On the 31st floor of an office building in midtown Manhattan, builders are transforming a once offices V residences and they also add some extra amenities like a dining room, a common reception area, firefighting equipment, and a gas barbecue of sorts. building it has been vacant since 2021 and is now being converted into 588 apartments that can accommodate 1,000 people. Speaking to The Associated Press, Joe Silelli, general manager of real estate at the Vanbarton Group, emphasizes that “we are taking an empty building and bringing life not only to it, but to the entire area.”

This is not an isolated case. In New York, where the vacancy rate is 15.5% of the total, Mayor Eric Adams announced in January a plan to build 500,000 new housing units. According to brokerage CBRE, the vacancy rate is rising: in San Francisco – 29.4%, in Houston – 23.6%, in Philadelphia – 21.7%, and in Washington – 20.3%.

Thus, throughout their territory USA office buildings are being converted into apartments not only to provide affordable housing but also to stimulate the local economy in downtown areas that once thrived on their offices, businesses and staff but are now languishing. The pandemic, quarantine and remote work have killed these areas, which may never fully recover. To this end, the authorities of many metropolitan areas offer contractors significant tax incentives to encourage projects to convert offices into apartments, provided that some of these apartments are sold or rented out at affordable prices below purchase prices.

In January, Pittsburgh launched a tender to build affordable housing through “converting old and underutilized office space.”

Boston also announced a similar plan in October to revitalize downtown economic life by converting offices into residences. And in April, Seattle announced a competition between the owners real estate and design firms to submit proposals for converting offices into residences.

The aim is to stimulate the local economy of the inner regions, which once lived off business, and is now languishing.

Washington DC Mayor Muriel Elizabeth Bowser has made office refurbishment the cornerstone of her plan to revitalize downtown life and economic activity. Her plan, which was announced earlier this year, aims to attract 15,000 new residents to the city center, which is now home to 25,000 people.

However, this whole fever to turn offices into residential buildings is being heavily criticized. Affordable housing organizations have raised concerns that the plan will be deviated from its original goal and the affordable housing goal will be scrapped. roof. However, proponents of the conversion model point out that tax breaks for wealthy contractors are not the best means to achieve the goal. And as more employers begin to shift to a hybrid work model, the question is whether people will be willing to settle in downtown areas if they don’t have to be there every day.

As Pittsburgh Mayor Ed Gainey said at a recent conference of mayors in Washington, “Downtown needs to be turned into a real neighborhood, a place where people can live, have fun and be active.”

There were people who decided to settle in the city center even before the pandemic, because then they were attracted by the opportunity to get to work on foot and quickly. Then the pandemic followed, and the center turned into a lunar landscape. However, even before the quarantine, many people in this category were in for some unpleasant surprises when they discovered that the area lacked some of the usual amenities found in a residential area: grocery stores or pet stores.

As Chuck d’Apri, chief executive of consulting contracting firm Downtown Economics, points out, the project to attract residents to areas of former offices and enterprises is particularly difficult.

The type of shops, services and companies that residents need is different from those needed by company employees who spend several hours a day in the area.