Can turning office towers into apartments save downtowns?

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.