Quote:
Originally Posted by AusTxDevelopment
The deck to deck (floor to floor) height of a garage (9' to 10') is much lower than the office portion (13' to 15'), so it makes it difficult to do. The drop ceiling needs a good 1.5' to 2' of space for the above-ceiling mechanical stuff - HVAC boxes and ducts, VAV air handlers, lights, etc. You could end up with Floor 7.5 from Being John Malcovich.
However, some developers do plan for that in the design process. It costs more but your building's parking garage is less likely to become functionally obsolete in the future. SXSW had their structural engineer design their parking garage in such a way that it can be converted to office space if necessary.
From a Nov 2016 Towers article about SXSW Center (bold is mine):
https://austin.towers.net/sxsw-the-t...nd-steel-wave/
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Sadly, a Gensler associate informed me last year that though the possibility of conversion was being discussed at the time of the 2016 article, this is no longer really the case:
Quote:
The garage floor plates are flat, so technically they can be converted, but the floor-to-ceiling height is only 10’, which won’t work with current mechanical requirements. There’s one garage floor where the ceiling height is 11’, so that might still be a possibility. But because of the overall height restriction due to capitol view, we ended up compressing everything to cram as many floors into the building as possible.
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Still waiting patiently for Austin's first explicitly conversion-minded parking structure. Surely someone will be forward-thinking enough to make it happen soon.