[hawainpanda]

Originally Posted by LouisVanDerWright

You might be surprised. Asbestos can be expensive, but really is not that pricey when you look at it in the scheme of things. It depends a lot on how much asbestos there is and what kind it is (insulation, tile, wallboard, etc), but it's generally fairly reasonably priced for environmental remediation especially in an unoccupied structure. The real pain in the ass that makes it pricey is when you have active uses directly adjacent and have to be ten times as care about isolating it. At the Post Office they can basically just seal the whole building off and tear it all out instead of sealing one little area off at a time if there were active users in the building.



Actually, the large floor plates can be extremely functional for modern office layouts. The new trend is open office with almost no partitions. This means having vast, wide open spaces is the most efficient layout because you can allow the light to filter all the way into the space for everyone to enjoy. This is often coupled with loft-style buildouts (see Merchandise Mart Moto buildout) which again keeps costs low. For a user like Walgreen or Moto, a building with massive floorplates makes a ton of sense. These companies are looking for huge cubicle farms and a 150,000 SF floor plate doesn't sound that unreasonable.

Ironically this is kind of the same reasoning behind the Sears Tower. Sears was looking for a vast amount of space with enormous floor plates and limitless expansion possibilities. The same thing applies to Montgomery Ward, Merch Mart, Fulton Cold Storage, and now the Post Office. I made an extensive post about this a while back with more reasons why it makes sense.



That could be the the reason for the high number. Sterling Bay might even want to get into the hotel or residential game at a site like this as 2.7 million SF of office space is bound to generate huge demand for both uses. Maybe they are thinking about building the smallest tower adjacent to the Post Office proposed by Davies as a part of that $500 million number? It's almost a "why not" proposition if you are going to draw this kind of office density to one location.

Wow I'm imagining that Sears could be a possible tenant. Honestly with a 500 million dollar budget they could have easily build a new super tall, so it does sound a lot more sense if the 500 million includes some sort of new residential tower which may also justify utilizing retail space in the post office.