Can turning office towers into apartments save downtowns?

Original Article ↗ Hacker News Discussion ↗

With remote work hollowing out downtown office towers, many are asking whether these buildings can be converted into much‑needed housing and mixed‑use space. Commenters highlight both the appeal — more central housing, reduced commutes, and livelier city cores — and the substantial obstacles, including building codes (egress, ventilation, plumbing), economics, zoning, and entrenched real-estate interests. There is broad agreement that some conversions and new residential construction could help cities adapt, but skepticism that this alone can “save” downtowns without deeper policy changes on affordability, public safety, and land use.

Economic feasibility of office-to-residential

  • Many argue conversions are usually only marginally cheaper than teardown-and-rebuild, sometimes more expensive, especially for 80s/90s “cube farm” towers.
  • Key constraint: owners, lenders, and city budgets are still priced for high commercial values. Large write-downs, bankruptcies, or eminent domain may be needed before cheap acquisition makes projects pencil out.
  • Some say if the building can be bought cheaply enough, creative reuse (e.g., big storage rooms, workshops, amenities) can work; others counter that building-code and systems retrofits still kill the economics.
  • Vacant buildings are seen as a clear negative for crime and downtown vitality, but landlords’ bailouts are widely opposed; several comments argue to let them fail and reset prices.

Physical and code constraints

  • Repeated themes:
    • Deep floorplates → windowless interiors; many jurisdictions require operable windows and daylight for bedrooms and sometimes ventilation.
    • Plumbing: going from a few office cores to dozens of kitchens/bathrooms per floor is very costly (drain lines, vent stacks, hot water, electric).
    • HVAC and electrical loads differ between office and residential; metering and distribution often need major rework.
    • Fire codes (egress, stairwells, sprinklers, interior bedrooms) and national building codes are stiff obstacles.
  • Older warehouses/factories and smaller mid‑rise offices convert more easily than modern, very-deep high-rises.

Design ideas for “problem” interior space

  • Suggested uses: storage lockers, workshops, gyms, tracks, courts, libraries, coworking, computer labs, shared kitchens, tool libraries, indoor markets, co‑living amenities, or simply “non-living” bonus rooms.
  • Some propose drastic structural changes (light wells, removed floors, cored-out cores) but others note these require heavy, expensive structural work and may only work in select projects.
  • Controversial idea: windowless bedrooms or “virtual windows” (OLED/fake skylights), with some enthusiastic and others calling it dystopian or unsafe.

Social housing, crime, and who the units serve

  • Strong disagreement over using converted towers as low‑income or homeless housing:
    • One side warns of repeating “concentrated poverty” project failures and crime; cites NYCHA vs Singapore-style mixed-income models.
    • Others argue most poor are not criminals, that vacancies are more criminogenic than occupied units, and that we already accept marginal/hard‑scrabble housing (SROs, adult dorms, cage homes elsewhere).
  • Mixed‑income, mixed‑use buildings are widely favored to avoid stigma and support local retail.

Zoning, regulation, and incentives

  • Zoning is repeatedly blamed: single‑use districts, bans on residential in office zones, and restrictions on mixing ground-floor retail with apartments.
  • Several commenters argue cities should:
    • Legalize SROs/co‑living and interior units with revised codes.
    • Tax long‑vacant property heavily; relax rules that block new dense housing.
    • Use eminent domain or public ownership in extreme cases.
  • Others emphasize finance: banks, leases, and property-tax structures can keep offices nominally “worth” more as offices than as housing.

“Saving downtowns” and urban form

  • Split views on whether downtowns should be “saved” at all versus allowed to shrink and reconfigure.
  • Fans of dense cities argue:
    • Mixed-use, high‑density cores offer walkability, social life, culture, and efficient shared infrastructure.
    • More residents downtown could support shops, transit, and even make RTO less painful.
  • Skeptics point to crime, weak schools, high taxes, and WFH as structural headwinds; some prefer suburban or rural models with distributed small centers.
  • Examples: Kansas City and some NYC/Brooklyn and European cases show successful conversions and mixed-use cores, but commenters note these are often older, more adaptable buildings, not generic glass towers.