What cities have office building conversions to residential going on in their downtowns and how is it changing them? (living, population)

[MDAllstar]

Many cities around the nation are seeing older C and B class office space redeveloped as residential space. How is it changing downtowns across the nation? What potential does your city have as older office buildings are converted?

[sonofaque86]

Columbia SC....The brown building you see was home to SCANA (Fortune 500) company and it moved to the cities suburbs on a brand new campus....The city and the University of South Carolina plan to make it into student dorms

Courtesy of John E. Lowry
http://johnlowryphoto.files.wordpres...olumbia-sc.jpg

[MDAllstar]

Originally Posted by sonofaque86

Columbia SC....The brown building you see was home to SCANA (Fortune 500) company and it moved to the cities suburbs on a brand new campus....The city and the University of South Carolina plan to make it into student dorms

Courtesy of John E. Lowry

Wow...that's going to be a big dorm.

[ckhthankgod]

In Syracuse, there's the Merchants Commons project, which will be mixed use and adds more housing to a Downtown that is almost at full occupancy for Downtown housing. So, there is definitely a demand here and there are other such projects as well.

Syracuse Downtown Apartments

Downtown Living Tour includes three new projects | syracuse.com

Downtown Apartments Syracuse NY | Downtown Neighborhood Apartments for Rent

Downtown Syracuse

[iamjacobm]

Omaha is seeing a good number of it lately.

Farm Credit Building recently completed to 106 units.
http://propimages.apartments.com/100...2752741_64.jpg

Northern Natural Gas Building is currently u/c to 194 units. Fun fact, the tower was home to Enron's HQ before they left for Houston. Northern Natural Gas Building - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia http://bethanybauman.com/wp/wp-conte...L_building.png

Black Hills Energy Building recently announced conversion to 110 units.
http://douglasne.mapping-online.com/...0000001896.JPG http://content.omaha.com/media/maps/...y/nustyle2.jpg

These are really the last large chunks of office space left downtown. Downtown office vacancy is under 9% and should dip even lower once the last announced building gets going. The influx of 410 units in 3 long time vacant buildings in a city like Omaha are sure to make a nice impact, we really haven't seen residential of this scale very often. The fact that they are among the last of the vacant buildings here it could mean good things for the prospect of new construction as well.

[pwright1]

Downtown Los Angeles is an excellent example of this. All of these old buildings have been converted
into lofts/condos/apts and has improved life dt by 1000%.
http://farm6.static.flickr.com/5022/...7dc94880_b.jpg
http://farm6.static.flickr.com/5184/...13e0d71a_b.jpg
http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3040/...e1574f8e_b.jpg
http://farm7.staticflickr.com/6115/6...03b5b6c9_b.jpg

[kcmo]

There have been so many in KC that I will only try to list some of the more interesting ones. But downtown KCMO has converted dozens and dozens of office buildings into residential. Not just old ones either, but even buildings from the 70's and 80's as well. So many were being converted that new construction is just now starting to occur. A new 24 story residential tower is going up in downtown for the first time in decades. (new construction mostly occurs in the plaza area of kc).

old federal reserve


909 walnut


kcpl building


old courthouse


tons of 1920's -1930's 10-20 story office buildings like this.


This relatively modern building is now condos


There are many more.

[kidphilly]

I think there has been nearly 8,000 units converted in the last 10 years. It adds population, just wish the commercial sq footage was added back quicker.

[MDAllstar]

Originally Posted by kidphilly

I think there has been nearly 8,000 units converted in the last 10 years. It adds population, just wish the commercial sq footage was added back quicker.

I think Philly and Baltimore have had some of the most commercial to residential conversions of any city. It's one of the driving factors that has made Center City one of the most highly populated downtown's in the nation. It is also making Baltimore another city with a very high downtown population. The equilibrium can be thrown off though because the daytime population may fall and continue to fall without office construction but the city is livelier at night though.

[JoeTarheel]

These two have had a huge impact on downtown Greensboro and Winston-Salem NC as the first highrise residential buildings in each city...

Nissen Luxury Apartments in Winston-Salem, formerly bank offices built in 1925:
All sizes | nissen building | Flickr - Photo Sharing!


Center Pointe Condos in Greensboro, former Wachovia Bank building built in 1966:
All sizes | Center Pointe Greensboro NC | Flickr - Photo Sharing!