30% of U.S. office buildings, valued at $1.1T, are obsolete

[dchan]

Originally Posted by 3rd&Brown

There have been a few buildings in Philadelphia that were converted and the center of the building was taken out (i.e. creating a big donut hole straight up into the sky). Thus, there are no units without direct light.

These don't have to be "little" light wells. They can be massive courtyards that become a selling feature.

Yes, they usually have to be fairly large-sized courtyards not just because they're a selling feature, but because they are required by zoning & building codes. At least that's the case for NYC zoning laws, which requires a certain distance between a living area (living room or bedroom) window and any obstructions (such as walls from the same building or an adjacent building).

Whether or not you can actually carve out this central courtyard without compromising the building's structural integrity during and after the removal depends on the existing building's structural design.

[mhays]

I've heard that post-tensioned concrete might be the worst scenario for a potential light well. Each floorplate will have a tight pattern of cables that pull it all together in tension, creating a slight upward bow and allowing thinner and lighter slabs. Cutting the cable can be catastrophic, and it's apparently not very feasible to only cut part of it out while keeping tension. Can any engineers or superintendents weigh in?

Otherwise, I understand that light wells are tough but can often be done if augmented with new structure, and presumably life safety...

[mrnyc]

Originally Posted by dchan

As another person mentioned, it's not that easy to convert office space to residential. Residential "living" spaces require a certain amount of light and air based current residential building codes, something that is difficult to acquire in certain office buildings. Some office buildings are comprised of curtain wall with no operable windows (thus, no "air").

But in most cases, it would be the "light" component that would be difficult to attain. Have you ever noticed why older apartment buildings tend to be built in a weird H or I shape? It's because the living spaces (living rooms, bedrooms) in each apartment must have access to a certain amount of light and air (see the I shaped building 2nd from the bottom right).



Office buildings do not have these requirements (with mechanical ventilation to providing the air). Therefore, only the apartments along the window perimeters would have meet the "light" requirement. Any space in the middle would technically be illegal, unless the local DOB issues some sort of code variance. Newer codes might allow tubular daylight devices and constant mechanical ventilation in lieu of operable windows, but the tubular daylight devices might be tricky to install throughout a commercial office building to provide enough light to the apartments around the core.

yes i'm aware of that for nyc -- you can read and see how they are handling the issue in the above cleveland conversion here

https://neo-trans.blog/2021/12/14/38...ic-tax-credit/


Typical residential floor plan proposed throughout most of 45 Erieview.
The plan shows 31 apartments on the building’s large floors (Sandvick).


The 15th floor of 45 Erieview is proposed to be redeveloped with 16 apartments, a community room and a pool deck with pool and jacuzzi.
Maximizing floor usage in the conversion to apartments proved to be difficult in the design (Sandvick).

[Steely Dan]

I guess the good news on that front for cities like Chicago with lots of giant chunky old pre-war office blocks is that, as pointed out with 175 W Jackson, the thickest ones already tend to have light wells because natural light and fresh air were just as important for office space back then as they are for residential today.

[dchan]

Originally Posted by mrnyc

yes i'm aware of that for nyc -- you can read and see how they are handling the issue in the above cleveland conversion here

https://neo-trans.blog/2021/12/14/38...ic-tax-credit/


Typical residential floor plan proposed throughout most of 45 Erieview.
The plan shows 31 apartments on the building’s large floors (Sandvick).

Thanks for the pics and link!

However, such a conversion would technically be illegal in NYC. The article mentioned Cleveland requiring each apartment needing an external window. But in NYC, each individual bedroom or living room needs an external window. As you can see in the floorplan, many of the bedrooms are not directly next to an external window.

So maybe these conversions are easier to do in other municipalities?

[dchan]

Originally Posted by mhays

I've heard that post-tensioned concrete might be the worst scenario for a potential light well. Each floorplate will have a tight pattern of cables that pull it all together in tension, creating a slight upward bow and allowing thinner and lighter slabs. Cutting the cable can be catastrophic, and it's apparently not very feasible to only cut part of it out while keeping tension. Can any engineers or superintendents weigh in?

Otherwise, I understand that light wells are tough but can often be done if augmented with new structure, and presumably life safety...

Yes, it would be a concern. It would also be a concern for reinforced concrete as well (though a bit less disastrous). You can't just cut the middle of a reinforced concrete beam in half and expect the remaining half to support the same loads. Concrete beam reinforcement is designed to support a certain moment & shear at different sections based on the reinforcement pattern design.

For pre-stressed concrete plates, the engineers would basically need to locate the ends of the tensioners at any floor plates around the proposed light well before determining where to make the cuts.

Cutting the light well courtyard works best for regular grid-pattern structures, in which each column mainly supports the immediate adjacent loads around it (as well as the loads above). The main concern afterwards is the eccentric (unbalanced) load on the columns surrounding the light well, since the column connections were not originally designed for continuous eccentric loads at all times. The entire light well structure would need to be braced to prevent any columns from bowing in/out.

[mhays]

Interesting, thanks.

[LA21st]

Originally Posted by TWAK

Who wouldn't want to live in a tower that used to be an office? I would! It would sure help some of CA's housing problems.

Many older office buildings along Wilshire were already being converted into residential before covid.
Hell, its even happening in Beverly Hills.

[iheartthed]

It's interesting to hear the discussion of converting old office towers to housing to address housing shortages. A decade ago, converting office towers to housing was mostly done just to save old buildings.

[TWAK]

Originally Posted by LA21st

Many older office buildings along Wilshire were already being converted into residential before covid.
Hell, its even happening in Beverly Hills.

SF probably has done the same thing or will be able to do it since of all the money out there.

Originally Posted by iheartthed

It's interesting to hear the discussion of converting old office towers to housing to address housing shortages. A decade ago, converting office towers to housing was mostly done just to save old buildings.

California started a program to sell and swap excess state property for the purpose of developing housing. It could now be applied to office towers like the ones in Sactown.

[llamaorama]

I'm sure that some people on SSP will know better than me, but IIRC in the 19th century before widespread electric light there were innovations to bring sunlight into interior rooms. Anidolic lighting. Mirror tubes and prismatic glass to diffuse light more evenly into a deep room, etc.

I'm kind of curious how far light would make it in a unit that was 20' wide and just very long, if the bedrooms further back down the hall had a transom. Transparent miniblinds that could be shut but still let a lot of light in, etc.

Also I don't think a "deep" unit would be so bad if you had something like an office or storage room buried in the interior. That would also be an acceptable place for kitchen, laundry, etc.

[Emprise du Lion]

Originally Posted by Steely Dan

What's weird though is that, despite being 36 years old now, it's still one of the youngest office towers in downtown st. Louis.

And when it became vacant 10 years ago, it was only 26 years old; it wasn't some decrepit century-old dinosaur that needed $100M+ to modernize ancient building systems.

It hasn't quite been 10 years just yet. AT&T fully vacated the building in 2017, but it has sat completely empty since. You're also right about its age. One Metropolitan Square was completed shortly after 909 Chestnut, and it's still sitting at about 92% full a few blocks away. It's the tallest skyscraper in the city, although only the third largest office building in terms of square footage.

Honestly, the only new construction class A office space that downtown has produced in 20+ years was the PwC Pennant Building completed in 2019 next to Busch Stadium and Ballpark Village, and it's only 11 stories.

Just about all of st. louis' significant urban office buildings constructed over the past three decades have been built out in Clayton.

I often wonder about how much healthier downtown st. Louis might be today if downtown Clayton had never become a thing.

my guess is that this building would've almost certainly not sat vacant for so long if there was no Clayton.

In terms of skyscrapers and highrises, yes, Clayton has stolen the city's thunder in terms of office space construction. St. Louis is still seeing office infill though, the trouble is that there's still more options than just downtown. A lot of office infill is still going in and around the Cortex district, which straddles the Central West End and Midtown.

There's also ongoing conversions of downtown St. Louis' prewar office buildings into new office, but many of the larger buildings have also relied on residential conversion, hotels, etc. For a residential example, the Butler Brothers Building is going to become apartments. It's roughly 700,000 sq ft. For a straight up office update / conversion, Square has completely gutted the old St. Louis Post-Dispatch Building and their office opened last year, I believe.

Originally Posted by SAN Man

$9.2 million for a 1.4 million sq ft. skyscraper?! $6.50/square foot. A typical mid century ranch house here goes for about $700/square foot. Something must be really wrong with the building. How can something like that sit around for that long at that price?

It lost $5 million in value over last year alone. Something is up, or the bond holders have finally given up and just want to unload the thing. At the rate things are going though, the skyscraper is about to be the same price as a mansion next to Forest Park.

Jokes aside, it will cost money to update the building, but the real problem is apparently the complete and utter lack of parking. There's a limited number of spots included with the building, but when AT&T occupied the tower there was a skybridge connecting it to its neighboring building that had the parking garage that served the building. AT&T retained control of the garage that was meant to serve a 44 story skyscraper, and the skybridge also got torn down.

So this means employees are going to have to street park, park in a nearby public garage, or, heaven forbid, take the MetroLink that has a stop a block away at 8th and Pine. For car centric St. Louis, these are apparently unattractive options.

[SFBruin]

Originally Posted by pdxtex

I hope these companies abandoning American downtowns start getting shamed. 1 year ago, were all in this together! One year later, yer downtown is failing? Yeah were outta here! So much for civics.

Companies that were downtown and left did more than companies that were never downtown to begin with.

[pdxtex]

Suppose work from home becomes the new norm and 30 to 40 percent of US office space goes into foreclosure. What happens? All these people think working from home is great but look what happened when we shut things down. A gazillion intertwined systems all went tits up. Would a massive foreclosure crisis have similar results as 2008? Nobody is going to turn skyscrapers into housing. Owners will walk away.

[eschaton]

Originally Posted by pdxtex

Suppose work from home becomes the new norm and 30 to 40 percent of US office space goes into foreclosure. What happens? All these people think working from home is great but look what happened when we shut things down. A gazillion intertwined systems all went tits up. Would a massive foreclosure crisis have similar results as 2008? Nobody is going to turn skyscrapers into housing. Owners will walk away.

This has been debated for awhile, and I don't think it will be as bad as you think. It could be a financial disaster, but it won't be a disaster for cities in general.

1. There are higher vacancy levels in suburban office parks than downtown buildings. This shouldn't be surprising, because working in an office park involves all of the bad parts of working away from home (like the commute) with none of the good parts (lunches out, being able to do something in the evening after work, etc.). So ultimately suburbs are in bigger trouble here pound for pound.

2. Within cities, class B/C office space will get converted into apartments or hotels, with the remaining office workers consolidating into the Class A buildings. Thankfully class B/C buildings are also more likely to be older buildings (in some cases prewar) with floor plates which are more amenable to this sort of conversion.

[Innsertnamehere]

There had been trends for a decade or two of declining space per employee in office spaces as well - falling office lease rates would likely reverse that trend.

lower office demand will see employers upgrade their quality of space (perhaps a company previously renting class B will now rent class A), will see the lowest tiers of space demolished, converted, etc, but these are already buildings largely at end of life, companies which still lease space will lease more space than they would have historically as it's cheaper, etc.

The market will adjust to the new realities.

What would happen is

1. relatively little new office space will be built for quite a while outside of the highest growth markets

2. the most marginal office spaces, i.e. aging suburban office buildings in need of serious upgrades which were never particularly good office spaces even when new, will get demolished or converted.

3. companies would expand their office footprints per employee over historically as office space becomes cheaper, backstopping some of the fall in office demand. 150sf per employee we commonly see today would likely return to closer to the ~250sf per employee we historically saw. More offices again, larger desks, more meeting rooms, zoom call rooms, etc.

A good spot to look for the future of these trends is Calgary, which has had huge office vacancy rates (like over 30%) in the downtown since well before the pandemic as a result of the oil crash of 2014/2015. Lots of old, 1960's office buildings being converted to residential, companies expanding their footprints per employee as the rent is cheap, and basically no new construction whatsoever in the last 7 years.

[Yuri]

^^^^^^
Yes, office spaces are in "crisis" for over 15 years now. New York and Chicago skyscraper boom, for instance, have been heavily residential.

If Covid is to be this transformative (I don't believe so), cities could easily dodge the worse effects with residential conversions.

[Steely Dan]

Originally Posted by Yuri

New York and Chicago skyscraper boom, for instance, have been heavily residential.

Yes, heavily residential, but not without significant new office towers being built either.

chicago has built 17 major office towers so far this century, totaling roughly 22M square feet of new class A space in big office towers (and that doesn't even include all of the space in the sub-400' range like the current west loop office building explosion).

here's how they shake out on height and square footage.

1. Salesforce Tower --- 2023 - 850' - 1.6M SF
2. 110 N Wacker ------ 2020 - 817' - 1.5m SF
3. 300 N LaSalle ------ 2008 - 785' - 1.3M SF
4. BCBS Tower -------- 2010 - 744' - 1.6M SF
5. River Point --------- 2017 - 732' - 1.0M SF
6. BMO Tower --------- 2021 - 727' - 1.5M SF
7. 150 N Riverside ---- 2017 - 724' - 1.2M SF
8. 111 S Wacker ------ 2005 - 681' - 1.5M SF
9. 71 S Wacker ------- 2005 - 679' - 1.8M SF
10. UBS Tower ------- 2001 - 652' - 1.4M SF
11. 155 N Wacker ---- 2009 - 638' - 1.2M SF
12. 353 N Clark ------ 2009 - 623' - 1.2M SF
13. Citadel Center --- 2003 - 580' - 1.5M SF
14. One S Dearborn - 2005 - 571 - 0.8M SF
15. CNA Center ------ 2018 - 517' - 0.8M SF
16. 191 N Wacker --- 2002 - 516' - 0.7M SF
17. 540 W Madison -- 2003 - 453' - 1.1M SF

source: SF figures are approximate and are pulled from a variety of online sources. height figures are CTBUH.


And I imagine that NYC has a similar list that's like 5x longer.





EDIT:

i merged the new thread into this old one on the same topic.

[DCReid]

Originally Posted by Steely Dan

Yes, heavily residential, but not without significant new office towers being built either.

chicago has built 17 major office towers so far this century, totaling roughly 22M square feet of new class A space in big office towers (and that doesn't even include all of the space in the sub-400' range like the current west loop office building explosion).

here's how they shake out on height and square footage.

1. Salesforce Tower --- 2023 - 850' - 1.6M SF
2. 110 N Wacker ------ 2020 - 817' - 1.5m SF
3. 300 N LaSalle ------ 2008 - 785' - 1.3M SF
4. BCBS Tower -------- 2010 - 744' - 1.6M SF
5. River Point --------- 2017 - 732' - 1.0M SF
6. BMO Tower --------- 2021 - 727' - 1.5M SF
7. 150 N Riverside ---- 2017 - 724' - 1.2M SF
8. 111 S Wacker ------ 2005 - 681' - 1.5M SF
9. 71 S Wacker ------- 2005 - 679' - 1.8M SF
10. UBS Tower ------- 2001 - 652' - 1.4M SF
11. 155 N Wacker ---- 2009 - 638' - 1.2M SF
12. 353 N Clark ------ 2009 - 623' - 1.2M SF
13. Citadel Center --- 2003 - 580' - 1.5M SF
14. One S Dearborn - 2005 - 571 - 0.8M SF
15. CNA Center ------ 2018 - 517' - 0.8M SF
16. 191 N Wacker --- 2002 - 516' - 0.7M SF
17. 540 W Madison -- 2003 - 453' - 1.1M SF

source: SF figures are approximate and are pulled from a variety of online sources. height figures are CTBUH.


And I imagine that NYC has a similar list that's like 5x longer.





EDIT:

i merged the new thread into this old one on the same topic.

Companies tend to prefer new space, even if there are millions of older space
available. That is why places like Houston and Dallas, which have had office vacancies near 20% or more for years still build new offices and often succeed in filling them up. Landlords with older space have to refurbish to keep tenants.

[kingkirbythe....]

Speaking of....



Why Empty Offices Are Becoming Apartments in Texas’s Big Cities

With workers continuing to stay home post-pandemic and housing in short supply, developers in the state’s largest metros are giving a second life to old buildings.

https://www.texasmonthly.com/news-po...s-conversions/

The trend seems tailor-made for Texas. Office-vacancy rates in most of the state’s major downtowns are high (roughly 25 percent in Dallas and Houston, in the teens in Fort Worth and San Antonio). The cost of single-family homes has skyrocketed and interest rates have risen, making many would-be buyers renters. And relatively few apartments are available, with vacancy levels in the single digits and pricey monthly rents expected to get even pricier, according to projections from the Texas Real Estate Research Center at Texas A&M University.

What’s more, decades-old buildings may be more cost-effective and environmentally friendly to revamp into residences than ground-up construction, experts say, since the building’s shell is already in place and carbon emissions from the creation of new materials can be reduced.

“I think it checks all the boxes,” Chuck Dannis, an adjunct professor of practice in real estate at Southern Methodist University, says of the office-to-apartment trend. “You get empty space filled, and you get some people back into the inner city and you increase the tax rolls. I think all of that is good.”