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Comment by voicedYoda | Hacker News Reader

Bloomberg is writing these articles about every big city. These old buildings are the workforce of yesteryear, but so much money is invested in these monoliths, and the audience Bloomberg writes at wants to know about their money, thus we get articles lamenting the fact that these big, expensive buildings are vacant, and if we can't force workers back into them, there will be catastrophic repercussions

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What do people get from making up narratives like this? Bloomberg literally writes thousands of articles a day. This topic is just one of the few that HN happens to care about.

The main audience of Bloomberg aren't executives who need validate their comercial real estate purchases. They're analysts who just want to be informed about the current economic landscape.

Do you expect that someone will read this will think "welp, better start commuting to the office because I don't want my city's budget to be cut!"

Maybe people will start living in them and real estate costs will go down. Truly catastrophic for the readers of Bloomberg.

There are real logistical and engineering difficulties in making those buildings suitable for habitation. In many cases, it would be less expensive to tear them down and build a new building for that purpose.

That's not a bad idea

What are some of the difficulties? Are there compromises that would allow them to be ok residential use at some tradeoff (like fewer units per floor)?

For buildings that are partially built, can they still be converted or is it too late?

I'm no mechanical engineer, but as I understand it, the biggest issue is plumbing-related. If you want every unit to have water and a drain, that's a huge retrofit right there that can be extremely difficult.

There are other factors, too, but the plumbing seems to be the biggest hurdle.

For the most part, there are no insurmountable engineering issues. It's just a question of cost.

The NYTimes had a good article on this, along with some examples of buildings that have actually undergone the conversion:

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

Floor plans are awkward if you had to segment them in to apartments, having each apartment meet code for residential spaces turns in to a puzzle in ensuring things like light entry. Math that made sense for office buildings doesn't translate as easily to residential, so you're paying for more elevators (made for an office building) than you need, you have less floor space you can rent out because you need it for amenities, you have to do extensive renovations to make it suitable for living, and then have to hope the commercial real estate market doesn't surge in demand after you've done it.

It's apparently doable, but not easy, and has a significant downside if there isn't enough demand to meet your new luxury apartment building, and the risk that commercial real estate bounces back after you've done it.

Looking into the past, I think it's more likely that the development would be analogous to what happened to old industrial zones in developed cities, such as SoHo in Manhattan. People started moving into old, derelict industrial buldings, and eventually the style became so trendy that it's now one of the most expensive neighborhoods of the city. If the downtown office building truly stops being a thing, I could see something similar happening.

On the other hand, you could use them to solve finding a home for the homeless. Sure, they have windowless rooms and less bathrooms than is ideal but surely that’s better than living under a bridge.

NYC is weird.

Been there a few times and it always gave me the impression it's one of those fake cities in Disney.

A sea of people on the streets but some buildings seem like 90% empty.

Some shops are highly suspect too. My wife wanted a selfie stick and we got one in an electronics shop in 7th avenue, a couple of blocks from Times Square, big store but completely empty.

We went in, browsed, bought one selfie stick for few bucks (not expensive) and left, no other shoppers in sight. Later that day we went to exchange it because the button didn't work, same ordeal.

I'm not an economist, but I pretty sure that a business in that location with that rent cannot be profitable without a continuous stream of shoppers, no way.

The whole city seems like a money laundering operation.

> Goes to time square

> The whole city seems like a money laundering operation

Classic

As someone who lives in NYC, there are a lot of "sides" to it. What you're describing definitely exists, but to generalize the whole city as a laundering operation would be akin to generalizing a large tech org based on your experience with one small team.

Approximately what percentage of the whole city do you believe you've seen?

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