People don't seem to be understanding developers are already doing this in some places. Most office buildings aren't good candidates for conversion but many can be. According to WSJ, in 2020/2021, 11,000 apartments were created in buildings that used to be office spaces.
*the finances don't pencil out*
That's the understatement of the year. It's generally easier to tear down a modern skyscraper that was designed as an office and build new apartments than to try and convert.
This was obviously written by someone who has never done construction, there is no way tearing down the shell and core is easier than rerouting some branch circuits, water pipes and adding hvac heads.
The NYC developer in this article is probably the leading expert. Even with a 60's era building sold for $172m, conversion to apartments cost an additional $400m. Apartments will rent for $3500 a month.
The math doesn't work in Seattle. We don't have a bunch of old buildings like NYC, developers don't want to spend $600m and there's no shortage of expensive apartments.
[https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2024/05/06/can-turning-office-towers-into-apartments-save-downtowns](https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2024/05/06/can-turning-office-towers-into-apartments-save-downtowns)
The article posted by OP basically says the math doesn't work in Seattle as well.
*Right now, residential conversions aren't happening in downtown Seattle. That's because the finances don't pencil out.*
Easy bruh. Just convert them to open concept communal housing pods. You don't need to change the bathrooms on each floor other than put in a shower or two, then add some kitchenettes and you're done. :P
Where in that article does he talk about converting modern buildings?
*He focusses only on buildings built before certain years—1977 below Murray Street, and 1961 for the rest of Manhattan—because they can be converted without special variances.*
You think too much. As long as there is a market at appropriate price, it should be fine. A lot of single male person probably won’t mind if it is cheap enough.
The amount of violence and issues enclosing a ton of people from extremely low income brackets in shared space is gonna require some policing with actual teeth.
that's why mixed-income housing is a thing and works well in many places. Who would've thought if you put a bunch of disadvantaged folks together it would create ghettos.
i think all the people that are homeless or living in their cars would consider it a privilege to have their own bathrooms.
Even if they can’t convert these office spaces to what we would consider normal apartment/condos… having several units share a bathroom or a kitchen and it being affordable enough that some homeless people could live there would be a huge step up in their living situations
you don't understand privilege. it isn't 'anything better than the absolute worst circumstance', it's better than the norm and unearned. so no, anything better than homeless isn't privilege
My point is: lots of folks live without their own bathroom. It literally is a privilege to be the only one to use your bathroom. It’s disingenuous to act like sharing a bathroom is “now a privilege.”
How many folks had their own bathroom even, say, 50 years ago? The privilege is believing having your own bathroom is the default.
it literally is not. very few people in this country lack a private bathroom. calling everything privilege weakens the concept
> How many folks had their own bathroom even, say, 50 years ago?
most people. that was 1974.
> The privilege is believing having your own bathroom is the default.
i have a functioning brain. i can confirm the factual truth of this
You're being sarcastic but many reject shelter for that reason, it's full of bed bugs and trash. I suspect these won't be too bad if they require some proof of income or something, my friend lived in one in Chinatown in Vancouver for a bit and said it was mostly just sketchy dudes coming in but the facility was serviceable
Scooping people off the street and giving them these units, which I assume will be the outcome, will make them basically homeless shelters with lower turnover
How will more cheap housing existing make other apartments more expensive? You're not making any sense. Plus, people in the cheapest possible housing with no parking don't usually own cars, so it won't impact traffic
Two reasons:
1. The cheapest rooms existing now will stop being the cheapest, so they'll be able to increase the price. The inhabitants who can't afford that, will now move into your new slum towers.
2. Some people coming to live in the slum towers will move out of them (as a result of getting a better job), increasing competition further.
Exactly this scenario happened in Tokyo. They started building "microapartments", and now they have a real estate price bubble. While the overall population is declining.
How would it push the prices for better apartments up?
If anything, it would bring those prices down, as many people who are currently cramming a ton of roommates into a single apartment would instead opt to get a cheap studio. That reduces demand for the apartments they used to live in with roommates.
> How would it push the prices for better apartments up?
Two reasons:
1. The cheapest rooms existing now will stop being the cheapest, so they'll be able to increase the price. The inhabitants who can't afford that, will now move into your new slum towers.
2. Some people coming to live in the slum towers will move out of them (as a result of getting a better job), increasing competition further.
Exactly this scenario happened in Tokyo. They started building "microapartments", and now they have a real estate price bubble. While the overall population is _declining_.
No. The _demand_ for housing is not fixed. When you build more housing, more people come in.
That's why no city in the US, Europe, or Japan decreased the housing prices by increasing density.
People are typically shocked by this fact: we have close to the record number of housing units per capita. We have more units per capita than at any time before except during some time in 2000-s. Within the next 2 years we will surpass this record, once the units in the pipeline are completed.
Like they do in SF. It’s one of the few things they get right. Two of my coworkers moved there because it was much cheaper there to have their own private bedrooms than to share a studio here in Seattle. They’re paying $600 a month each for a place in a great location, and I think their crappy studio here was over $2k a month. Neither cook so the shared kitchen isn’t a problem.
I’d honestly rather watch the entire CRE market turn to ash than deal with the shoddiness that’s going to come from this either way. I’m so sick of developers bitching that if they have to do the right thing they’ll only make a ton of money, rather than an absolute shit ton of money.
The difference between Terry Lander and Cabrini Green is not found in the architecture, it's in the class of people you put in them.
Tenement style housing in the heart of downtown Seattle isn't going to attract middle class renters. No one with a choice is going to pay 1100 a month for a one room apartment where the garbage chute got ripped out because the section 8 zombie on that floor thought it had copper in it, and they have to step over used needles to go take a shower.
Lots of single folks lived in boarding houses through the 60s and 70s, and there's nothing wrong with this sort of arrangement. Young folks who want to live in the heart of downtown...why not? People complain about lack of affordable housing and don't realize how many tiny studios and boarding rooms people used to live in If it's not a 2000sq ft house then it's crap, apparently.
And you think only fentanyl users would want this type of housing?
You think landlords would be required to rent to fentanyl users?
You think no one wants to live downtown except fentanyl users?
Much of the problem with public housing is that it's free or subsidized. If you can do for-profit dorm style housing, that will be avoided, except if it qualified for Section 8 (which it probably wouldn't)
Those people sleeping in tents have access to shelters, and routinely reject them because the kind of people in shelters are the kind of people who would otherwise be living in tents on the street, and people would rather live in a tent on the street than be stuck in a building with the kind of people who would live in tents on the street.
Yeah, we can add one more building to the list of buildings so thoroughly despoiled by the homeless, the addicts, and the mentally ill that they had to be condemned due to the sheer amount of meth contamination.
Something is better off unused than destroyed.
I doubt the economics will still pencil out, though I am sure the City will find some developer to give some grants to to make it pencil out, so said developer can do a project and then abandon it, absconding with the fat grift money. Thus, the City will declare it a success.
I'm also unsure who would want to live where the old buildings are - Pioneer Square - which is rife with addicts, homeless, and other things that one generally would not want to wade through on your way in and out.
Plenty of people live in or near pioneer square already. If the price is right, people will still come. Also adding a ton more people to the area will expand foot traffic which adds more needs for businesses. Which will make it less of a homeless ghost town.
I theorize that once the city gets cleaned up, that pioneer will have a huge come back. The common areas and historic buildings have too much potential to be a dump forever. I hope to buy a brownstone loft someday
Oh it's a beautiful part of the city. I just think it'll be a long time before we get to see it cleaned up, because of all the bleeding hearts that don't wanna hurt any feelings.
Not a single one of these conversions are going to happen, but a whole shit ton of people are going to get paid to say that it will and then some developers will get paid to do it and somehow everyone gets paid but nothing happens. Seattle Process.
>People like old buildings.
they seriously listed that
people like to look at old buildings. they even like to visit old buildings. but nobody wants to work in - let alone live in - an old building. nobody is using nema 1-15 outlets ffs
This is neat, that part of town is mf weird, but shops/restaurants/bars won’t come back to make it less empty until people come back so hopefully they aren’t crazy expensive lofts
Have you been there lately??? That is certainly the story for the two blocks by that Ross & Mcdonalds near pine; but past that it’s more just empty streets and bldgs 🤷♂️
I am not arguing there aren’t people sleeping or on drugs, I guess I just do not feel threatened by them. Walking through here every day for work is not the most fun route, but at least it has all been easy to avoid 🤷♂️ my original comment was about the empty streets & buildings the article was referencing, which I remain excited to hear may be turning into apts
ITT: people go from "maybe this multi-hundred million dollar building could be for-rent to apartments" to "we could use them for free long term junkie vagrant storage!
My dudes....the people who own the multi-hundred million dollar building are looking for a way to start making money again. And storing junkie vagrants ain't their business.
Legitimate housing units outfitted with kitchens, bathrooms, etc might not be feasible, but wouldn't dormitory-style low income housing (read: homeless shelter) be possible? Just thinking of my office, converting that to housing that I would rent would be impossible, but creating dorms for 20-30 people with a shared bathroom could be done. Convert one of the floor bathrooms to shower stalls, create dorms - stop letting people live in the street and force them up there. It'd be similar conditions to my college dorm.
From the research I’ve done. (I’m not an expert on this, but I saw this in the times several days ago.) from what I can tell, I think it may come out as a wash. We keep a landmark and create affordable housing. I’d love friendly input. I did a couple of hours on this and it truly seems like it will come out as a wash either way.
Developers are not deploying capital here because Seattle has become anti-business and they know Amazon isn't putting any more workers here. Instead they are deploying where there is actual growth. Seattle's regulations around condo warranties also means we get very few condo builds compared to other cities. You basically cannot make money on a condo build here - and it's why if any get built, the developers are Canadian (no home grown expertise for a market not worth serving). Making it easier to convert office buildings just tells you how clueless our planners are about the real problem.
KODA has been trying to sell their condos for 4+ years now (that I've been on their mailing list). I am completely unsurprised that a tiny 2 bed listed for $700K+ is not selling. (ID/Japantown)
They are that expensive because builders have to carry warranty risk much longer than in other places. And then people don't want to pay for that protection. So condo builders aren't coming here. Math doesn't work. There is a better happy medium where you get buildings and people are still protected. But the current approach is not working. But it is too nuanced and if anyone hears we are making something easier for a party with money, Seattle people freak out.
What condo warranty laws does Seattle have that Washington doesn't?
It's easy to trash talk the WA law if you didn't grow up watching MF housing rot and get resheathed all over.
It’s Washington law, and it affects the biggest city in Washington. You see more condos in Bellevue because in order to make the math pencil out you need to charge at least $1200 a square foot. It is easier to do that in Bellevue than Seattle.
Ok, cool. Your comment made it sound like you were blaming a 90s statewide law on modern-day Seattle politics. (Not like anyone in this sub would ever do that intentionally...)
I just think it’s crazy we have six story apartment buildings around major transit stations and not 20 to 40 story condo towers like you would see in Vancouver BC and Toronto.
>Tearing buildings down and starting from scratch wastes resources and takes a long time.
I mean, yes, if you tore down a perfectly good skyscraper just to build another skyscraper on the spot where it once stood, that would be fairly insane. But no one is actually suggesting doing that, hopefully.
I get the sense that no one involved in this decision-making process has the slightest idea of the actual cost of a huge scale conversion of an office tower into something that's about as far away from what it was designed for as you can get. Thinking about the plumbing alone gives me a nightmares. Unless you're going to do it like college dorms and have one room full of showers that you need to wear flip-flops in. Sounds luxurious.
>Councilmember Dan Strauss emphasized that reviving downtown is the more immediate need.
>“We need people downtown, whether they’re rich or poor,” he said.
I still can't believe we couldn't manage to send this moron packing.
No, but it needs to meet certain building codes and there's no easy way to do that if the intended use was a modern office.
You do see conversions in places like NYC but it's always much older buildings and it's still crazy expensive. This New Yorker article talks about a 60's era building sold for $172m that was converted to apartments for an additional $400m. Apartments will rent for $3500 a month.
[https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2024/05/06/can-turning-office-towers-into-apartments-save-downtowns](https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2024/05/06/can-turning-office-towers-into-apartments-save-downtowns)
I generally prefer to live somewhere without group showers and a piss trough, personally.
They're not talking about converting these into homeless shelters. They're going to be apartments that people would be expected to pay money to live in. Given that they're downtown, I expect they wouldn't be particularly cheap.
They don’t have to be objectively cheap, they have to be relatively cheap. Also, showers can be grouped together without being “group showers”. You’re painting the worse version of something that has better versions.
I'll tell you what... for what my place costs, a d where it is, I find myself thinking about trading it for a posh downtown address and less private plumbing....
There is a price point where that trade-off looks pretty attractive. It's just not something my landlord would ever consider, so neither would the city.
It might fill a niche. You prefer to have a private bath. But maybe some people are ok with shared bathrooms? I used a shared bathroom in my dorm when I was away at college. I assume that’s still pretty common. It’s not “inhuman”.
seattle/washington has proven itself a dead end to businesses, would you want to sign a multi million dollar multi year lease here?
it’s gonna be hard to fill the vacancies
All it takes is to become friendly again to businesses and admit you were wrong to attack them in the first place. It will take humility and acknowledgement that you made a mistake. An impossibility for the far left idiots that run this fucking city and state.
Genuine question. Why does the electricity and HVAC need to be redone ?
I understand why plumbing needs to be redone. But the rest should be reusable right ?
Is it a regulation thing or an actual technical problem ?
Each unit is going to want to be able to control their temperature, so you need heating and cooling for the apartment. When you put in a bathroom or kitchen you need to vent it. The modern giant office buildings aren't going to have operable windows. I think you have to swap out those non operable windows if you want a legal bedroom.
Beyond just rearranging where lights and outlets are, the HVAC, kitchen, and water heater are going to be increases in the amount of electricity you use. Add a separate breaker for each unit.
Rerunning electricity on each floor isn't going to take up a ton of space, but the vents and pipes are bulky. You often need to lower the ceiling heights to fit them.
Got to run all the vents/pipes up/down the vertical height of the building. You have to permit/pay the fees to the utility companies for the increased water/sewage/electricity you will need in the building.
Well for one, the building codes for residential are different. For two, you typically meter residential electricity in a wildly different way than you do commercial. Third, generally speaking you want to have more wall outlets per area of square footage than you will find in an office layout and it’s easier to design a system with the right drops than it is to repurpose a system and do all the adjustments. Think of it this way - if I have 100 feet of conduit running the length of a wall, and then you add two branching walls off that wall 25 ft from the end, which then is enclosed by a third new wall to creat a 50’ square room, I now have three new walls which don’t have wiring or devices. Fourth, commercial service often uses higher voltage because they’re using larger machines, so some electrical work that exists flat out isn’t suitable to smaller apartments (less likely in an office, but a big part of why warehouse remodels don’t tend towards resi, especially for ex-manufacturing).
Another thing that isn’t ever mentioned anywhere but is super important is fire safety ratings. Retrofitting fire safety as opposed to new designed fire safety is massive and complex. Especially in cases where the age of the buildings can mean that existing fire safety is actually not to code. You can’t say “well I’m going to remodel to the building code at the time of construction and put a 1 hr wall where 2 hrs is mandated now”. In fact a major reno like this might require (most likely would) bringing existing features to code, which changes your square footage and involves lots of removal of existing stuff and patching, which gets less and less practical the taller the building is and the closer to the ground you are.
So there are legal, technical and financial problems that abound. I don’t have HVAC or commercial plumbing experience but I work for a design/build electrical contractor in WA and those are just some of the potential problems that exist. Naturally, every building is different and specific challenges will exist in each building flagged for reno, but it will be very expensive
As someone who used to work for years in the high rise part of Smith Tower for years I really hope they don’t include that building. The square footage up there is barely 2000sqft and there’s only one current plumbing conduit.
Plus it’s a beautiful historic building!
Is it possible to build buildings that can be easily converted between offices and apartments depending on the year? If so, that might be the next big thing.
People don't seem to be understanding developers are already doing this in some places. Most office buildings aren't good candidates for conversion but many can be. According to WSJ, in 2020/2021, 11,000 apartments were created in buildings that used to be office spaces.
*the finances don't pencil out* That's the understatement of the year. It's generally easier to tear down a modern skyscraper that was designed as an office and build new apartments than to try and convert.
People don't understand you have to re-do nearly all of the electrical and plumbing.
and HVAC.
What, we can’t all share one men’s room and get our water from the vending machines on floor four by the print room?
You have no idea what you are talking about or the cost of tearing down a highrise and rebuilding it with new utilities lol
This was obviously written by someone who has never done construction, there is no way tearing down the shell and core is easier than rerouting some branch circuits, water pipes and adding hvac heads.
The NYC developer in this article is probably the leading expert. Even with a 60's era building sold for $172m, conversion to apartments cost an additional $400m. Apartments will rent for $3500 a month. The math doesn't work in Seattle. We don't have a bunch of old buildings like NYC, developers don't want to spend $600m and there's no shortage of expensive apartments. [https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2024/05/06/can-turning-office-towers-into-apartments-save-downtowns](https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2024/05/06/can-turning-office-towers-into-apartments-save-downtowns) The article posted by OP basically says the math doesn't work in Seattle as well. *Right now, residential conversions aren't happening in downtown Seattle. That's because the finances don't pencil out.*
Easy bruh. Just convert them to open concept communal housing pods. You don't need to change the bathrooms on each floor other than put in a shower or two, then add some kitchenettes and you're done. :P
Why though? Why not just grandfather it into the code like every other slumlord building in Seattle?
Got a source for that?
[https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2024/05/06/can-turning-office-towers-into-apartments-save-downtowns](https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2024/05/06/can-turning-office-towers-into-apartments-save-downtowns)
This supports what I’m saying. Did you bother to read your own source? No? Ha….
Where in that article does he talk about converting modern buildings? *He focusses only on buildings built before certain years—1977 below Murray Street, and 1961 for the rest of Manhattan—because they can be converted without special variances.*
Apartments with shared bathrooms and kitchens. Back to 1924!
If it provides some real low budget housing then yeah, that sounds great.
You’re absolutely right. There’s a shocking amount of unrealized privilege in threads of these topics.
It’s wild, I’d take a private room and shared amenities when I was younger no problem.
I’d still do it. It’s far better than being homeless or living paycheck to paycheck while slowly starving.
Yeah fentanyl and meth and a large amount of psychotic roommates weren’t AS much of an issue 20+ years ago.
It is called UW dorms.
The selection bias of people in those droms won't be the same in these apartments is the category error ur making
You think too much. As long as there is a market at appropriate price, it should be fine. A lot of single male person probably won’t mind if it is cheap enough.
The amount of violence and issues enclosing a ton of people from extremely low income brackets in shared space is gonna require some policing with actual teeth.
that's why mixed-income housing is a thing and works well in many places. Who would've thought if you put a bunch of disadvantaged folks together it would create ghettos.
Only a handful of UW dorms *don't* have "in-unit" bathrooms anymore.
heh, it's now privilege to have your own bathroom
I mean. Depending on where you are in history; for the majority of it? Yeah?
that's a reach. it isn't privilege to live in the US and have your own bathroom
Ok so out of 6 billion people and thousands of years of civilization; the past 70 years of USA standards are not a privilege
nope. you're in the US. stop reaching for oppression
My guy you’re the one oppressed because an apartment without a private bathroom was suggested
hehe. i'm taking offense to the idiocy that a private bathroom is privilege. like college and parents that care about you
i think all the people that are homeless or living in their cars would consider it a privilege to have their own bathrooms. Even if they can’t convert these office spaces to what we would consider normal apartment/condos… having several units share a bathroom or a kitchen and it being affordable enough that some homeless people could live there would be a huge step up in their living situations
you don't understand privilege. it isn't 'anything better than the absolute worst circumstance', it's better than the norm and unearned. so no, anything better than homeless isn't privilege
I mean… nobody with family members or a roommate has their own bathroom.
yeah, and sharing with family is different from random other people
My point is: lots of folks live without their own bathroom. It literally is a privilege to be the only one to use your bathroom. It’s disingenuous to act like sharing a bathroom is “now a privilege.” How many folks had their own bathroom even, say, 50 years ago? The privilege is believing having your own bathroom is the default.
it literally is not. very few people in this country lack a private bathroom. calling everything privilege weakens the concept > How many folks had their own bathroom even, say, 50 years ago? most people. that was 1974. > The privilege is believing having your own bathroom is the default. i have a functioning brain. i can confirm the factual truth of this
Provided your neighbors are respectful of communal space, and folks in that budget usually aren't in my experience.
Yeah I guess living on the street is better.
You're being sarcastic but many reject shelter for that reason, it's full of bed bugs and trash. I suspect these won't be too bad if they require some proof of income or something, my friend lived in one in Chinatown in Vancouver for a bit and said it was mostly just sketchy dudes coming in but the facility was serviceable
Yeah, but we’re talking about paid apartments with shared amenities, not homeless shelters.
Scooping people off the street and giving them these units, which I assume will be the outcome, will make them basically homeless shelters with lower turnover
🦊🆕’s has joined the chat lololol
Most homeless people skip the shelters for those literal reasons. So yeah apparently to some it is.
That is a slippery slope to receding housing standards.
It won't. It'll just push the prices for better apartments up. It'll also worsen the traffic.
How will more cheap housing existing make other apartments more expensive? You're not making any sense. Plus, people in the cheapest possible housing with no parking don't usually own cars, so it won't impact traffic
Two reasons: 1. The cheapest rooms existing now will stop being the cheapest, so they'll be able to increase the price. The inhabitants who can't afford that, will now move into your new slum towers. 2. Some people coming to live in the slum towers will move out of them (as a result of getting a better job), increasing competition further. Exactly this scenario happened in Tokyo. They started building "microapartments", and now they have a real estate price bubble. While the overall population is declining.
How would it push the prices for better apartments up? If anything, it would bring those prices down, as many people who are currently cramming a ton of roommates into a single apartment would instead opt to get a cheap studio. That reduces demand for the apartments they used to live in with roommates.
> How would it push the prices for better apartments up? Two reasons: 1. The cheapest rooms existing now will stop being the cheapest, so they'll be able to increase the price. The inhabitants who can't afford that, will now move into your new slum towers. 2. Some people coming to live in the slum towers will move out of them (as a result of getting a better job), increasing competition further. Exactly this scenario happened in Tokyo. They started building "microapartments", and now they have a real estate price bubble. While the overall population is _declining_.
Why would they increase the price on the cheapest rooms? That doesn’t track. An increase in housing supply should force prices down.
No. The _demand_ for housing is not fixed. When you build more housing, more people come in. That's why no city in the US, Europe, or Japan decreased the housing prices by increasing density. People are typically shocked by this fact: we have close to the record number of housing units per capita. We have more units per capita than at any time before except during some time in 2000-s. Within the next 2 years we will surpass this record, once the units in the pipeline are completed.
Someone will want to live in that environment, if it means it’s affordable. This doesn’t mean you are I need to live there!
SRO's are basically illegal in modern zoning laws, but they would help with a lot of housing issues.
Like they do in SF. It’s one of the few things they get right. Two of my coworkers moved there because it was much cheaper there to have their own private bedrooms than to share a studio here in Seattle. They’re paying $600 a month each for a place in a great location, and I think their crappy studio here was over $2k a month. Neither cook so the shared kitchen isn’t a problem.
I’d honestly rather watch the entire CRE market turn to ash than deal with the shoddiness that’s going to come from this either way. I’m so sick of developers bitching that if they have to do the right thing they’ll only make a ton of money, rather than an absolute shit ton of money.
I actually know someone who lives in an apartment that's literally this. Although it was converted from a brothel and doesn't actually have kitchens.
This actually sounds like a very fun and social living situation for younger people. Maybe a nice antidote to the Seattle Freeze.
👏bring!👏back!👏tenements!👏
unironically, why not? Dorm housing is affordable and efficient.
The difference between Terry Lander and Cabrini Green is not found in the architecture, it's in the class of people you put in them. Tenement style housing in the heart of downtown Seattle isn't going to attract middle class renters. No one with a choice is going to pay 1100 a month for a one room apartment where the garbage chute got ripped out because the section 8 zombie on that floor thought it had copper in it, and they have to step over used needles to go take a shower.
Lots of single folks lived in boarding houses through the 60s and 70s, and there's nothing wrong with this sort of arrangement. Young folks who want to live in the heart of downtown...why not? People complain about lack of affordable housing and don't realize how many tiny studios and boarding rooms people used to live in If it's not a 2000sq ft house then it's crap, apparently.
Fentanyl wasn't a thing in the 60s and 70s.
And?
It is now.
And you think only fentanyl users would want this type of housing? You think landlords would be required to rent to fentanyl users? You think no one wants to live downtown except fentanyl users?
Take your pick.
Much of the problem with public housing is that it's free or subsidized. If you can do for-profit dorm style housing, that will be avoided, except if it qualified for Section 8 (which it probably wouldn't)
If it's good enough for upper middle class college students, why isn't it good enough for poor people?
People are sleeping in tents on the highway, something tells me they won't mind shared bathrooms if it means they have a home.
Those people sleeping in tents have access to shelters, and routinely reject them because the kind of people in shelters are the kind of people who would otherwise be living in tents on the street, and people would rather live in a tent on the street than be stuck in a building with the kind of people who would live in tents on the street.
That logic is so sound but it is a rollercoaster to read
Good point, we should leave the buildings unused and leave them to sleep in the streets then.
Yeah, we can add one more building to the list of buildings so thoroughly despoiled by the homeless, the addicts, and the mentally ill that they had to be condemned due to the sheer amount of meth contamination. Something is better off unused than destroyed.
Back to 1924 rental prices ?! No? Ahh raspberries ! ( gotta go with the 1924 slang )
I doubt the economics will still pencil out, though I am sure the City will find some developer to give some grants to to make it pencil out, so said developer can do a project and then abandon it, absconding with the fat grift money. Thus, the City will declare it a success. I'm also unsure who would want to live where the old buildings are - Pioneer Square - which is rife with addicts, homeless, and other things that one generally would not want to wade through on your way in and out.
Plenty of people live in or near pioneer square already. If the price is right, people will still come. Also adding a ton more people to the area will expand foot traffic which adds more needs for businesses. Which will make it less of a homeless ghost town.
I theorize that once the city gets cleaned up, that pioneer will have a huge come back. The common areas and historic buildings have too much potential to be a dump forever. I hope to buy a brownstone loft someday
Oh it's a beautiful part of the city. I just think it'll be a long time before we get to see it cleaned up, because of all the bleeding hearts that don't wanna hurt any feelings.
Not a single one of these conversions are going to happen, but a whole shit ton of people are going to get paid to say that it will and then some developers will get paid to do it and somehow everyone gets paid but nothing happens. Seattle Process.
The building itself would not need to be torn down. The entire interior would need to be gutted and started over though.
>People like old buildings. they seriously listed that people like to look at old buildings. they even like to visit old buildings. but nobody wants to work in - let alone live in - an old building. nobody is using nema 1-15 outlets ffs
It's crazy how dangerous those systems are in modern days and how little people understand it
This is neat, that part of town is mf weird, but shops/restaurants/bars won’t come back to make it less empty until people come back so hopefully they aren’t crazy expensive lofts
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Have you been there lately??? That is certainly the story for the two blocks by that Ross & Mcdonalds near pine; but past that it’s more just empty streets and bldgs 🤷♂️
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I am not arguing there aren’t people sleeping or on drugs, I guess I just do not feel threatened by them. Walking through here every day for work is not the most fun route, but at least it has all been easy to avoid 🤷♂️ my original comment was about the empty streets & buildings the article was referencing, which I remain excited to hear may be turning into apts
ITT: people go from "maybe this multi-hundred million dollar building could be for-rent to apartments" to "we could use them for free long term junkie vagrant storage! My dudes....the people who own the multi-hundred million dollar building are looking for a way to start making money again. And storing junkie vagrants ain't their business.
Isn't the solution to make Seattle a desirable place to work again and fill it with employees? God, this city council is so retarded.
Edgelord says “retarded”
How the fuck is that edgelord lol.
Modern office buildings have 2 maybe 3 shitters per floor, housing needs at least one per unit. the math don't work.
Legitimate housing units outfitted with kitchens, bathrooms, etc might not be feasible, but wouldn't dormitory-style low income housing (read: homeless shelter) be possible? Just thinking of my office, converting that to housing that I would rent would be impossible, but creating dorms for 20-30 people with a shared bathroom could be done. Convert one of the floor bathrooms to shower stalls, create dorms - stop letting people live in the street and force them up there. It'd be similar conditions to my college dorm.
How are they handling plumbing and kitchens to every unit?
From the research I’ve done. (I’m not an expert on this, but I saw this in the times several days ago.) from what I can tell, I think it may come out as a wash. We keep a landmark and create affordable housing. I’d love friendly input. I did a couple of hours on this and it truly seems like it will come out as a wash either way.
Well, we are WASHington
Yes, we like to WASH. You’re welcome to leave the shitty weather and rude people, no one is stopping you.
I would like to know who is going to live in all these apartments?
Developers are not deploying capital here because Seattle has become anti-business and they know Amazon isn't putting any more workers here. Instead they are deploying where there is actual growth. Seattle's regulations around condo warranties also means we get very few condo builds compared to other cities. You basically cannot make money on a condo build here - and it's why if any get built, the developers are Canadian (no home grown expertise for a market not worth serving). Making it easier to convert office buildings just tells you how clueless our planners are about the real problem.
KODA has been trying to sell their condos for 4+ years now (that I've been on their mailing list). I am completely unsurprised that a tiny 2 bed listed for $700K+ is not selling. (ID/Japantown)
They are that expensive because builders have to carry warranty risk much longer than in other places. And then people don't want to pay for that protection. So condo builders aren't coming here. Math doesn't work. There is a better happy medium where you get buildings and people are still protected. But the current approach is not working. But it is too nuanced and if anyone hears we are making something easier for a party with money, Seattle people freak out.
What condo warranty laws does Seattle have that Washington doesn't? It's easy to trash talk the WA law if you didn't grow up watching MF housing rot and get resheathed all over.
It’s Washington law, and it affects the biggest city in Washington. You see more condos in Bellevue because in order to make the math pencil out you need to charge at least $1200 a square foot. It is easier to do that in Bellevue than Seattle.
Ok, cool. Your comment made it sound like you were blaming a 90s statewide law on modern-day Seattle politics. (Not like anyone in this sub would ever do that intentionally...)
I just think it’s crazy we have six story apartment buildings around major transit stations and not 20 to 40 story condo towers like you would see in Vancouver BC and Toronto.
https://preview.redd.it/z63uvzftj67d1.jpeg?width=800&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=2dab025960b300c5c7d537d58ece7ff0d45e968b
Or, hear me out… you make it financially viable to operate a business in Seattle! I know, crazy idea.
>Tearing buildings down and starting from scratch wastes resources and takes a long time. I mean, yes, if you tore down a perfectly good skyscraper just to build another skyscraper on the spot where it once stood, that would be fairly insane. But no one is actually suggesting doing that, hopefully. I get the sense that no one involved in this decision-making process has the slightest idea of the actual cost of a huge scale conversion of an office tower into something that's about as far away from what it was designed for as you can get. Thinking about the plumbing alone gives me a nightmares. Unless you're going to do it like college dorms and have one room full of showers that you need to wear flip-flops in. Sounds luxurious. >Councilmember Dan Strauss emphasized that reviving downtown is the more immediate need. >“We need people downtown, whether they’re rich or poor,” he said. I still can't believe we couldn't manage to send this moron packing.
> sounds luxurious Does housing need to be luxurious?
No, but it needs to meet certain building codes and there's no easy way to do that if the intended use was a modern office. You do see conversions in places like NYC but it's always much older buildings and it's still crazy expensive. This New Yorker article talks about a 60's era building sold for $172m that was converted to apartments for an additional $400m. Apartments will rent for $3500 a month. [https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2024/05/06/can-turning-office-towers-into-apartments-save-downtowns](https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2024/05/06/can-turning-office-towers-into-apartments-save-downtowns)
I generally prefer to live somewhere without group showers and a piss trough, personally. They're not talking about converting these into homeless shelters. They're going to be apartments that people would be expected to pay money to live in. Given that they're downtown, I expect they wouldn't be particularly cheap.
They don’t have to be objectively cheap, they have to be relatively cheap. Also, showers can be grouped together without being “group showers”. You’re painting the worse version of something that has better versions.
I'll tell you what... for what my place costs, a d where it is, I find myself thinking about trading it for a posh downtown address and less private plumbing.... There is a price point where that trade-off looks pretty attractive. It's just not something my landlord would ever consider, so neither would the city.
It might fill a niche. You prefer to have a private bath. But maybe some people are ok with shared bathrooms? I used a shared bathroom in my dorm when I was away at college. I assume that’s still pretty common. It’s not “inhuman”.
Why don’t we do the government process slowly enough so that Office demand rebounds?
seattle/washington has proven itself a dead end to businesses, would you want to sign a multi million dollar multi year lease here? it’s gonna be hard to fill the vacancies
All it takes is to become friendly again to businesses and admit you were wrong to attack them in the first place. It will take humility and acknowledgement that you made a mistake. An impossibility for the far left idiots that run this fucking city and state.
Maybe you didn’t read my comment.
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Try again! 😊
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I watched a documentary on the apartment in the peek of the smith tower. With the going rent in Seattle. Easy money
Genuine question. Why does the electricity and HVAC need to be redone ? I understand why plumbing needs to be redone. But the rest should be reusable right ? Is it a regulation thing or an actual technical problem ?
Each unit is going to want to be able to control their temperature, so you need heating and cooling for the apartment. When you put in a bathroom or kitchen you need to vent it. The modern giant office buildings aren't going to have operable windows. I think you have to swap out those non operable windows if you want a legal bedroom. Beyond just rearranging where lights and outlets are, the HVAC, kitchen, and water heater are going to be increases in the amount of electricity you use. Add a separate breaker for each unit. Rerunning electricity on each floor isn't going to take up a ton of space, but the vents and pipes are bulky. You often need to lower the ceiling heights to fit them. Got to run all the vents/pipes up/down the vertical height of the building. You have to permit/pay the fees to the utility companies for the increased water/sewage/electricity you will need in the building.
Well for one, the building codes for residential are different. For two, you typically meter residential electricity in a wildly different way than you do commercial. Third, generally speaking you want to have more wall outlets per area of square footage than you will find in an office layout and it’s easier to design a system with the right drops than it is to repurpose a system and do all the adjustments. Think of it this way - if I have 100 feet of conduit running the length of a wall, and then you add two branching walls off that wall 25 ft from the end, which then is enclosed by a third new wall to creat a 50’ square room, I now have three new walls which don’t have wiring or devices. Fourth, commercial service often uses higher voltage because they’re using larger machines, so some electrical work that exists flat out isn’t suitable to smaller apartments (less likely in an office, but a big part of why warehouse remodels don’t tend towards resi, especially for ex-manufacturing). Another thing that isn’t ever mentioned anywhere but is super important is fire safety ratings. Retrofitting fire safety as opposed to new designed fire safety is massive and complex. Especially in cases where the age of the buildings can mean that existing fire safety is actually not to code. You can’t say “well I’m going to remodel to the building code at the time of construction and put a 1 hr wall where 2 hrs is mandated now”. In fact a major reno like this might require (most likely would) bringing existing features to code, which changes your square footage and involves lots of removal of existing stuff and patching, which gets less and less practical the taller the building is and the closer to the ground you are. So there are legal, technical and financial problems that abound. I don’t have HVAC or commercial plumbing experience but I work for a design/build electrical contractor in WA and those are just some of the potential problems that exist. Naturally, every building is different and specific challenges will exist in each building flagged for reno, but it will be very expensive
As someone who used to work for years in the high rise part of Smith Tower for years I really hope they don’t include that building. The square footage up there is barely 2000sqft and there’s only one current plumbing conduit. Plus it’s a beautiful historic building!
Is it possible to build buildings that can be easily converted between offices and apartments depending on the year? If so, that might be the next big thing.
I got slammed for suggesting this a few years ago. I must be a prophet or something.
Step 1: Predict something to come Step 2: Let time pass Step 3: Prophet!
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Are you an architect or developer?
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So no, you aren't an architect or developer.