> Is the cost of conversation so prohibitive that it is a non-starter?

Having asked the same question of developers, it's a combination of cost and code. Many office buildings are old, with tiny windows surrounded by load-bearing walls. They're also laid out with an office, not home, in mind. (Think: plumbing.) This combination means extensive renovation, retrofitting and–if you find a previously-unseen problem–rebuilding.

That said, it's New York City. My first two apartments were illegally subdivided and subletted, the first having no window. There are people who will happily take an apartment with a tiny (or non-existent) window in exchange for cheaper rent. We just need to update the code to remove aesthetic requirements while ensuring that doesn't mean skimping on safety.

Windows aren't for aesthetic reasons. They are required in bedrooms by most codes for fire egress purposes.

> Windows aren't for aesthetic reasons. They are required in bedrooms by most codes for fire egress purposes

Commented on this elsewhere [1], but egress into a fireproofed stairwell is a safety-neutral compromise. It's against code, however.

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35989503

Egress is also insane for high-rises, but it is still code.

> Egress is also insane for high-rises, but it is still code

That's the point. It's vestigial code that could be loosened to promote housing supply.

Pretty hard to egress from the window of the 30th floor of a skyscraper anyway innit

Have you ever pondered what the big ladders on firetrucks are for?

> Have you ever pondered what the big ladders on firetrucks are for

The tallest ladders in the FDNY's inventory go up to 100'. (They were testing a 300' rig, but I don't know if it was deployed.) They aren't designed to recover people from burning skyscrapers.

Most buildings in NY are less than ten stories tall.

Say you have a fire on floor 8. The floor is full of smoke and residents can't reach floor 7 from 9. Pull up a ladder truck to a window on floor 9 and they can escape from there.

> You don't have to exit from the floor you live on

Which means you don’t have to have a window in the apartment you’re in.

Let me know how that works from the 43rd floor.

Aesthetic requirements aren’t the big issue, things like plumbing are. Office buildings don’t need to distribute water infrastructure the way residential buildings do.

> things like plumbing are

There are apartment buildings in Hell's Kitchen with communal toilets and showers for each floor. There is still running water to each apartment, but I'm not sure that has to be a requirement. (My college dorm didn't have running water.)

I think on average we can do better than literally hell.

> think on average we can do better than literally hell

Sure. But not with the existing CRE stock. My prediction is code won't be compromised. We'll raze the buildings and construct new housing. It will never be as cheap as the alternative could have been, or, more pointedly, than what tens if not hundreds of thousands of New Yorkers endure. (Quite happily, I may add.)

In the US they force people to live in the tents after demolishing the slums and call it progress.

Then they demolish the tents.

> There are apartment buildings in Hell's Kitchen with communal toilets and showers for each floor. There is still running water to each apartment, but I'm not sure that has to be a requirement. (My college dorm didn't have running water.)

You're talking about prewar walk-ups that have been converted to de facto SROs. Also, those are mostly downtown, not in Hell's Kitchen. They're cheap and mostly occupied by young people who can't afford anything else, because they're incredibly undesirable ways to live, limiting their market rental price. Some number are also rent-stabilized and occupied by longtime residents, for the same reasons.

There is no way that you can seriously argue that doing this for newly-constructed skyscrapers would result in units that can be sold at the price that the building owners are demanding. There's a reason no new construction uses this model except for dedicated affordable housing (to the extent that's even built anymore). People simply do not want to live like that, and the market reflects that.

> cheap and mostly occupied by young people who can't afford anything else, because they're incredibly undesirable ways to live, limiting their market rental price

Yup, do this. "Young people who can't afford anything else" in New York are a population comparable with that of Atlanta [1].

> no way that you can seriously argue that doing this for newly-constructed skyscrapers would result in units that can be sold at the price that the building owners are demanding

The buildings' owners are screwed. Their leverage constrains them. The question is whether the structures have positive value. Retrofitting to current code leaves most with negative value, i.e. it's cheaper to abandon. The question I was answering is if it's possible to economically convert these to housing for somebody. Under current code, the answer is no.

[1] https://www.statista.com/statistics/911456/new-york-populati... 20 to 24

[a] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_United_States_cities_b...

> Yup, do this. "Young people who can't afford anything else" in New York are a population comparable with that of Atlanta [1].

You can't just link to the age distribution and cite the number of "20-24 year olds in NYC" as evidence that there are half a million people in NYC who can't afford to live in anything other than an SRO.

I’m saying there are half a million New Yorkers aged 20 to 24. Is your argument really that there isn’t a market for a cheap, minimal build in New York?

You're also pulling "can't afford anything else" into that as if the two groups are the same, which is what they're complaining about. (I'm not expressing an opinion myself, I've never been to New York.)

High rises are designed to have reconfigurable floorplans. So, very few internal walls are going to be load bearing. In the absolute worst case (low fixed ceilings that prevent drop ceilings), you can always go for the industrial look + expose upstairs' plumbing to downstairs, and/or add fixed internal walls for vertical plumbing runs.

> We just need to update the code to remove aesthetic requirements while ensuring that doesn't mean skimping on safety.

There are very few "aesthetic requirements" that prevent an office building from being converted to residential. Most of issues with building code - including the window issue - are in fact motivated by safety concerns.

> Most of issues with building code - including the window issue - are in fact motivated by safety concerns

Office buildings are fireproofed in ways residential units are not. One can also replace windows with proximity to a fireproof stairwell without compromising safety.

I'm winging this. The point is there are places we can make tradeoffs. They're just not the kind Manhattan voters like.

> Office buildings are fireproofed in ways residential units are not. One can also replace windows with proximity to a fireproof stairwell without compromising safety.

You can't, really.

The way that emergency exits are laid out in office buildings is different from the way that they're laid out in residential buildings, and that's done because the safety needs of residential buildings are different from the typical safety needs of office buildings. It would be more expensive to build office buildings with those requirements from the get-go, so few dedicated office have them (particularly the larger skyscrapers that we're talking about).

You can either retrofit the core of the building (very expensive) or you can redesign the unit size and shape to conform to the existing building core (less expensive, but results in layouts that cannot be sold at the price the building owners require - the exact problem discussed in the article).

> The point is there are places we can make tradeoffs. They're just not the kind Manhattan voters like.

To make that claim, you'd have to point to actual tradeoffs that could be made without significantly compromising safety, and which aren't being done because "Manhattan voters" have rejected them.

And as someone who probably has a much better understanding of NYC commercial and residential building codes than the typical HN reader, I'm really only aware of one, and even that is only really being advocated for smaller and mid-size buildings, not the tall skyscrapers discussed in this article.

> I'm winging this.

Yes, I can see that.

> that's done because the safety needs of residential buildings are different from the typical safety needs of office buildings

You're acting like residential retrofits have never been done. They have. These are workable problems.

As others point out, the killer is plumbing. Not fire escape.

> only really being advocated for smaller and mid-size buildings, not the tall skyscrapers discussed in this article

Most of New York City's CRE tax revenue comes from mid-sized offices. Not from skyscrapers. Everything I'm suggesting is aimed at, and has been proposed for, those.

> I'm really only aware of one

There are many more. I'm winging the solutions. Not the capacity for them, which has been and is being studied by architects, engineers and psychologists.

> You're acting like residential retrofits have never been done. They have. These are workable problems.

I didn't say residential retrofitting can't be done. I said that they can't be done while still demanding the resale value (read: net profit) that the building owners are demanding.

> Most of New York City's CRE tax revenue comes from mid-sized offices. Not from skyscrapers.

This comment thread is on an article titled "NYC Skyscrapers Sit Vacant, Exposing Risk City Never Predicted". So we're talking about things that apply to skyscrapers.

> As others point out, the killer is plumbing. Not fire escape.

There are multiple issues. I addressed fire escape only because you brought it up, not because it's the only issue.

Again, this whole thread is in response to your claim that the limiting factor is "aesthetic requirements" in the building code that are not motivated by safety concerns. So far, you haven't pointed out any.

> "aesthetic requirements" in the building code that are not motivated by safety concerns. So far, you haven't pointed out any.

Yes, I have [1]. Communal water, toilets and showers.

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35989481

> Yes, I have [1]. Communal water, toilets and showers.

No, because that's non-prohibitive under current building code. Contrary to popular misconception, it's permissible to have communal facilities; it's just not economically viable, in part because it's extremely undesirable to live in.

Again, because of the other fixed costs of development. When those units come on the market there is ample demand. That doesn’t work if you have to price in years of community board and planning meetings.

> You’re acting like residential retrofits have never been done. They have. These are workable problems.

The issues is not “is it a workable problem”, everyone knows it is, that’s not in dispute.

The issue is “is the cost compared to the value recovered after the conversion such that, with the particular properties in the particular concrete situation that currently exists, it would be financially better for the owners to do a conversion or to abandon the property”.

You are trying to make a specific, concrete issue into a general, abstract one.

> at the price the building owners require

Supply and demand will fix this. Real estate speculators will eventually realize they've already lost the money they put into the building, then sell it at a loss (or at bankruptcy). Then, the residential conversions will happen, producing a supply of large, irregularly shaped manhattan condos that will certainly sell.

Capitalism does have its advantages.

> Supply and demand will fix this. Real estate speculators will eventually realize they've already lost the money they put into the building, then sell it at a loss (or at bankruptcy). Then, the residential conversions will happen, producing a supply of large, irregularly shaped manhattan condos that will certainly sell. > > Capitalism does have its advantages.

The inherent land value is so astronomical and the cost of retrofitting is so high that, at virtually any price, most developers would decide it's more economical to raze the building and start over, designing a residential building from scratch with cookie-cutter units that can be sold for maximum profit.

One problem is that the owner of the land, the owner of the building, and the developer are generally separate and distinct. In my experience the vast majority of property owners - especially those with the wherewithal to own prime CBD real estate - tend to be quite happy to sit on unproductive land for a very long time. If any of these buildings get razed, my guess is that many landowners would rather turn it into a parking lot for half a decade than let a developer turn it into something cookie cutter.

We're already deep in a mental health crisis, particularly among the city folk, I don't think ignoring the aesthetic experience of where one lives is a wise idea. People aren't widgets even if they themselves don't realize that.

> I don't think ignoring the aesthetic experience of where one lives is a wise idea

Nobody says to ignore it. Just not to make specific expressions of it a red line.

Windows are a great example. New Yorkers get emotional about windows. Guess what: nobody is egressing from the 57th story of a burning building via the window. Yet go to a community board meeting and every numpty who Ctrl + F'd the fire code will pull up photos from 1911 to argue for windows an aircraft carrier can fit through.

You know what you can provide the residents of a building with tiny, tiny windows? A rooftop garden. Modern heating and fresh, filtered air. Potted plants in the hallways, community spaces, warmer lighting et cetera.

> Many office buildings are old, with tiny windows surrounded by load-bearing walls.

Just a nit-pick: older buildings with windows and load-bearing walls are actually better candidates for residential conversion than newer buildings with glass curtain walls and structural columns. [https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2023/03/11/upshot/office...]

> older buildings with windows and load-bearing walls are actually better candidates for residential conversion than newer buildings with glass curtain walls and structural columns

Structurally, yes. Politically, community boards will claim they're hellscapes and then trot out studies on the health benefits of open air and sunlight and whatnot.

Not that I expect NIMBYs to make sense but that's all nonsense. The buildings already exist, so there's no issue of open air and sunlight for surrounding buildings. Older office buildings actually have windows that open to let in fresh air unlike to newer glass towers.

I used to worked by FIDI, most the apartments there are old converted office buildings. Visited a lot of friends and coworkers in those buildings, I felt fine inside. But I supposed midtown buildings are a bit different in terms of girth versus old brick and stone buildings.

NY has already begun changing the code to facilitate conversions.

> They're also laid out with an office, not home, in mind. (Think: plumbing.)

Plumbing is easy, pressurized pipes and pumps can deal with that just fine. The real challenge is air conditioning: showers create lots of humid, warm air - introduce that into your building's HVAC and you'll get issues with rust and mold - and cooking isn't much better, people generally don't want to smell the curry that someone at the other end of the building is cooking. Or they don't want to hear their neighbors having sex through the air vents.

IIRC, the issue with plumbing is often sewage volume from cooking + showers and the like. There's a certain amount of load expected per floor of commercial space that is lower than for residential, and often commercial buildings literally don't have a hookup to the main sewer line large enough to accommodate residential use, and adjusting that can be immensely expensive.

It's also a question of what the trunk water/sewer line can handle. There's places in some cities where larger apartment buildings have to hold sewage in a tank and pump it out at night because the city pipes can't handle a normal load during normal hours.

>Plumbing is easy, pressurized pipes and pumps can deal with that just fine.

The bigger problem is finding space for pipes. Many commercial buildings have specialized vertical tunnels for plumbing. The bathrooms in these buildings are usually adjacent to these tunnels, and there are no provisions for expanding plumbing to other areas of the floor in order to separate the floorspace into separate apartments with their own bathrooms.

The vertical tunnels are also designed to handle some number of main pipes based on N bathrooms per floor that you'd typically find in an office, with no room for expansion to handle N*10 bathroom capacity.

Is that a problem though? Office toilettes are used way more often then residential. You can just put more residential toilettes in series than you could put office toilettes.

Pipes dimensioned for an office floor is surely enough for flats.

It really depends on the building. I've seen some older office buildings with 2-4 toilets per floor. Not sure if those can be retrofitted for more capacity...

My point is that people don't poop or pee less at the office (I guess?), so those 2-4 toilets should be flushed about as much as if they all lived there and had a toilet each. And offices have more people per sq feet, so residential conversions should not flood the pipes.

Although showers could mess up my 'theory'. But the sewer from those is easier to get flowing than toilettes I guess.

* * *

> Plumbing is easy, pressurized pipes and pumps can deal with that just fine.

AIUI, plumbing is technically easy, but is still insanely expensive for conversions.

That said, it makes sense that HVAC would be a bigger problem.

Basically. There are a ton of logistical problems, but a major one is that the big office buildings in Midtown have a lot of interior space with no windows, and apartments need windows.

A recent study in NYC found:

"Most conversion projects would only become financially feasible if buildings could be acquired at significant discounts, in many cases at prices that valued the structures as having negative value."

https://cbcny.org/research/potential-office-residential-conv...

If the trend in office usage keeps going, it's not long before these white elephants in the middle of cities will be considered of "negative value". Empty monoliths in very valuable lots, that you have to spend money to make useful? Sounds like negative value to me.

Negative value isn't really possible in this scenario. I'll buy a floor of one of these buildings for $1, and promise to pay for its upkeep.

I'm sure I can find someone willing to rent a 10,000+s.f. downtown manhattan apartment for more than the cost of maintenance (and the property tax on the $1 the floor of the building is apparently worth).

Will you also take on the debt payments?

> prices that valued the _ structures_ as having negative value

You are ready to pay $1 for a floor in the structure and how many millions for your share of the plot?

Pinky swear you’ll pay for the upkeep, all of it? It’s not just day-to-day maintenance (which I promise costs more than you’d expect) but also long-term building integrity and lifespan assurance.

There are about 100 condo residents in Miami who kicked that can down the road to disastrous consequences and paid with their lives.

Plus, negative value to equity is absolutely possible in this scenario. Let me how far you get in the commercial real estate world without signing a personal guaranty.

Seems like they could make decent mixed use spaces - with some of the space being converted into retail / malls, some of it being used for on-shoring / light industry, and the rest remaining office space.

Another solution for cities with astronomical land prices (like NYC) is to look into moving some of their city buildings into sky scrapers, and then selling their buildings & land to be re-developed.

Like why can't the police "building" just be 30 floors in a sky scraper? Why can't a hospital just be a bunch of floors in a sky scraper? Why can't a high school just be a bunch of floors in a sky scraper? Etc...

Plumbing is a big one. Most commercial floors only have a few hookups and drains. Each apartment typically has at least 6.

Building layout is another. You could only reasonably put apartments on the outside with windows. There would be a lot of wasted space in the core of the building.

It's all possible, but the question becomes is it desirable to live there? Will the rents justify the cost to convert? I doubt it...

In Columbus, Chase is doing just that. Converting 23 of the 25 floors into 253 residential units.

https://columbusunderground.com/office-to-residential-conver...

I’ve heard to do plumbing work to convert office to residential would be so ridiculously expensive it would be easier in some cases to tear the building down and start anew

> plumbing work to convert office to residential would be so ridiculously expensive

If you require plumbing to every apartment. Dorm-style lay-out would sidestep this problem.

Who would want to live in a dorm?

> Who would want to live in a dorm?

Younger me. Lots of people. Particularly if you don't work from home, saving a few hundred bucks a month is a good bargain for having to walk a few feet to pee.

The tories wouldn't mind asylum seekers living in them

People who are on the street or living in their car today.

We have a desperate need for affordable housing all over this country. SROs and hostel-style residences are perfectly reasonable as a step to keep people stable and off the streets.

What's old is new again

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Communal_apartment

I can see this in progress. Needs windows, but we also need more residential, so happy to see it.

https://nypost.com/2023/04/24/longtime-nyc-home-of-the-daily...

> Why can't they convert to residential?

They can, and will, but it is not an easy process (yet).

I would guess that within 1-3 years we see major cities changing their codes and zoning processes specifically to fast track commercial -> residential conversions.

It's not, they're just dragginf their feet hoping they can pressure the workforce to stuff the genie back in the bottle. It ain't happening.

Financial district has a number of converted office buildings, which are now residential. If anything, that area is now more vibrant and cool, certainly not an apocalyptic thing.

Floor plate size. Offices are very deep and the elevators are far from the windows. Condo towers are small so that natural light can penetrate. You can’t just convert an office tower to condos. Also, office towers don’t have the plumbing to put in a shower and drain for every 500 sqft.

Many things can be converted to office space. Old hotels for instance - they have common bathrooms, small rooms, lots of doors. Pretty compatible with offices.

The opposite is harder. Adding bathrooms, combining rooms, adding kitchens and drains and individual utilities costs maybe more than the building is worth.

Looking beyond the regulatory hurdles (others have covered that, plus it's being worked on), there are some real practicality problems:

1 - Windowless rooms are heavily undesirable in residences but pretty normal in office settings. In many areas they are also illegal (all bedrooms must have natural light) - but regardless of legality they are shunned by most buyers/renters.

Offices however have lots of windowless rooms in the form of supply closets, utility rooms, freight elevators, conference rooms, storage rooms, etc. This combined with the popularity of open floor plan offices means that office buildings are really deep dimensionally. You can easily find modern office buildings where a desk is 50+ feet from the nearest window.

This makes them nearly impossible to divide into residences, because the resulting apartments are dungeon-like, with only the very outer reaches getting any significant natural light.

2 - Cost of conversion is high but the resulting product is worse than purpose-built.

Keeping in mind the natural light factor above, a lot of office-converted apartments are less pleasant to live in than purpose-built residential apartments, but the conversion costs are very high, and the two opposing dynamics cannot be reconciled. The cost of converting an office demands a level of rent that it cannot achieve in competition with actual residential buildings.

3 - Utility usage increases in residential buildings. A lot. Electrical, water, and sewer needs in residential buildings are much more intense than in commercial buildings. This is non-trivial to retrofit - since additional conduit and piping has nowhere natural to go. Conversion projects often have to punch through the concrete floor plates in order to create new top-to-bottom shafts to run all of the additional utilities. This is intensely expensive.

4 - Commercial buildings have over-built elevators relative to residential buildings. Office workers move from floor-to-floor a lot more than residents, and so for the same floor area commercial buildings would have more elevators. They take up valuable floor space that can otherwise be rented, and removing them to recover the floor area for residential use is incredibly costly. Many modern commercial buildings are in fact built around their elevator cores, so removal may not even be feasible.

There are some successful conversions - but as others have brought up, they tilt towards conversion of pre-war office buildings where, because they didn't have powered HVAC, there are more windows and no office is too far from a window, creating good opportunities to convert into actually pleasant spaces. Modern offices with their gigantic floor plates are a whole different story.

Apartments are quite difficult in the footprint, I think. Depending on the size of the unit, it becomes impossible to give everyone a window, and not have some overly narrow floorplan. And that's not even taking into consideration the need to build out the plumbing to some x10 or x50 scale of what it currently is. Every unit needs a wet wall for kitchen and bath. Evacuation routes suffer.

Retrofitting should certainly be possible, but neither cheap nor quick, and you either run into the problem of the resulting monthly being too high (and having trouble getting occupancy up above 95% where you want it), or it goes too low and you can't make back what you spent,

After 9/11, they tried doing this in downtown NYC because no one wanted work there. It was not good at all.

That just sounds misguided from the start. No one wants to work there but they’d be willing to live there?