As someone who knows nothing about commercial real estate business but lived in NYC for a long time. Why can't they convert to residential? Is the cost of conversation so prohibitive that it is a non-starter?
Having asked the same question of developers, it's a combination of cost and code. Many office buildings are old, with tiny windows surrounded by load-bearing walls. They're also laid out with an office, not home, in mind. (Think: plumbing.) This combination means extensive renovation, retrofitting and–if you find a previously-unseen problem–rebuilding.
That said, it's New York City. My first two apartments were illegally subdivided and subletted, the first having no window. There are people who will happily take an apartment with a tiny (or non-existent) window in exchange for cheaper rent. We just need to update the code to remove aesthetic requirements while ensuring that doesn't mean skimping on safety.
Just a nit-pick: older buildings with windows and load-bearing walls are actually better candidates for residential conversion than newer buildings with glass curtain walls and structural columns. [https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2023/03/11/upshot/office...]
Structurally, yes. Politically, community boards will claim they're hellscapes and then trot out studies on the health benefits of open air and sunlight and whatnot.
Plumbing is easy, pressurized pipes and pumps can deal with that just fine. The real challenge is air conditioning: showers create lots of humid, warm air - introduce that into your building's HVAC and you'll get issues with rust and mold - and cooking isn't much better, people generally don't want to smell the curry that someone at the other end of the building is cooking. Or they don't want to hear their neighbors having sex through the air vents.
It's also a question of what the trunk water/sewer line can handle. There's places in some cities where larger apartment buildings have to hold sewage in a tank and pump it out at night because the city pipes can't handle a normal load during normal hours.
The bigger problem is finding space for pipes. Many commercial buildings have specialized vertical tunnels for plumbing. The bathrooms in these buildings are usually adjacent to these tunnels, and there are no provisions for expanding plumbing to other areas of the floor in order to separate the floorspace into apartments with their own bathrooms.
The vertical tunnels are also designed to contain some number of main pipes with capacity based on N bathrooms per floor that you'd typically find in an office, with no room for expansion to handle N*10 bathroom capacity.
Pipes dimensioned for an office floor is surely enough for flats.
Although showers could mess up my 'theory'. But the sewer from those is easier to get flowing than toilettes I guess.
However, I think the capacity requirements for water/sewer are determined by law, much like the hard requirement that habitable residential spaces must have egress windows.
In the USA there are similar laws around septic systems for detached houses, where the capacity/size of the septic system is determined by the number of bedrooms in the house.
AIUI, plumbing is technically easy, but is still insanely expensive for conversions.
That said, it makes sense that HVAC would be a bigger problem.
Commented on this elsewhere [1], but egress into a fireproofed stairwell is a safety-neutral compromise. It's against code, however.
That's the point. It's vestigial code that could be loosened to promote housing supply.
The tallest ladders in the FDNY's inventory go up to 100'. (They were testing a 300' rig, but I don't know if it was deployed.) They aren't designed to recover people from burning skyscrapers.
Which means you don’t need a window in every apartment—those people can’t use theirs for egress.
There are very few "aesthetic requirements" that prevent an office building from being converted to residential. Most of issues with building code - including the window issue - are in fact motivated by safety concerns.
Office buildings are fireproofed in ways residential units are not. One can also replace windows with proximity to a fireproof stairwell without compromising safety.
I'm winging this. The point is there are places we can make tradeoffs. They're just not the kind Manhattan voters like.
You can't, really.
The way that emergency exits are laid out in office buildings is different from the way that they're laid out in residential buildings, and that's done because the safety needs of residential buildings are different from the typical safety needs of office buildings. It would be more expensive to build office buildings with those requirements from the get-go, so few dedicated office have them (particularly the larger skyscrapers that we're talking about).
You can either retrofit the core of the building (very expensive) or you can redesign the unit size and shape to conform to the existing building core (less expensive, but results in layouts that cannot be sold at the price the building owners require - the exact problem discussed in the article).
> The point is there are places we can make tradeoffs. They're just not the kind Manhattan voters like.
To make that claim, you'd have to point to actual tradeoffs that could be made without significantly compromising safety, and which aren't being done because "Manhattan voters" have rejected them.
And as someone who probably has a much better understanding of NYC commercial and residential building codes than the typical HN reader, I'm really only aware of one, and even that is only really being advocated for smaller and mid-size buildings, not the tall skyscrapers discussed in this article.
> I'm winging this.
Yes, I can see that.
You're acting like residential retrofits have never been done. They have. These are workable problems.
As others point out, the killer is plumbing. Not fire escape.
> only really being advocated for smaller and mid-size buildings, not the tall skyscrapers discussed in this article
Most of New York City's CRE tax revenue comes from mid-sized offices. Not from skyscrapers. Everything I'm suggesting is aimed at, and has been proposed for, those.
> I'm really only aware of one
There are many more. I'm winging the solutions. Not the capacity for them, which has been and is being studied by architects, engineers and psychologists.
I didn't say residential retrofitting can't be done. I said that they can't be done while still demanding the resale value (read: net profit) that the building owners are demanding.
> Most of New York City's CRE tax revenue comes from mid-sized offices. Not from skyscrapers.
This comment thread is on an article titled "NYC Skyscrapers Sit Vacant, Exposing Risk City Never Predicted". So we're talking about things that apply to skyscrapers.
> As others point out, the killer is plumbing. Not fire escape.
There are multiple issues. I addressed fire escape only because you brought it up, not because it's the only issue.
Again, this whole thread is in response to your claim that the limiting factor is "aesthetic requirements" in the building code that are not motivated by safety concerns. So far, you haven't pointed out any.
Yes, I have [1]. Communal water, toilets and showers.
No, because that's non-prohibitive under current building code. Contrary to popular misconception, it's permissible to have communal facilities; it's just not economically viable, in part because it's extremely undesirable to live in.
The issues is not “is it a workable problem”, everyone knows it is, that’s not in dispute.
The issue is “is the cost compared to the value recovered after the conversion such that, with the particular properties in the particular concrete situation that currently exists, it would be financially better for the owners to do a conversion or to abandon the property”.
You are trying to make a specific, concrete issue into a general, abstract one.
Supply and demand will fix this. Real estate speculators will eventually realize they've already lost the money they put into the building, then sell it at a loss (or at bankruptcy). Then, the residential conversions will happen, producing a supply of large, irregularly shaped manhattan condos that will certainly sell.
Capitalism does have its advantages.
The inherent land value is so astronomical and the cost of retrofitting is so high that, at virtually any price, most developers would decide it's more economical to raze the building and start over, designing a residential building from scratch with cookie-cutter units that can be sold for maximum profit.
Nobody says to ignore it. Just not to make specific expressions of it a red line.
Windows are a great example. New Yorkers get emotional about windows. Guess what: nobody is egressing from the 57th story of a burning building via the window. Yet go to a community board meeting and every numpty who Ctrl + F'd the fire code will pull up photos from 1911 to argue for windows an aircraft carrier can fit through.
You know what you can provide the residents of a building with tiny, tiny windows? A rooftop garden. Modern heating and fresh, filtered air. Potted plants in the hallways, community spaces, warmer lighting et cetera.
There are apartment buildings in Hell's Kitchen with communal toilets and showers for each floor. There is still running water to each apartment, but I'm not sure that has to be a requirement. (My college dorm didn't have running water.)
You're talking about prewar walk-ups that have been converted to de facto SROs. Also, those are mostly downtown, not in Hell's Kitchen. They're cheap and mostly occupied by young people who can't afford anything else, because they're incredibly undesirable ways to live, limiting their market rental price. Some number are also rent-stabilized and occupied by longtime residents, for the same reasons.
There is no way that you can seriously argue that doing this for newly-constructed skyscrapers would result in units that can be sold at the price that the building owners are demanding. There's a reason no new construction uses this model except for dedicated affordable housing (to the extent that's even built anymore). People simply do not want to live like that, and the market reflects that.
Yup, do this. "Young people who can't afford anything else" in New York are a population comparable with that of Atlanta [1].
> no way that you can seriously argue that doing this for newly-constructed skyscrapers would result in units that can be sold at the price that the building owners are demanding
The buildings' owners are screwed. Their leverage constrains them. The question is whether the structures have positive value. Retrofitting to current code leaves most with negative value, i.e. it's cheaper to abandon. The question I was answering is if it's possible to economically convert these to housing for somebody. Under current code, the answer is no.
[1] https://www.statista.com/statistics/911456/new-york-populati... 20 to 24
[a] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_United_States_cities_b...
You can't just link to the age distribution and cite the number of "20-24 year olds in NYC" as evidence that there are half a million people in NYC who can't afford to live in anything other than an SRO.
Sure. But not with the existing CRE stock. Not for cheap.
My prediction is code won't be compromised. We'll raze the buildings and construct new housing. It will never be as cheap as the alternative could have been, or, more pointedly, than what tens if not hundreds of thousands of New Yorkers endure. But it's an easier sell on the lectern.
The opposite is harder. Adding bathrooms, combining rooms, adding kitchens and drains and individual utilities costs maybe more than the building is worth.
A recent study in NYC found:
"Most conversion projects would only become financially feasible if buildings could be acquired at significant discounts, in many cases at prices that valued the structures as having negative value."
https://cbcny.org/research/potential-office-residential-conv...
I'm sure I can find someone willing to rent a 10,000+s.f. downtown manhattan apartment for more than the cost of maintenance (and the property tax on the $1 the floor of the building is apparently worth).
Plus, negative value to equity is absolutely possible in this scenario. Let me know how far you get in the commercial real estate world without signing a personal guaranty.
You are ready to pay $1 for a floor in the structure and how many millions for your share of the plot?
Another solution for cities with astronomical land prices (like NYC) is to look into moving some of their city buildings into sky scrapers, and then selling their buildings & land to be re-developed.
Like why can't the police "building" just be 30 floors in a sky scraper? Why can't a hospital just be a bunch of floors in a sky scraper? Why can't a high school just be a bunch of floors in a sky scraper? Etc...
Building layout is another. You could only reasonably put apartments on the outside with windows. There would be a lot of wasted space in the core of the building.
It's all possible, but the question becomes is it desirable to live there? Will the rents justify the cost to convert? I doubt it...
Financial district has a number of converted office buildings, which are now residential. If anything, that area is now more vibrant and cool, certainly not an apocalyptic thing.
Retrofitting should certainly be possible, but neither cheap nor quick, and you either run into the problem of the resulting monthly being too high (and having trouble getting occupancy up above 95% where you want it), or it goes too low and you can't make back what you spent,
https://nypost.com/2023/04/24/longtime-nyc-home-of-the-daily...
If you require plumbing to every apartment. Dorm-style lay-out would sidestep this problem.
We have a desperate need for affordable housing all over this country. SROs and hostel-style residences are perfectly reasonable as a step to keep people stable and off the streets.
Younger me. Lots of people. If you don't work from home it's just a crash pad. Saving a few hundred bucks a month is a good bargain for having to walk a few feet to pee.
https://columbusunderground.com/office-to-residential-conver...
They can, and will, but it is not an easy process (yet).
I would guess that within 1-3 years we see major cities changing their codes and zoning processes specifically to fast track commercial -> residential conversions.
1 - Windowless rooms are heavily undesirable in residences but pretty normal in office settings. In many areas they are also illegal (all bedrooms must have natural light) - but regardless of legality they are shunned by most buyers/renters.
Offices however have lots of windowless rooms in the form of supply closets, utility rooms, freight elevators, conference rooms, storage rooms, etc. This combined with the popularity of open floor plan offices means that office buildings are really deep dimensionally. You can easily find modern office buildings where a desk is 50+ feet from the nearest window.
This makes them nearly impossible to divide into residences, because the resulting apartments are dungeon-like, with only the very outer reaches getting any significant natural light.
2 - Cost of conversion is high but the resulting product is worse than purpose-built.
Keeping in mind the natural light factor above, a lot of office-converted apartments are less pleasant to live in than purpose-built residential apartments, but the conversion costs are very high, and the two opposing dynamics cannot be reconciled. The cost of converting an office demands a level of rent that it cannot achieve in competition with actual residential buildings.
3 - Utility usage increases in residential buildings. A lot. Electrical, water, and sewer needs in residential buildings are much more intense than in commercial buildings. This is non-trivial to retrofit - since additional conduit and piping has nowhere natural to go. Conversion projects often have to punch through the concrete floor plates in order to create new top-to-bottom shafts to run all of the additional utilities. This is intensely expensive.
4 - Commercial buildings have over-built elevators relative to residential buildings. Office workers move from floor-to-floor a lot more than residents, and so for the same floor area commercial buildings would have more elevators. They take up valuable floor space that can otherwise be rented, and removing them to recover the floor area for residential use is incredibly costly. Many modern commercial buildings are in fact built around their elevator cores, so removal may not even be feasible.
There are some successful conversions - but as others have brought up, they tilt towards conversion of pre-war office buildings where, because they didn't have powered HVAC, there are more windows and no office is too far from a window, creating good opportunities to convert into actually pleasant spaces. Modern offices with their gigantic floor plates are a whole different story.