Apparently it is incredibly expensive to convert office to living and meet most housing standards (windows, bathrooms, HVAC, etc.)

I recall a story about a month ago that a firm said they would be willing to have undertaken that cost for a tower in downtown San Francisco but the city, and it's wisdom, had passed an ordinance that required a certain percentage of new housing to go for low income people and thus for low rent and when that was baked in it made absolutely no sense (or cents).

So not only do you have the trouble of the cost of conversion, you also have the trouble of meddling do-gooders messing things up (because one of the easiest ways to reduce rent for everybody is to slam a lot of supply into the market)

From my experience going through a lot of offices in SF, they are really good at flexibly up and downsizing workspaces. This space will open to smaller companies or will be sliced and diced into sizes appropriate for anyone willing to buy for commercial purposes. Granted my experience comes from before work from home, so maybe things have changed, but I doubt it will change to residential unless the location was already mixed use.

Zoning issues, time, and money.

An airbnb for hotdesk coworking is one possibility for space monetization, but I would probably want to limit it to people with Fortune 1000 email addresses and certain designated floors/areas for security reasons. One key enabler would be integration with corporate building security systems.

I don't think that would mesh well with the neighborhood character