Incredibly bleak. Beyond the windowlessness, there are only 11 bedrooms on the floor. Maybe 15 people will live here? That’s nothing compared to the number of people who used to work on a floor. There is no urban future for America without bringing office workers back to these buildings. - ThreadSky

stephenjacobsmith.com • 43 days ago

Incredibly bleak. Beyond the windowlessness, there are only 11 bedrooms on the floor. Maybe 15 people will live here? That’s nothing compared to the number of people who used to work on a floor. There is no urban future for America without bringing office workers back to these buildings.

Reposted from Chicago Cityscape

Plans that show the conversion of an existing 8-story office building to a residential building with...

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Comments

nilo.bsky.social•43 days ago

Not even downtown. Really unclear to me why they wouldn’t just tear this down and build a taller residential building?

stevevance.net•43 days ago

Idk if this is the most correct answer but it’s tied to the PD/PUD of a much larger residential building that is using the space above it (1000M)

nilo.bsky.social•43 days ago

I figured the answer was “rules arbitrage” in some sense.

stephenjacobsmith.com•43 days ago

Unfortunate that even with all that residential density next door, it can’t support commerical reoccupation (since apartments create demand for commercial space).

cstarks.bsky.social•43 days ago

Or tear it down and build anything at all with a more efficient layout?

Very weird.

benadamso-o.bsky.social•43 days ago

Knocking down office buildings and rebuilding them is probably easier forcing workers and employers to do something they don't want to do.

benadamso-o.bsky.social•43 days ago

There is no urban future without getting workers back into the office is such an unserious take.

sqncs.bsky.social•43 days ago

Na. If towns depend on RTO then they can rot for all I care

rebeccajtiffany.bsky.social•43 days ago

An office-to-residential building conversion near me punched balconies into the facade, creating more window surface. Worked great! In many cases, office workers don't want to come back to these buildings & we shouldn't force them. People want to live in these places & the buildings are empty.

jwolf.bsky.social•43 days ago

The value for many of these Class C (and B) office buildings is going to be the dirt they sit on. They aren't amenable to residential conversion and are not attractive to office tenants anymore, with an abundance of newer, nicer space available.

scienceb.bsky.social•42 days ago

Huge lifeless office buildings are bad infrastructure no matter how they are used.

Humans cannot thrive in windowless boxes no matter how you decorate them.

jajajaboo.bsky.social•43 days ago

I love wfh. But if I could walk to work or have an easy commute it would be great to be able to go in to office. Ppl in this thread seem to miss the point which is build livable cities people want to be in and around, rather than paper over the core issues by making offices miserable apartments.

planetoffinks.bsky.social•43 days ago

Ok guess there's no future for urban America then?

planetoffinks.bsky.social•43 days ago

"the future depends on a ship that has long since sailed" oh ok

94501.bsky.social•43 days ago

Somehow still better units than today’s typical 5-story double loaded corridor buildings.

stephenjacobsmith.com•43 days ago

It’s way, way worse! There are no windows along that bottom wall.

94501.bsky.social•42 days ago

I’ll take a logical/generous unit layout with windows in the common space only and windowless bedrooms over a 300 unit building of 13’x50’ bowling lane shaped 1 bedroom apartments and a double loaded corridor out of the severed floor of Lumon Enterprises. 🤷‍♂️

oleanders.bsky.social•43 days ago

If more housing were built, increasing the population of the metro area, demand for office space would increase eventually. One would think no one would be more eager to relax strict residential zoning requirements than owners/developers of commercial estate.

sallyern.bsky.social•43 days ago

Workers DO NOT want to go to the office. We now understand we can be productive for 8 hours and when off, we are home. No long commute that takes away from our lives.

nparikh.org•43 days ago

I also like being at home but many many people like going to the office

samd.bsky.social•43 days ago

I like going to the office and know plenty of people who feel the same way (provided the office is easily accessible via transit)

watchreader.bsky.social•43 days ago

Your preferences are abnormal.

johnbrownstan.bsky.social•43 days ago

Yeah I don't think people hate in-person work so much as 1) inflexibility, and 2) commuting. Both of those are solvable.

That said, if a considerable percentage of people prefer working from home, I don't see why we can't just tear down the office buildings and replace them with apartment.

mikebyoder.bsky.social•43 days ago

Why put up a new building when this one is good?

People wanting more windows etc is a luxury concern. I think it says a lot that people who say they want to legalize all housing, that they reject housing for not being posh enough. Straight up NIMBYism

redwoodgirl.bsky.social•42 days ago

Windows are not a luxury concern. JFC.

mikebyoder.bsky.social•42 days ago

Don't be a NIMBY

nopoopforyou.bsky.social•42 days ago

Not enough windows? Some folks can only afford basements in many markets.

Also 15 people owning or paying rent us far better than none.

mikebyoder.bsky.social•42 days ago

I don't understand these people. I throught we were in favor of zoning reform.

If you want a bright bedroom, don't rent these units. Other people can! God forbid we produce units that are qualitatively different, for people with different priorities

lampsofgold.bsky.social•43 days ago

Key here is choice and flexibility, top down mandates do not work and only breed resentmen

cstarks.bsky.social•43 days ago

It depends on the work, but in many fields i just don’t see how remote is good for teaching the next generation. I don’t know how I would have learned about the world and my profession if I hadn’t gone into work and had in-person interactions every day for many years.

cstarks.bsky.social•43 days ago

While it’s nice not to commute, there’s also a civic responsibility to doing things in person.

dankeshet.bsky.social•43 days ago

If 75% of workers return to office, that's still a massive drop-off in office demand.

scruffycities.bsky.social•43 days ago

I work remotely - and have a membership at a CoWorking space that's a ten-minute walk away.

Easily the best ten minutes of my day.

arcoar.bsky.social•43 days ago

If this feeling were widespread enough to match the hopes of the return-to-office crowd, there would be no need for policies to require it. I want you office-lovers to have that choice! But as a lawyer who loves the 1-hr plus I now have back in each day, I don't want to be forced back downtown.

octaviuz.bsky.social•43 days ago

Same, I commute by bus, I like interacting with my coworkers and I do not wish to provide office space to my employer, that's their responsibility.

janethebane.bsky.social•43 days ago

knocking down the office blocks is more realistic. there isnt demand for office space, and they dont convert well to apartments

samd.bsky.social•43 days ago

It’s pretty funny to see the same left-NIMBYs who hate SROs pitch office conversions as the alternative to building more housing

reftpt93.bsky.social•43 days ago

I do not see converting office buildings to residential housing as an alternative to building increased housing. But I don’t want to see policies orientated around requiring people to come back into work.

gregshill.com•43 days ago

I don’t disagree with the macro point, but it’s class C office space and (as you observe in another tweet) it can’t be torn down and built up (even if demolition were allowed, which I don’t know; it’s in a landmark district). It’s a hard problem.

stephenjacobsmith.com•43 days ago

Healthy cities will have demand for office space at all price points. This one is located a 5-min walk from an electrified rail line with level boarding at every station which travels through some very dense residential neighborhoods – and which has 2-hour gaps in service today during daylight hours

stephenjacobsmith.com•43 days ago

Maybe we’ll do the easy stuff (like running rapid transit-quality transit service on the rapid transit infrastructure nearby) and it will turn out that still, it isn’t viable to run an office space in this Loop-adjacent office building. But won’t accept that it’s a hard problem to solve until we…

stephenjacobsmith.com•43 days ago

…do the easy stuff.

gregshill.com•43 days ago

I don’t think this is fixable via transit - there’s so much local vacancy - and its highest and best use at the moment appears to be residential. The alternative may not be a bustling commercial building full of tenants, but rather just another vacant building.

stephenjacobsmith.com•43 days ago

I disagree. Transit access to residential neighborhoods is the entire raison d’être of downtowns. It’s not a minor thing for the health of South Loop office space when you just choose not to run usable service on the line that the whole area was built around.

darwinwoodka.bsky.social•43 days ago

Why not housing around the outside with the windows and offices in the middle where they can work? Maybe a nice restaurant in the center for lunch and dinner?

nopoopforyou.bsky.social•42 days ago

Also storage. The bathrooms.

And ive heard all the “these buildings are not habitable” arguments but we were ok with spending most of our waking hours in them with all these people packed in close???? Seriously contradictory

nopoopforyou.bsky.social•42 days ago

Conversation would cost too much? Look at what used to happen between every tenant.

jjarchitect.bsky.social•43 days ago

Obsolescence in building type.

charjg.bsky.social•43 days ago

Bleak is being forced to give up 8-12 hours of your day for commuting and sitting under fluorescent light and breathing recycled air next to 100 other people who don't want to be there either so everyone is angry and miserable.

ninahorisakichr.bsky.social•43 days ago

I don't see the necessity of bringing workers into every building: there's no reason to concentrate everything in a downtown area in order to create urban fabric.

But I do agree that the windowless bedrooms, which are illegal due to the need for light, ventilation, and egress, are bleak.

pushtheneedle.bsky.social•43 days ago

I love how this idea has been discussed for 5 fucking years and yet this is all we get and the concept has never taken off. I think a lot of city officials who don’t understand architecture or economics think it’s a great catch all idea

slucy.bsky.social•43 days ago

What are the city officials supposed to do? They can't force companies to bring workers back to office towers.

redwoodgirl.bsky.social•42 days ago

They can re-zone it for residential and offer incentives for knocking the building down and building a new one.

mkroll.bsky.social•43 days ago

Perhaps tariffs will lead to Americans having more hobbies and then lightner publishing can return to its glory days

pushtheneedle.bsky.social•43 days ago

They shouldn’t be wasting their time on shit like this and instead actually try to plan the city. This whole topic is a huge distraction soaking up all their resources

stephenjacobsmith.com•43 days ago

The relevant officials could try to run rapid transit service on the rapid transit-quality rail line that runs directly between where you live and where this building is. Transit service is a pretty tried and true way to improve the desirability of office space.

slucy.bsky.social•43 days ago

Well, they already do at rush hour.

No one is avoiding working in the office 9-5 because the train schedule between Hyde Park and the Loop is insufficient.

slucy.bsky.social•43 days ago

I think the real answer is rapidly grow the population in the residential neighborhoods.

If office occupancy is down 25% due to WFH, we need to grow the city 25% to fill those offices again.

slucy.bsky.social•43 days ago

(I'm not against converting some of the pre-war office buildings though...the Fisher Building conversion was quite successful I think)

davidasilva.bsky.social•43 days ago

Is metra still every 30-60 min?

slucy.bsky.social•43 days ago

Most lines, yes.

My line (Metra Electric) has 15 trains per hour at rush hour, 3tph most of the day / evening and also Saturdays (so every ~20m), and then super bullshit on Sunday (~1tph)

ranryu.bsky.social•43 days ago

The 1300 apartments in this former office building in New York disagree with you

https://www.6sqft.com/largest-office-to-residential-conversion-25-water-street-apartments-fidi/

pushtheneedle.bsky.social•43 days ago

Yes a few projects will work but most of them won’t. Also, midwest and east coast are slightly more likely because they don’t need seismic upgrades. Spending all our time on conversion policy and studies to flip maybe 1% of these buildings is actually a complete waste of time

pushtheneedle.bsky.social•43 days ago

Chicago and NY were already doing conversions before the pandemic. They are incredibly expensive and tedious to complete

a-c-saccade.bsky.social•42 days ago

They could at least alter the floor plan to better suit the building they HAVE: long, thin studio room apartments each coming off a window, so your space has natural light.

stephenjacobsmith.com•43 days ago

You know what would be a good way to encourage commercial reoccupancy of this South Loop office building, rather than a handful of dystopian apartments where your bedroom/bathroom/kitchen morning routine doesn’t get a single ray of natural light? Running the Metra Electric District as rapid transit!

antiwhimsybrigade.bsky.social•42 days ago

what are you talking about? every one of those apartments has a window in the bedroom, kitchen or dining area. Besides, when you're going into the office half the year you don't get a single ray of natural light regardless of windows because you have to leave when it's still fucking dark out!

bikemoredriveless.bsky.social•43 days ago

I can’t argue with your assessment of the bleakness of that office building conversion. However, what is equally bleak is a city center where office workers go home at night. We need people living in the business district to bring life to a city.

stephenjacobsmith.com•43 days ago

There’s a high-rise apartment building not just next to this site but cantilevered on top of this building (1000M).

ramonarjona.bsky.social•43 days ago

And how does rent there compare to what people working nearby might earn?

ramonarjona.bsky.social•43 days ago

To be clear, I do not intend snark. My experience so far is that family apartments near the city center are only accessible to the very wealthy. But maybe the pandemic & WFH will change that.

mikebyoder.bsky.social•43 days ago

YIMBYs need to be more open to atypical (for America) floorplans, if they really do want more housing. Not every property makes sense as a tear down.

I also take issue with den bedroom units being bleak. There are hundreds of these type of units featured on YouTube, that are twee AF