago

There's a new general manager, Phillip Eng, who's actually a transit enthusiast rather than some random bureaucrat... if he can't fix the issues plaguing the MBTA no general manager can. This is a long problem though, they're trying to fix decades of unaddressed maintenance issues.

caycep• 3 years ago

He may be an enthusiast, but one also needs to be a Lyndon Johnson level of bureaucratic bulldozer, I suspect...

jancsika• 3 years ago

I absolutely agree we need to discuss the topic of their dilapidated public transit system. But shouldn't we first solve the problem of how to deal with Richard Stallman's oversized influence on the FSF?

Until we have a truly well-funded FSF filled with both successful projects and sustainable outreach programs that can reach a more diverse set of participants, I'm afraid that the topic of software freedom will continue to be relegated to the sidelines as some kind of fringe religious zeal.

Until we do that, we'd just be replacing one unethically-proprietary fire suppression system with another unethically-proprietary fire suppression system. And riders will just be commuting back and forth between abodes wired with automation systems which do not respect the wishes of the users within them.

nix0n• 3 years ago

It will reduce the strain on transportation infrastructure if more people can live close to where they work, or have "reverse" commutes.

kibwen4• 3 years ago

There's a very good NYT article with great visualizations on the process of and obstacles to converting office buildings to residential: https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2023/03/11/upshot/office...

marcosfelt• 3 years ago

Thanks for sharing this!

pcurve• 3 years ago

WSJ recently had a good video on challenge of converting office building into condo.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nTKjwWlhcLM

chewmieser• 3 years ago

Thanks, this was interesting! If anyone is blocked by the paywall use this:

https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2023/03/11/upshot/office...

balloonthief• 3 years ago

These projects are so interesting from an architectural/engineering standpoint, but then they hit you with the "rethink the rules that say how much green space an apartment needs or where its windows must be." I highly doubt the best long-term policy for a city's residents involves even less greenspace and natural light.

mkoubaa6• 3 years ago

I highly doubt the best long-term policy for a city's residents is to have a housing shortage and for many to live on the street because of natural light concerns.

fnordpiglet• 3 years ago

I find it interesting people converted factories and workshops and such into housing (lofts etc) but developing places built for humans is somehow harder. I feel like most of this is FUD for redevelopment subsidies by developers. A good friend is a Gehry apprenticed professor of architecture that specialized in sky scrapers, residential and commercial, and he thinks it’s technically not a challenge. They are built with drop ceilings and modularity built in mind so segmenting into smaller spaces with plumbing and other amenities isn’t a challenge. Most offer floor to ceiling windows around a core of elevator banks so the “no windows” thing is on the surface absurd.

danans• 3 years ago

A good friend is a Gehry apprenticed professor of architecture that specialized in sky scrapers, residential and commercial, and he thinks it’s technically not a challenge.

It's not a technical challenge, it's an economic challenge. For the large floorplate postwar buildings, the cost of the conversion usually doesn't make sense unless the rents or prices the units can fetch is very high, often higher than local wages can support.

Most offer floor to ceiling windows around a core of elevator banks so the “no windows” thing is on the surface absurd.

A floor to ceiling window isn't operable. Many of those would have to be replaced with Windows that are operable.

orthoxerox• 3 years ago

I've been thinking about the office building in which I worked pre-pandemic. It's actually not that wide and could be converted into a residential tower without cutting any holes in it (we had about 5 metres worth of desks, then 3 metres of walking space around the building core housing the elevators, fire escapes and conference rooms), but the ceiling height would be an obstacle. A typical flat is 2.7m tall, 3m is a premium height. The office had ceilings that were at least 3.5m tall to absorb the noise of the open space.

TimTheTinker• 3 years ago

IMO, they should consider banning cars in downtown areas (and adding large parking garages just outside them) while they're at it.

skwirl• 3 years ago

They will have to fix Boston’s horribly broken subway system first.

HWR_143• 3 years ago

Easier to do if you stop having to maintain tons of roadway and can move that money into mass transit.

caditinpiscinam• 3 years ago

When I lived in Boston I used the subway a lot and though it was ok. What makes you say it's broken? Has it gotten worse recently?

IX-103• 3 years ago

They've banned new parking places in Cambridge. They're not fixing the red line or adding parking outside of the city. They're just not allowing more parking inside.

So I have the option of paying $700 a month to park in town or take a bus that only comes by once every hour and then get jammed on a subway car that might even make it to it's destination.

bee_rider2• 3 years ago

How is Boston doing nowadays, overall?

As an Masshole, but not a city one, I’ve always kinda admired the job they do in Boston. At least, you don’t get the big dramatic narratives about it crumbling, like California cities, and NYC seems to be a bit boom-bust.

Boston seems to always be doing fine. The Big Dig was a ripoff but that was ages ago, and the T smells like piss but that’s par for the course, right?

ollien• 3 years ago

It's fine. The T is as bad as ever, shutting off sections for weeks on end for repairs. Rents are through the roof. But things aren't all bad, it's still a fun city.

whymauri2• 3 years ago

My favorite thing about the MBTA is it's one of the least piss-smelling subway system in the U.S.

I wish it moved like the MTA, though lol. I might be willing to make that tradeoff... maybe.

doctoboggan• 3 years ago

I lived in Cambridge/Somerville from 2013 - 2019 and always had the feeling that downtown was only for office workers during business hours. There never seemed to be anything to do after hours as all the workers left downtown at 5pm. If this proposal takes off it would be really nice to see a lively downtown on the evenings and weekends.

pivo• 3 years ago

I live downtown (Leather District) and work downtown (Post Office Sq.) I think there's really quite a bit of stuff to do. Not NYC stuff to do level, sure, but definitely not a wasteland after dark either.

I do agree, there are some beautiful old office buildings around here that would probably make great residential buildings. That would be even better for the area.

ghaff6• 3 years ago

Personally I'd live in Cambridge over Boston but, outside of the Financial District (which is pretty dead at night like it is in many cities), there's plenty of activity in the evenings. As another commenter said, it's not Manhattan but I worked downtown for about a year and lots to do.

mrDmrTmrJ• 3 years ago

Fun fact - The Big Dig can pay for itself if they ever toll on 93 like they do the Mass Pike

spywaregorilla3• 3 years ago

The Big Dig does pay for itself. Despite being horrendously overbudget and overdue, it still works, and it's more valuable than what was put into it. It was a poorly managed success.

natdempk3• 3 years ago

We're not building enough housing, COL/rent is high to the point where it makes it hard for many smaller businesses to thrive, the MBTA is an embarrassment, we're not laying enough fiber, the roads could use some work, but overall things are stable and fine. I just wish there was more of a standard of excellence all around.

harambae• 3 years ago

Well the T is as terrible as always, but until 2 weeks ago or so the motorcycle and moped parking situation was ok, if you were willing to do that.

But recently they started enforcing that very aggressively and requiring motorcycles to pay the same amount as cars and park in the same spots. Just a wave of orange envelopes on every motorbike I walked by.

Kind of an unfortunate move IMO - one of the things I like about European cities is not having to have 1 person per SUV clogging streets.

kgc• 3 years ago

Maybe just make the middle a datacenter that uses that modern HVAC. Datacenter doesn't need windows.

bee_rider2• 3 years ago

Plus Boston is a big biotech city. Chilly winter day? Fold some proteins.

mec31• 3 years ago

Fun fact—AI has done that already. 200 million proteins have been folded (and that’s all there are). Folding at Home is no longer a thing!

cs702• 3 years ago

Great news -- especially for the investors who own all those office buildings, and the banks that lent money to them.

Their government in Boston has just announced it's about to save them from otherwise certain financial distress.

The polite term they're using to describe such generous government help is "public-private partnership."

kbos87• 3 years ago

It’s far and away in the best interests of the people who live in these cities for these spaces to be repurposed. Wouldn’t want to cut off our nose to spite our face.

jimt1234• 3 years ago

I'm confused. Why is this program necessary? If building owners are sitting on vacant space because the demand for office space has dropped, while the demand for housing continues to rise, aren't they already incentivized to convert to residential space just based on the market conditions? Not sure why the city has to subsidize the property owners.

thinkcontext2• 3 years ago

Office space rents for more per SQ ft than residential, so landlords have incentive to keep it vacant in the hopes that markets come back.

eagleinparadise2• 3 years ago

I work in CRE - anyone reading this completely disregard this silly comment. it is laughably stupid

superfrank• 3 years ago

I've read that one of the biggest problems is that while the demand for office space has dropped, the cost to convert to residential is so high that building owners can't break even on a reasonable timeline so they have little incentive to convert. I'm not an expert at all, but I think that in addition to building out the new floor plans you pretty much have to redo all the plumbing and electrical and I believe in many places the rules for emergency exits are different between the two building types. I think in some cases it would actually just be cheaper to tear the entire building down and build a new one from the ground up.

I think many owners have the mindset that if they're going to lose money either way they'll stick with the devil they know and hope for a miracle rebound. It sounds like this program is offering tax incentives to help offset those conversion costs to make it much easier for building owners to break even after a conversion.

eagleinparadise2• 3 years ago

Most office buildings are not architecturally feasible to convert to residential. In fact, because of zoning laws, many/most can't even be converted.

Would you live in an apartment 15 feet wide and 50 feet deep? No. That's why most office buildings dont work

You have to redo all the mechanical, plumbing, electric, and then entirely refinish the building. Its literally cheaper to build new than deal with the nightmare that is to convert an office.

I work in CRE - every single office to multi deal i have seen the developer has war stories. And the units are 40-100% more expensive in cost than other apartments.

Office buildings are like an infectious disease. You could let them die. But if you have an urban infill city environment and more and more office properties become ghost buildings, then that disease will spread. All of the restaurants and other businesses nearby that rely on the foot traffic from office folk, they will die. You will see more riff raff. More homeless. More crime.

Many office assets need to go to 0 in asset value before the private market is willing to take the risk of those conversions.

Remember, loans are close to 10% for construction. And equity returns are higher.

1986• 3 years ago

Would you live in an apartment 15 feet wide and 50 feet deep?

Isn't this basically a railroad?

JustARandomGuy• 3 years ago

Would you live in an apartment 15 feet wide and 50 feet deep?

For laughs, I just measured the width of my home's hallways and rooms. I don't see why 15x50 feet apartment isn't doable especially for a bachelor/new couple starting out. Assume an apartment with a 3 foot wide, 50 foot length hallway, subtract another 2 feet width for walls/piping/whatever, and then you can hang 5 rooms that are 10x10 feet from the hallway. Enough for a living room/common area/kitchen/2 bedrooms. Might get a bit cramped but very usable.

I assume I'm missing something here since this doesn't seem to be too bad.

carlosjobim• 3 years ago

Would you live in an apartment 15 feet wide and 50 feet deep?

Yes, if that's the alternative to being enslaved for life. How can people still not understand that there is a massive part of the population who need to be able to purchase their living space to not have to rent for life or take on life-long debt that they can't afford. How can people not understand this? Yes, it's better for a young worker to be able to purchase a shit apartment that is a converted office building and start building his or her future, than pay rent for years and years and have nothing to show for it.

This is a true "let them eat cake" situation. Imagine if we didn't allow people to eat because we didn't think the food was good enough. That's what's happening with housing.

ke88y5• 3 years ago

Would you live in an apartment 15 feet wide and 50 feet deep?

In a nice part of Boston? Under 500K? Over 1K sqft? With some nice building community amenities? Hell. Yes.

inferiorhuman2• 3 years ago

Would you want to live here? Conversion is a great theory, but it definitely needs some guard rails.

https://www.sfgate.com/local/article/viral-bay-area-zillow-l...

https://www.google.com/maps/@37.9703586,-122.5195036,3a,75y,...

pierat• 3 years ago

Would you live in an apartment 15 feet wide and 50 feet deep? No. That's why most office buildings dont work

Yes. I lived in this with my SO for 9 years. And I lived with 200 other families like this on small plots of land.

Its called a "Mobile Home".

BenFranklin1003• 3 years ago

It’s probably cheaper just to allow new construction. Boston has plenty of underdeveloped land that could be converted to multistory residential, but the city’s zoning laws forbid most new residential construction.

anigbrowl• 3 years ago

Because they're wildly over-leveraged because they were squeezing out every last drop of capital. Landlords are economic parasites who provide very little value to the larger economy. Kinda hoping cities just start eminent domaining the properties, there will never be a better time.

temp-boston• 3 years ago

When I read this my immediate reaction is this is part of Boston's effort to blunt the impact of the potential incoming commercial real estate crash, which could damage many Boston business as well as Boston's commercial tax base.

I was surprised not to see that mentioned at all in the announcement. Is it unrelated? Is the announcement political spin to encourage those who might otherwise be against bailing out commercial real estate property owners to support it? Am I just wrong and this has nothing to do with the CRE crisis?

ghc• 3 years ago

I don't think it's related to any crisis in CRE. Rather it's related to an ongoing crisis in housing. Boston is short 30 thousand housing units.

Yes CRE vacancy is high in Boston, but it's still far from being a CRE crisis. The share of biotech and healthcare space is so high within Boston CRE that vacancy rate aren't nearly as bad as in other cities. And lab conversions are increasingly commonplace, so it's not like a residential conversion program was necessary to save CRE.

fundad• 3 years ago

Housing should not be privatized

twelvechairs2• 3 years ago

Its a delicate balance with these things. Residential brings life to the monotonous business areas and helps to improve housing supply (often not by an awful lot) but on the other hand, once you lose office sites they are generally gone forever (because of multiple ownership you can almost never convert from residential back to office) and even though the office market is taking a big hit from working from home / remote, the broader trend of the past 100 years is more and more jobs being concentrated into fewer and fewer office district that have to be larger and larger in critical mass.

Sydney, Australia is a good example. They introduced residential floorspace bonuses 10-20 years ago which have changed the city for the better. Pre-covid they wanted to shut this lever off as it almost flipped the other way where they were running out of land for offices to keep up with demand. Now its a bit of a lull on how to respond to the new environment though.

kbenson• 3 years ago

even though the office market is taking a big hit from working from home / remote, the broader trend of the past 100 years is more and more jobs being concentrated into fewer and fewer office district that have to be larger and larger in critical mass.

Well, the question is whether we hit an inflection point which changed the future drastically and invalidated data based on prior trends or not. So, does remote work just alleviate how quickly office space needs were growing (and if so is it to the point that new office space could be built), or does it actually reverse the trend to a degree?

hattmall• 3 years ago

It's not strictly work from home. Lots of business located near each other in city centers for business purposes that are being replaced by digital services. Video conferencing and other collaborative tools have decreased the need for many business to be in close physical proximity to each other.

ktosobcy• 3 years ago

I never understood the need to concentrate all the offices in the single focal point of the city. And currently with WFH it seems to make even more sense to distribute office spaces in local "co-working" spaces and in the end mix residential with work making it intertwined (zoning in the USA, from what I understand, is weird as hack…)

gameman1442• 3 years ago

For professions or companies where in-person collaboration is still needed, bigger concentration of business helps focus infrastructure investment into areas where it is most impactful. For instance, it's easier to make a subway line go through an area with lots of offices than it would be to have multiple separate lines passing through satellite hubs.

btbuildem• 3 years ago

I think it's a hold-over from the age of factories and paper offices, when people had to be in one place to do the work. White collar work can now be mostly distributed, but light and heavy industry still needs groups of people working on site. Very different locations though, you don't see much manufacturing happening downtown.

asielen• 3 years ago

Fair point if WFH is and remains the primary means of working.

On the other hand, if we believe the offices have value, as in people working together in one place has value, having offices in centralized locations because it is more of a known quantity for commuting.

Once you settle down roots, you don't want to have to upend your life if you lose your job or just want to find another job. And from the perspective of the company, you have more of a talent pool because you can recruit from all the other companies in the area with the benefit of not asking someone to move or change their routines.

I am in the camp of believing there being some benefit to people coming together to work on projects. Maybe not 5 days a week, but even if it is hybrid or occasional, there is still benefit for me to be central. I have worked 5 different jobs within 2 mile of each other and have never had to reconsider locations or commutes. I also benefit from being able to get lunch/drinks with old coworkers, attend impromptu 'meetups' and still make it home for dinner with my family because I can walk everywhere.

From a city planning point of view, there is a network effect to cities. Businesses move to cities because that is where there are services. Services are built because there is economy of scale to density.

Decentralized office locations means less density which means public transportation makes less sense, and dense services make less sense. Then you end up with Los Angeles (and Orange County). Which has lots of scattered office parks with little to nothing to do around them and that are only accessible by cars.

This is all a very American point of view. If instead we looked at European cities that were not built around cars and have good trains even for small hamlets, then absolutely, decentralized offices would make sense to me. It would satisfy my main concern of reliable transportation and ease of finding new jobs/networking.

So with many US city planning problems, the issue is our car centric culture.

HumblyTossed• 3 years ago

Because at one point, we designed, built and sold stuff and so you would need everything local. Now that most of that is offshored and most jobs are paper pushing, it's really not needed.

cramjabsyn• 3 years ago

Oh no not office suites being gone forever.

Don’t worry they’ll rebuild. They always rebuild.

worik• 3 years ago

Residential brings life to the monotonous business areas and helps to improve housing supply (often not by an awful lot) but on the other hand, once you lose office sites they are generally gone forever

I am not a town planner, but this makes little sense to me.

Can you not have mixed use?

twelvechairs2• 3 years ago

There's a range of factors for why not endless mixed use. A few of the big ones:

The clustering nature of businesses wanting to be close to each other. Most commercial areas are limited in expansion and a big 'critical mass' helps to drive the success of all the businesses.

Office workers dont like to look out at residential uses (hanging laundry etc.).

On the economic side its important to note that office-only zoning is effectively a government subsidy to encourage business. If they have to compete with residential some businesses will die and others will struggle.

There's also issues with sudden change. If you convert zoning from office only to mixed use quickly expect 10 years or so of no new office buildings leading to flight of the best businesses seeking premium accommodation and office buildings start to run down and other building also seeing a lack of investment as their owners eye tearing them down soon.

If the market swings back towards office over time it will be harder to respond to. As I say also its easy to convert office to residential but almost impossible to convert back.

davidjytang• 3 years ago

In Taiwan, we have a very large number of SMB which operates out of someone's apartment. If an apartment unit is up to office building code, then the apartment unit can be certified for a business license. Sometimes constructions are done to combine 2 or 3 apartment units into one bigger office.

So office sites may not be gone forever but could be converted for small businesses. (if Chicago laws allow it)

xrd• 3 years ago

Mayor Wu seems like the best mayor in the US. I saw her take a selfie with Bad Bunny backstage at his concert. She's obviously got her pulse on young blood over old blood. I need to learn more about how she thinks. Anyone have a link?

spywaregorilla3• 3 years ago

Our new office building in boston (Winthrop Center) is doing something I thought was interesting. It's got residences on the upper floors above the office spaces. I hadn't seen that before.

They're grossly luxurious mind you, but it was still interesting.

binarymax• 3 years ago

My first job out of university, was a dotcom company called ZEFER. They had an amazing 2 floors of loft building in the old Boston leather working district on Beach St.

I hadn’t been back to Boston in years until this past October, and stayed in a hotel near by.

One evening I walked past the office, which are now high end condos.

I’m sure they were crazy expensive. I loved that part of town, and walking around I saw lots of empty commercial space available. How wonderful it will be to have it teeming with life. That part of the city is glorious, and I’m sure many people will enjoy living there, hopefully at reasonable prices.

chiefalchemist2• 3 years ago

- I wonder how much of this is legit[1]?

- How much of it is the mayor playing politician?

- And how much of it is the mayor trying to inspire others to stop sitting on their residential or potential residential stock?

[1] Other comments are covering the finer - and more difficult - points of converting office building to residential.

fswd• 3 years ago

Ironically, now you can work from home at your old work office. They wanted us back in the office, they got it.

HermanMartinus• 3 years ago

Funny story. I recently stayed in an AirBnb that was literally my old office but turned into micro-apartments. Woke up sweating that I'd be late for standup.

costanzaDynasty• 3 years ago

Great idea, as a sign of leadership and truly believing in change I hope the Mayor fast tracks the programs scope beyond downtown and into Roslindale.

atleastoptimal• 3 years ago

It's hilarious seeing the grand lapses in efficiency and problems that last decades in the United States. I know for a fact that if there was a persistent vacancy of buildings in China, they would have razed a city and built a new one overnight. America feels slow, tired, and pointlessly ineffective at any problem larger than building a new app for content, and even at that China is doing better now.

011000113• 3 years ago

I hope we don't just settle for substandard housing cobbled together from ADUs and converted office buildings... I would like to see governments stepping up to raise the funds to buy out neighborhoods at a fair price and converting them into efficient, humane urban areas.

You take what you can get, but in my area it seems most new housing is either smashed up against a freeway or a mish-mash of car-dependent ADUs. Future generations deserve better.

mkoubaa6• 3 years ago

converting office buildings do not preclude designing humane urban areas

011000113• 3 years ago

Did you interpret my comment as suggesting that it does?

mcmoor• 3 years ago

Given some other comments that say that "it's better than eternal slavery", I'd hope that it truly doesn't end in another brutalism hell.

Panzer04• 3 years ago

Given government regulations are the reason many neighbourhoods turn into the things you dislike, I sincerely doubt giving them yet more responsibility and control would help.

Eumenes• 3 years ago

Is anything lamer than vacant office buildings?

8f2ab37a-ed6c2• 3 years ago

Downtown LA had a bunch of (textile?) factories and warehouses back in the day that got repurposed as residential lofts. They're quirky and somewhat charming big buildings to live in, but you can tell they weren't really meant for humans to live in to begin with. I'm thinking of all of the SB lofts.

For example if you're on the first few floors and you don't have an outside-facing window, your only source of light might be a 20 story light well. At best it always looks like dusk in your apartment, but most often it's pitch black without having your lights always on.

Some of those repurposed building are quite livable, others not as much.

suzzer99• 3 years ago

There's also no green space nearby and skid row is only a few blocks away.

8f2ab37a-ed6c2• 3 years ago

You get used to the constant background sketchiness of it after enough time, but the lack of an easily accessible green space is a bummer. There's Elysian, but it's a decent walk.

BenFranklin1003• 3 years ago

This is a poor use of time and resources. A much better - and likely cheaper solution in the long run - is to relax Boston’s onerous zoning laws that forbid the construction of most new apartments.

The construction of plentiful new apartments near and in the urban core has the added benefit of increasing demand for existing urban office space. It also increases the city tax base and the subsequent short work commutes is good for the environment and quality of life.

temporalparts• 3 years ago

Nimby's have an easier time fighting new construction than conversions. I don't see this as a poor use of time if it can introduce hundreds of unit to a scarce and expensive market.

Also, the last sentence of the article:

The Mayor also committed to update Boston’s zoning code to create thousands of additional housing units in Boston’s squares and corridors and reform the Article 80 process to increase speed and predictability for development.

phendrenad2• 3 years ago

I wonder if in the future people will start designing office buildings with this possibility in mind. "With just a few alterations, this could be condos!"

LatteLazy• 3 years ago

If we can replace significant amount of urban office space with residents, we can increase city densities a lot, moving people from less to more densely populated places. This is really really important as population density is basically the driver for all progress. Getting people into cities makes them healthier, happier, richer, less polluting, and longer living. This could be the next big driver of progress for western civilisation...

rr8082• 3 years ago

Why would you want to live downtown though? Previously downtown living was attractive because of the short walk to the office. If you're WFH you might as well live somewhere nice.

fader• 3 years ago

I don't understand the extremely vocal hate for cities that comes up constantly on HN.

I love living in the city. I can walk to two different movie theaters, two grocery stores, a huge number of restaurants and stores, and a number of my friends' houses within 15 minutes. I can hop on a bus or the subway and expand that even more. I don't have to waste half a day every weekend mowing a pointless lawn or trimming tree branches, but I have parks, rivers, ponds, etc. easily accessible any time I want to enjoy them.

I grew up in a place where you had to drive 30+ minutes to go anywhere. It was incredibly isolating and I'd never want to go back to that.

It's fine for people to want to live like that, but it's obvious that for many (if not most) people, cities are somewhere nice to live.

stewartmcgown• 3 years ago

Absolutely. I live in Glasgow and it is a perfect environment for walkability, culture, music and great food. Wouldn't live somewhere rural/suburban if you paid me

rr8082• 3 years ago

I love living in the city too, but I work in the office 5 days a week. If I didn't have an office I would be in a smaller city in a nicer part of the world.

xyzelement4• 3 years ago

I don't totally understand what drives people to project demand for urban residential when urban office is in decline and is being removed.

Historically people moved to the cities because that's where the work was. What will drive people to cities when that's no longer true?

Granted some people really enjoy "density" but I suspect most people prefer more space / a yard / etc if the lack of commute enables then to spread out.

spaced-out• 3 years ago

People aren't "projecting" demand, the demand is being driven by the market. Downtown apartments (in good condition) are expensive because they are in high demand while office space is getting harder and harder to fill.

If you own a bunch of downtown commercial real estate, you don't need to be a business guru to see that you could be making a lot more money if you could rent that space out as apartments.

xyzelement4• 3 years ago

// Downtown apartments (in good condition) are expensive because they are in high demand

Yup, my question is - do we expect this to hold when downtown is no longer the place to be for work.

ghaff6• 3 years ago

A lot of (especially younger) people project their own urban living preferences--even if the absence of a need to go into an urban office--onto the population as a whole. But a net migration to cities isn't a law of nature. To the current example, there was a net outflow of population from Boston until the late nineties and most of the large computer industry companies were out in the suburbs/exurbs.

Of course, these things are also self-reinforcing cycles. If people move out, housing prices come down but a lot of the amenities that lead many people to live in the city in the first plce may go away as well.

gumballindie• 3 years ago

City management done right. Archaic methods of working that required people on site for jobs where it wasn't necessary are out the door. Would be great if uk’s London took the same path. Life there is atrocious, crime levels, pollution and prices are through the roof. Not to mention overcrowding and dirty public transport. Adjusting for more remote work would be game changing as people could live in the suburbs.

pitt1980• 3 years ago

fwiw, there's a building my sister lived in in Pittsburgh, the Penn Garrison, it's downtown, not totally sure what the history behind its development is, or what the window related zoning issues are in Pittsburgh, but it has one-bedroom apartments where the bedroom doesn't have any windows.

If you're interested in what it looks like, at least the promotional version of it, https://www.pmcpropertygroup.com/properties/penn-garrison-lo...

If you put enough soft lighting up, it was perfectly fine

Boston mayor announces residential conversion program for office buildings

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