New York City's mayor just conceded defeat to remote work--and declared war on the housing crisis. He

[Eugene]

Source: Fortune

New York City’s mayor just conceded defeat to remote work—and declared war on the housing crisis. Here’s how it went down

Alena Botros
Thu, August 17, 2023 at 5:18 PM EDT·4 min read

New York City officials, led by Mayor Eric Adams, announced a plan to convert empty office buildings across the heart of its central business district into housing at a news conference on Thursday. Although parts of this plan were announced previously, and it must clear several hurdles en route to implementation, it represents the nearest thing to an admission that the scourge of remote work has spread too far to turn back now.

He admitted as much. “COVID taught us something, if we want to acknowledge it or not, we are in a different norm,” Adams said. “Everything has changed, and we have to be willing to change with it.”

Earlier in the press conference, Adams kicked off with, "we know New Yorkers are struggling, you hear it all the time, every elected [official] in this city, the number one thing they hear is housing, housing, housing. And [there’s] just not enough of it, that’s the reality of it, the demand is not meeting the need.”

Before fully diving into aspects of the plan, Adams said the city has the potential to remove barriers to create more housing, “with a proposal to rewrite zoning regulations so unused office space can become homes for New Yorkers.” He added that it was unbelievable how much empty office space is “sitting idly by,” when it can be developed into housing to address the city’s housing crisis, while also “revitalizing” business districts, given that remote work is costing Manhattan more than $12 billion a year.

With this plan, an additional 136 million square feet of office space will be eligible for residential conversions, ...

-snip-

Read more: https://finance.yahoo.com/news/york-city-mayor-just-conceded-211821509.html

[Renew Deal]

1. I'll believe it when it happens

When people actually move in.

[Farmer-Rick]

2. Sounds like a good idea.

By 2025 most corporations are going to have rid themselves of the majority of their office spaces. It just makes sense.

Why pay for property rent, cleaning, electricity and furniture for office space when you can just get your employees to pay for those items from their home?

[Merlot]

3. "...the scourge of remote work" Really, scourge?

[peppertree]

4. The problem is that w/o controls, they'll all become "lofts"

i.e. open floor-plan spaces for the bohemian, prodigal sons of already wealthy people.

"This was a shirt factory at the turn of the century, can you believe it Muffy?"

"I think it set a record for the number of deaths in a single industrial fire - or something."

[IbogaProject]

5. The math is weird

136 million square feet could make 20,000 units. That is 6,500 square feet per unit.

[Warpy]

6. Are you paying attention, San Francisco?

They're in even more need of housing--and less need of office space--than NYC.

Downtown San Francisco looks like a ghost town, skyscrapers at least a third empty and businesses at street level shutterede.

[Hestia]

7. Too big? Too small? No, these office buildings are just right for housing

Too big? Too small? No, these office buildings are just right for housing
https://www.fastcompany.com/90866323/too-big-too-small-no-these-offices-are-just-right-to-become-housing

snipped

It’s time to admit it: Most empty office buildings are not turning into housing. That simple recipe for pandemic lemonade—offices people no longer use, combining with central urban locations where people want to live—is blissfully ignorant of a wide range of architectural and economic factors that make the vast majority of office buildings simply unsuitable as housing.

But while most are either too big, too new, too crowded, or too technically complicated to convert to homes, there’s a Goldilocks zone of office buildings that are just right for turning residential: Typically, they’re mid-rise, modestly sized structures built before World War II, with at least two sides fronting open areas or streets in neighborhoods near, but not directly in, the city’s dense financial center.

snipped

“Office buildings are sometimes hard to convert to residential because the floor plate’s big or they’re wedged between other buildings and don’t have enough street exposure,” Bloszies explains. Having two or more entire sides of a building facing the open space along a street allows light and air to penetrate more easily than one shadowed and suffocated by neighboring structures.

Urban density, especially in a city like San Francisco, makes for a lot of buildings—prototypical high-rises with modern, so-called Class A office space—without that access to the elements. But Bloszies’s analysis found that there are many structures that don’t have those issues, mostly four- or five-story prewar buildings that have operable windows and nestle into neighborhoods instead of towering above them. These properties, Bloszies says, are perfect candidates for conversion.

“On the technical side we haven’t learned anything new that we didn’t quite know before,” he says. “It’s simple, straightforward stuff, like you need light and air."

more at link

Read where plumbing is a huge issue for converting - the floors weren't made for residential plumbing and those have to be redone, which is a lot of money.