Archinect - News

Unpacking the factors behind New York City's complex housing crisis

2024-11-26T14:29:00-05:00

The New York Times recently outlined some of the facts underpinning NYC’s housing crisis ahead of an upcoming final City Council vote on Mayor Eric Adams’ amended ‘City of Yes’ zoning overhaul plan for 80,000 new residential units on December 5th.

Among the interesting takeaways: only 10% of zoned residential lots allow for the construction of high- or moderate-density buildings through "as of right" development. The plan also calls for ADUs and a framework to fund office conversions, which account for 20,000 units. Currently, the rate of new apartment construction in the city is still at historic lows. The Regional Plan Association estimates there will have to be 473,000 more units of housing by 2032 to match its current needs. (h/t Forbes.)

The architect of New York’s ‘loft movement’ has some lessons for would-be conversion architects today

2024-07-08T18:53:00-04:00

Today, the ideas Mr. Lombardi pioneered nearly 50 years ago are serving as a template for addressing twin problems: the city’s enormous office glut and its growing housing crisis. Mr. Lombardi, now 84 and still running a 16-person firm, is part of a wave of architects and developers now undertaking the mammoth work of converting financially distressed office buildings into multifamily housing.

A lengthy Times profile on the legendary New York conversion architect Joseph Pell Lombardi traces his early career efforts in SoHo and the Financial District to the contemporary challenges posed by office buildings and the impetus to remake them into housing in spite of the difficult parameters and feasibility of such designs.

One tenant of his crowning late-70s Liberty Tower conversion said: “He painted a picture of the neighborhood as a residential mecca, which no one else could see at the time.” Richard Gluckman of Gluckman Tang Architects adds: “His foresight inspired a lot of architects. He showed what was possible.”

At least 64 building owners have 'expressed interest' in the city's new Office Conversion Accelerator since the program was launched last summer. According to a RentCafe data analysis, 5,215 units are currently in the city's project pipeline after the local market experienced an 18% growth from the preceding calendar year.

64 building owners express interest in entering NYC's Office Conversion Accelerator program

2024-05-23T14:31:00-04:00

New York City's recently launched Office Conversion Accelerator Program has drawn interest from 64 building owners in Manhattan as planning officials mull changes to help speed up the process intended to deliver 20,000 new units of housing by 2033.

The market for conversion in Lower Manhattan has thus far yielded 2,100 new units in four converted buildings, highlighted by CetraRuddy's forthcoming effort at 25 Water Street, the largest conversion project in the country.

Still, as Gothamist reports: "The office conversion plan aims to produce thousands of new apartments, but none so far will be within reach for low-income New Yorkers who bear the brunt of the city’s housing shortage."

A potential game-changer is the proposal, backed by Mayor Eric Adams, to move the eligibility of conversion permits to include buildings constructed after 1990. Most of the conversions have targeted L...

Hotels surmount offices for residential conversion projects for the first time

2024-05-13T13:43:00-04:00

The balance of power in the market for residential conversion projects in the United States has shifted from offices to hotels for the first time, according to new statistics included in RentCafe’s latest market snapshot report for 2023.

Per their analysis of Yardi Matrix data, 4,556 of the 12,700 new apartments that were converted in 2023 were hotels. Office buildings were only slightly behind, with 3,587 converted units, representing 28% of the overall total. New York City led all markets with 733 conversions, followed by Albuquerque and Richmond, Virginia. A total of 151,000 conversion projects are in the pipeline currently across all 50 states, with a 17.6% increase being recorded year-over-year. The number of hotels being converted was up another 38.8% over the previous year.

UCLA buys into Westside Pavilion conversion space formerly reserved for Google campus

2023-12-29T12:15:00-05:00

UCLA has purchased the former Westside Pavilion shopping mall near its campus, reports The Real Deal. The 580,000-square-foot office known as One Westside was formerly been leased to Google for a 14-year term, but was left vacant as the company’s staff reductions began in January of this year ended the deal.

The Gensler project was partially completed in 2022 at a cost of $475 million. The other 240,000-square-foot half of the mall has been redone by a developer called GPI and includes a mixed-use residential component enacted at what used to be the mall’s parking lot. Google had invested in a spate of other office conversions highlighted by the $280 million Thompson Center project in Chicago, earning it praise as one of corporate America’s leading proponents of adaptive reuse strategies.

According to The Real Deal: “UCLA has not said what it wants to do with the three-story indoor mall, wh...

MVRDV completes colorful HAUS 1 office conversion in Berlin

2023-12-04T14:24:00-05:00

MVRDV has completed work on a vibrant new conversion project in Berlin called HAUS 1 that reworked an aging office building from 1997 into a new hub for innovation and community.

Other than the eye-catching canary color finish, the project is visually dominated by an extended grand external staircase. A new terraced timber pavilion space is enacted on the rooftop, completed by an arrangement of native plants and constructed using a palette of bio-based materials. Inside, floorplans are altered to maximize flexibility. Other important aspects of the design include low-temperature underfloor heating and a rainwater harvesting system that will help the building to function sustainably year-round.

Photo © Lukas Drobny

MVRDV founding partner Jacob van Rijs says: “The newly transformed HAUS 1 is more than a gateway to this unique campus devoted to impact. It is a representation of the Atelier Gardens community and their commitment to chart a different vision of society...

An updated study led by Gensler tracks progress of office-to-residential conversion data

2023-12-04T10:15:00-05:00

Gensler Principal Steven Paynter shares an update announcing important statistical findings related to his firm’s work surrounding the adaptive reuse and conversion of office buildings worldwide.

The data report has been updated to reflect changes in office conversions. The firm shares that an estimate of only 25% of buildings (from Gensler's original assessment) are suitable for conversion. This is a decrease from the 33% figure that was reported in January as Gensler began marketing its proprietary metric of office conversions.

The new study was expanded to cover some 1,000 buildings, an increase from their previous analysis of 300 buildings. Paynter and his team now report that conversion is "an unprecedented opportunity to create new residential stock quickly, sustainably, and at a 30% lower cost than new construction."

Previously on Archinect: Gensler Principal Steven Paynter further details office conversion algorithm in podcast sit-down

The assessment also provided some intere...

White House announces new guidebook to funding office conversions nationwide

2023-10-28T08:00:00-04:00

The Biden Administration has announced a new initiative aimed at financing office conversions in an effort to combat the growing problem of high vacancy rates and housing affordability in markets large and small across the country.

The announcement comes as vacancy rates have skyrocketed to 30-year highs, according to the White House. Some cities like Washington, D.C. have seen rates as high as 50% in their CBD areas, prompting desperate appeals from politicians to enact wholesale changes to the built environment that’s backed up by funding from the federal level. Now, in unison with the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) and Department of Transportation (DOT), the government has officially published its guidelines for obtaining available funding through the Transportation Infrastructure Finance and Innovation Act and Railroad Rehabilitation & Improvement Financing, and other programs.

The White House press release says: “Converting commercial real estate to housing a...

Flatiron Building developers announce residential conversion plans

2023-10-26T20:08:00-04:00

The building’s future as housing began to take shape this week when the Brodsky Organization, a residential developer, bought a stake in the 22-story, triangular-shaped tower on Fifth Avenue. Brodsky will lead the conversion, carving out units — either for sale as condominiums or as rentals — from the notoriously awkward space. The exact layout and the number of new residences have not been determined.

The project will take about three years to complete once plans finally clear the lengthy approval process. Developers told the New York Times they are considering multiple schemes but have yet to determine the total number of residential units the conversion will create.

The saga began with a botched auction sale in March and has implications as the Flatiron, which was one of New York’s first skyscrapers, is now the most historically significant structure included in the city’s push to create 40,000 housing units out of its existing office stock by the end of the decade.

U.S. colleges eye unused office buildings for academic adaptive reuse

2023-10-06T14:09:00-04:00

U.S. colleges are taking advantage of a post-pandemic increase in affordable, unused offices by purchasing such properties for educational use, according to reporting by The New York Times. Since 2018, numerous higher education institutions in the U.S. have been acquiring office buildings, with 49 private and 16 public institutions making such purchases, as per data from real estate services company JLL.

“For schools seeking to expand, or just beef up their real estate portfolios, the purchases can be a bonanza,” The Times explains. “With the office market in a slump, they have bought buildings at bargain prices. Renovations are usually needed, but a makeover is typically not as expensive or as time-consuming as building from scratch."

Related on Archinect: AIA announces $20 billion in grant funding made available for adaptive reuse and decarbonization projects. Image credit: Brian Ferry

Examples cited by The Times include the 1928 Title and Trust Building in Los Angeles purchased b...

Construction underway on Snøhetta and Park Associati’s 1960s office renovation in Milan

2023-08-29T11:50:00-04:00

Snøhetta and Park Associati have published photographs showing progress on the refurbishment of the 1960s Pirelli 35 office block in Milan. When completed in 2024, the project seeks to “create a generous and publicly accessible building with a significantly reduced carbon footprint.”

Image credit: Tommaso Maserati courtesy of Snøhetta

Building on the existing scale and lines of the neighboring buildings, the Pirelli 35 refurbishment will see works to the existing structure complimented by a rooftop addition and a six-story extension. The rooftop volume will create a new penthouse office floor while the extension “intimately addresses the smaller scale of the surrounding residential buildings while also providing chromatic contrast to the sober and elegant re-cladded facade of the existing building.”

Image credit: Tommaso Maserati courtesy of Snøhetta

The new scheme has been organized in three horizontal “layers.” The ground and 9th floor emphasize transparency to provide a high degree...

NYC announces Midtown South office conversion rezoning to combat housing shortfall

2023-08-18T09:00:00-04:00

New York City officials announced plans on Thursday to ease the conversion of office buildings to housing and to open manufacturing areas south of Times Square to new residential development, as part of a broader push to reinvent the struggling business district in Midtown Manhattan and address the city’s housing crisis.

The news comes after the revelation last week that a total of zero new housing starts were approved in Manhattan in the month of July. The Adams administration previously announced its desire to create 40,000 new residential units through the adaptive reuse of office buildings. The rezoned area south of 40th Street to 23rd Street will be bordered by Fifth and Eighth Avenues, respectively, and includes the historic Garment District, Penn Station area, and parts of Chelsea.

They are part of a larger spate of zoning changes that coincide with the development plan, including the addition of structures built as recently as 1990 to the list of those now permittable for conversion schemes.

“The world has changed,” New York Mayor Eric Adams said at the announcement press conference. “We have to be willing to change with it.” He's not kidding. Median monthly rents in the borough are now estimated at $4,400, according to the New York Times.

Gensler Principal Steven Paynter further details office conversion algorithm in podcast sit-down

2023-08-17T14:37:00-04:00

Gensler Principal and Studio Director Steven Paynter sat down recently with financial news service Marketplace.org to detail his firm’s year-old proprietary office conversion metric, a unique tool that has become indispensable as the industry looks to position itself for the mass-scale nationwide surge in the conversion market expected for the coming decade.

Paynter had previously revealed the metric’s surprising findings that only about 30% of commercial buildings have the ideal structural prerequisites (e.g., window depth, floor plates, and ceiling heights), essentially doubling down on his original claims with added details as to the so-called “Goldilocks” zones architects look for when looking at structures for a residential conversion.

“[If] you took a typical floor plate, for example, in those the average unit size for your location or your city, it would divide that unit size by the quarter window depth, so very quickly say, OK, your unit ends up being 25 feet wide and 30 fe...

New statistics detail the coming surge in apartment conversions nationwide

2023-08-10T20:11:00-04:00

New economic reporting compiled by Yardi Matrix suggests that apartment conversions will yield 122,000 or more new units in the United States in the coming years despite a recent turndown that’s been recorded in the market since January 1st.

RentCafe has the latest data analysis to highlight a still-surging trend in the residential sector that has only mildly dampened over the last two years after reaching an apparent peak in 2019 and 2020.

There are now 45,000 units on the way across the country as a product of office-to-residential conversions. Another 10,222 conversions were completed last year, propelled by a 43% increase in hotel retrofits. A total of 3,390 of the conversions were enacted within former office buildings — representing 34% of all conversion project areas nationally.

"Market conditions that favor such projects include significant multifamily demand or government incentives, specifically aimed at promoting historic restoration efforts, the same source shows," Yard...

CetraRuddy to design landmark office-to-residential conversion at 55 Broad Street in Manhattan

2023-08-07T11:24:00-04:00

A bellwether overhaul of the aging Emery Roth & Sons-designed 55 Broad Street office tower in Lower Manhattan will be undertaken by CetraRuddy in what is billed as one of the New York market’s largest office-to-residential conversion projects in recent memory.

The project for developers Silverstein Properties and Metro Loft Management will commence early next month and culminate in a reimagined 410,000-square-foot structure replete with 571 new apartment units, a private club, 45-foot-long rooftop pool feature, and other amenities.

Rendering courtesy Silverstein Properties

The firm’s founding partner and CEO John Cetra explained of their forthcoming design: “We took advantage of 55 Broad’s unique form with setbacks which enabled us to design a variety of apartment sizes and types ranging from efficient units to loft-like layouts with generous terraces. In converting the building from commercial to residential use, we recaptured floor area that was then used to add additional square ...

Economic and political obstacles stand in way of office-to-residential conversion projects

2023-07-25T12:12:00-04:00

These conversions seem like a win-win: turning a plethora of barely used office space into desperately needed urban housing. But converting offices into apartments is easier said than done. And while it's easy to imagine the process behind conversions, like adding in walls and plumbing, it gets complicated.

Various cities across the United States have been turning to office-to-residential conversions as a way to address declining city cores that have yet to reach pre-pandemic levels. As noted by NPR, San Francisco is making way for these conversions by adjusting current building codes and getting rid of extra fees. In Washington D.C., the mayor has proposed an increase in tax breaks for owners of downtown office buildings who convert them to housing.

Previously on Archinect: A new Brookings Institution report extends solutions to America's struggling office-to-residential conversion market

While cities are aiming to provide favorable incentives for conversions, the benefits may still fall short due to the many obstacles in front of ensuring a successful project. On top of some office buildings lacking the physical qualities needed to convert to residential, strict zoning rules, as seen in New York City, already determine which buildings can be transformed into housing. And, rezoning ca...

Carlo Ratti wants to remake New York into a ‘Playground City’

2023-05-15T17:09:00-04:00

Carlo Ratti and Harvard's Economics department chair Edward Glaeser recently detailed their vision of New York as a “Playground City” in an interactive opinion feature for the New York Times. The six-point plan calls for a number of radical solutions — including the widespread (but not windowless) conversion of “deep core” office buildings favored in comments by Mayor Eric Adams — and apparently has parallels to life in 17th- and 18th-century London.

“In a Playground City,” they describe, “mixed-use neighborhoods that tie life, labor and leisure together generate what the New York urbanist Jane Jacobs calls the 'sidewalk ballet,' a productive and playful dynamic in which a diversity of different users come and go at all hours.”

The plan centers on increased social interaction and a revival of street life, fueled by small businesses, green space, and recreation. They say we must “view the city as a for-profit real estate development company wholly owned by a nonprofit poverty-allevi...

A new Brookings Institution report extends solutions to America's struggling office-to-residential conversion market

2023-05-02T13:21:00-04:00

A new report published by the Brookings Institution is offering potential solutions for developers, architects, and urban planners engaged in office-to-residential conversions in the hopes of remedying the spate of downtown declines that are beginning to plague cities across the country.

Co-authors Tracy Hadden Loh, Egon Terplan, and DW Rowlands explain: “This report begins by identifying the five common arguments made by proponents for converting offices into housing. It then evaluates the myths and realities of each argument, using data from cities across the United States. It concludes with six recommendations for what cities should do about conversions and what other long-term strategies they could adopt.”

By first identifying and then debunking the critical “myths” they say predominate thinking in the market, the authors make possible a clearer path towards more informed conversion strategies. Notions that conversions are either too pricey or the key to providing solutions to a...

Moody’s declares pre-1980s office buildings ‘obsolete’ due to conversion costs

2023-04-07T15:18:00-04:00

A new report from Moody’s Analytics is further dampening CRE prospects for the near future after declaring all office structures built before 1980 to be “obsolete” in terms of their abilities to lure back tenants in the face of an ongoing national downtown decline.

Speaking to MarketWatch recently, the ratings agency’s Nick Villa said buildings built before that date are obsolete because “generally speaking, if there were no significant renovations to the building, the amount of capital required to bring it 'current' and compete in today's market would be costlier.”

Cities like New York and Oklahoma City that maintain a higher share of these buildings may therefore face further economic difficulties as interest rates continue to climb and lending standards tighten.

Previously on Archinect: Zoom Town to Boom Town: North American business districts are going to evolve instead of dying off completely

The end of the pandemic has ushered in a new era of office design, with many new const...

New York Mayor Eric Adams pitches a case for windowless apartment units in the city

2023-03-24T11:58:00-04:00

Mayor Eric Adams opened a new window into his vision for building New York City out of the current housing crisis, with a riff on “dormitory” style accommodations [...] During a conversation on Monday at the Greene Space, New York Public Radio's live events venue, Adams said he wants to 'do a real examination' of the laws that require windows in bedrooms — a major tweak that could make it easier for developers to convert empty offices into apartments.

The Mayor’s comments in favor of window features found in Dormzilla-like residential design caught the ire of critics, who were quick to illustrate its potential fire hazards and physiological impacts. Adams’ suggestion seems a bit at odds with the city’s push to deliver better affordable housing with 40,000 office conversions and other measures, but are nevertheless in line with several of the recommendations for “flexible regulations“ attributed to the Adaptive Reuse Task Force proposed in December 2022.

According to Gothamist, Adams then also commended WeWork’s flawed housing development model and the widespread adaptation of single-room occupancy (or SROs) constructions that typically have windows but have been dwindling since being made illegal under New York City law in 1955.

Supportive housing advocate and pioneer Roseanne Haggerty told Gothamist they would “...

This architect has identified the qualities office buildings need for converting to residential

2023-03-21T11:51:00-04:00

That simple recipe for pandemic lemonade—offices people no longer use, combining with central urban locations where people want to live—is blissfully ignorant of a wide range of architectural and economic factors that make the vast majority of office buildings simply unsuitable as housing.

Labeled by Fast Company as “Goldilocks” zones, the sweet spot for office buildings with the potential to become residential are ones that are mid-rise, built pre-WWII, with at least two sides facing open areas or streets near, but not within, a city’s financial core. According to San Francisco-based architect and structural engineer Charles F. Bloszies, the challenge with converting some office buildings lies in their large floor plates and lack of street exposure. Bloszies and his firm have been using publicly accessible data from the San Francisco Planning Department to identify offices that meet the ideal conversion characteristics.

Previously on Archinect: Gensler Principal Steven Paynter details new proprietary office conversion metric

This approach could be done in almost any city says Bloszies, and with higher office vacancies, greater housing demand, and lower real estate costs, this is an opportune moment to convert offices. There’s even the potential to make use of larger, ...

New York City announces new 40,000-unit adaptive reuse office conversion plan

2023-01-13T11:50:00-05:00

New York City Mayor Eric Adams has unveiled an ambitious plan to help convert the city’s unused office spaces into apartment dwellings in an effort to bring online 40,000 new units of housing in the next decade.

The plan, which includes a new study and 11 “concrete recommendations” made by the new Adaptive Reuse Task Force announced by Adams over the summer, will target a total of 136 million square feet of office space for conversions using updates to state laws and local zoning codes under the leadership of Department of City Planning Director Dan Garodnick.

Adams said the effort offers a “roadmap to deliver on a vision for a more vibrant, resilient, prosperous, and affordable city.” Its effectiveness in combating the city's dual housing crisis and expected economic downturn is vital to Adams' success in office and can potentially be seen as a bellwether for other cities as they attempt to find their own answers to the changes made to the urban environment following COVID.

Image...

Gensler Principal Steven Paynter details new proprietary office conversion metric

2023-01-09T11:56:00-05:00

Now the algorithm he spearheaded collapses the survey process — which must be conducted to determine whether a commercial building can be turned into apartments — from months to hours. His work will help these conversions to be enacted on a mass scale. which is important given the urgency created by America's rising office-vacancy rates due to the pandemic's reshuffling of where and how we work. It could help bring people back to downtowns across North America as renters or homeowners

Gensler estimates that only 3 out of 10 office buildings are eligible for conversion. The pitfalls of mass-scale conversions remain impediments even as architecture firms are earning more from renovations than new buildings for the first time. In the last two years alone, office conversions have jumped by 25%, with an estimated 77,000 apartments currently under construction, according to November data from RentCafe.

"If we can find the perfect buildings for conversion, you start to be able to correct the market, you start to be able to bring people back to neighborhoods," Paynter said to Business Insider. "And then, actually, the demand for the remaining office buildings goes up, because you're creating scarcity by taking some out of the market."

New data reveals the growing state of adaptive reuse residential conversions nationwide

2022-11-10T17:57:00-05:00

In the last two years, apartment conversions jumped by 25% compared to two years prior. More precisely, this increasingly popular real estate niche brought a total of 28,000 new rentals in 2020-2021, well above the pre-pandemic years of 2018-2019 when 22,300 apartments were brought to life through adaptive reuse.

The new data set from real estate researchers Yardi Matrix gives some additional context to the information in yesterday’s 2022 AIA Firm Survey, which said that almost half (48%) of all projects currently being pursued by U.S. firms involve the renovation, rehabilitation, extension, or preservation of existing buildings.

An analysis of the data (which only concerns residential construction) shows that adaptive reuse schemes more than doubled (10% compared to 25%) the growth rate of new apartment construction in the country since the beginning of 2018.

The figures include an unsurprising 43% jump in the conversion of office buildings into apartments between 2020-2021 and 2018-19, representing some 40% of the whole. Washington, D.C. and Philadelphia are the leading cities for the method, and thus far in 2022, Los Angeles is leading all markets with a total of 1,242 converted a...

Los Angeles to convert vacant courthouse into affordable housing

2022-10-27T13:16:00-04:00

A long-closed Los Angeles County courthouse in Sawtelle that was once a popular draw for skateboarders may soon be redeveloped for affordable housing. The County Board of Supervisors voted to buy the former West Los Angeles Courthouse at 1633 Purdue Avenue for a mixed-use, affordable housing development, City News Service reported via KFI AM 640.

As detailed by The Real Deal, a motion to buy the courthouse, which has been vacant since June 2013, was proposed, asking Los Angeles County to source funds to acquire the space from the Judicial Council. The County has reportedly, so far, paid more than $3.5 million to the Council to incentivize development.

Doubling as a popular skate venue since the 1990s, the courthouse site became a legal location for skating following its 2013 closure, in which it’s been dubbed the West LA Courthouse Skate Plaza. Los Angeles County has chosen Arlington, Virginia-based West LA Commons as the prospective developer. The current terms of the project call for the developer to pay the County $32.3 million. The County Board of Supervisors will meet to discuss the project again on November 15th, when the public will have the opportunity to comment on the project.

D.C. steps up office-to-residential conversions in the face of housing shortage

2022-08-09T10:00:00-04:00

Through the doldrums of America’s pandemic-triggered office downturn, the nation’s capital is quickly turning into a case study for the conversion of former commercial spaces into residential housing and mixed-use development.

The Washingtonian magazine recently did a survey of different office conversions in and around the District. Vacancy rates in the area climbed to an all-time high last quarter, and the city is predictably feeling the same housing crunch as nearly every other metropolitan area of the country.

A 2019 report from the Metropolitan Washington Council of Governments indicated that the area needs to bring online at least 325,000 units before the end of the decade in order to match rising demands, making its estimated 157.9 million square feet of rentable office space a prime target for prospective developers.

The up-for-grabs Victor Building near downtown. Image courtesy Brookfield Properties.

Among the projects mentioned are PGN’s conversion of the former Peace Corp...

NYC Mayor Eric Adams announces new adaptive reuse task force

2022-07-22T18:01:00-04:00

New York City Mayor Eric Adams has announced a new adaptive reuse task force that will explore the vast untapped potential for rehabilitation present in the city’s considerable stock of outdated office buildings.

Born out of the new Local Law 43, the task force is charged with producing recommendations by year’s end for how to best approach the rehabilitation of these buildings in the face of crises of affordability, homelessness, and the loss of tax revenue caused by corporate America’s yet-unresolved pandemic exodus from the city.

The creation of the panel indicates the further migration of large global cities towards adaptive reuse policies in the hopes of making strides in the area of sustainability before the end of the decade.

The 12-member panel is composed of four staffers from the city’s Department of Buildings, Economic Development Corporation, Depa...