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Comment by currymj | Hacker News Reader

i have a fairly ill-informed question.

my sense is that office-to-residential just rarely makes sense. but could one change building codes so that, when new office buildings are constructed, they have to be designed to make a future residential conversion relatively cheaper and more feasible?

how much extra cost would this impose in the construction process? is it something that's relatively cheap/not that much downside, if only you plan ahead?

this solves no problems now but I am still curious about it.

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So the basic problem is that basic building design is a major stumbling block here. (I learned this from listening to the Odd Lots podcast cited below when it came out, so this is all from memory.)

Modern offices are designed to be big open warehouses, trying to maximize the number of desks you can fit into a space. Big square footprint with central core for restrooms, stairs and elevators has been the dominant paradigm here because it maximizes the number of desks you can fit into a given lot. But apartments want perimeter, everyone wants windows and massively more plumbing necessary to give every apartment its own bathroom. So big square footprint isn't how you want your apartment building to be- that floorspace in the middle isn't worth much.

The developer they interviewed had actually ripped the center out of a building to create a big open glassed-in courtyard in one of their buildings, to give them an outer and inner ring of apartments which all had some light. But that requires a lot of work and a lot of staring at structural blueprints to make sure that it won't fall apart.

The two biggest hurdles in doing office-to-residential conversions are:

1. The lease span (i.e., the distance from the core of the building to the windows) is typically much larger in an office building vs. a residential building (40ft vs 30ft).

2. The plumbing/mechanical services need to be increased/modified for a residential building.

Enforcing the first would essentially mean asking the developer to design a different building. It's possible that you could make an office building work without following conventional office layouts and leasing patterns (who knows, maybe there's more of an appetite for something different post-COVID), but it would involve a significant re-thinking on the part of the developer about how they will make money from a project.

The HVAC/plumbing issue could probably be something you could ask the builder to make accommodations for without needing to totally re-conceptualize the project.

Not an expert but know a little, good ole "it depends". Options for water and waste management, building size, occupation levels, etc. It would likely end up being fairly substantial to make every building dual use.

Well apparently it takes almost no office to housing conversion to move migrants into an office building next to where I work in Boston (under 2 weeks from what I can tell).

So that's your answer on the lower end.

https://www.boston25news.com/news/local/residents-bostons-fo...

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