In The Spotlight: Adaptive Reuse Projects
As remote and flexible work settled in for the long haul post-Covid, empty offices have become an expensive headache for public leaders, property owners and whole neighborhoods. No wonder “adaptive reuse” has become one of the most compelling construction trends in cities across the country. Turning dark floorplates into occupied homes injects much-needed inventory into tight housing markets, rescues local small businesses from ghost-town syndrome, and slashes carbon footprints by keeping existing concrete structures intact. Municipal fast tracking and tax incentives are speeding the action. Read on for a glimpse into adaptive reuse builds, and ideas for winning local public work for your business too.
Office To Home Conversions Taking Off
Recently,Chicago’s Bellwether building became the first completed office to home conversion project in the city’s business district, known as the Loop. As Construction Dive reports, this is just the beginning:
- Using $28 million in tax increment financing from the city and a historic landmark designation that opened up $7.8 million in federal tax credits, the developers of the 14-story Rector building turned 11 floors of unused office space into 117 residential units, 41 of them earmarked for households earning an average of 60% of the area median income.
- …The 121-year-old building is the first of six office conversion projects the city’s Department of Planning Development is eyeing under the LaSalle Street Reimagined initiative to turn unused office space into 1,765 mixed-income housing units.
- As working habits change post-pandemic, adaptive reuse projects for office buildings are having a moment in major cities across the country. New York City and Washington, D.C., are leading the way, and Chicago’s efforts rank third, according to RentCafe.
Metro areas across the Sunbelt and Midwest—including Dallas, Denver, and Atlanta—are also seeing an influx of commercial conversions aimed at easing local housing shortages. It’s estimated that nearly 100,000 office-to-apartment units are currently progressing through planning and construction pipelines across the country, bringing the adaptive reuse trend off of paper and into real life.
Along with the flurry of work involving complex interior gut-renovations, MEP overhauls, and structural adaptations, comes new hopes for reimagining central business districts nationwide. For example, Gary Stoltz, a partner with developer R2 points out that completion of the Bellwether “demonstrates what is possible when we look at Chicago’s historic downtown assets with fresh eyes and invest in their next chapter…This project reflects our belief that the Loop’s future will be defined by a dynamic mix of people who live, work and spend time here.”
More neighborhoods where we can “live, work and play,” has long been a goal for public leaders and developers, and office to home conversions offer an opportunity to push it forward: they transform non-revenue-generating vacancies into cash-flowing apartment communities, shave months off project timelines by bypassing ground-up excavation and structural pours, and leverage municipal fast-track zoning alongside valuable tax incentives to bring income-producing units to market significantly faster.
As New York City learned through work on the former Pfizer HQ this summer,
adaptive reuse projects are not without their challenges. Office buildings tend to feature deep, dark floorplates engineered for open cubicles, forcing trades to core-drill massive concrete slabs to run complex, decentralized plumbing and drainage lines for individual kitchens and bathrooms. Adding vertical chases, installing residential-grade HVAC zones, and carving out window cutouts to meet residential light and air codes require heavy structural modifications.
What’s Your Growth Path?
Whether or not adaptive reuse is on your radar, keeping an eye on local public projects big and small is a wise move for construction business owners. Construction Wire points out that learning about public works projects before they formally reach the bid stage “is one of the most powerful ways contractors can grow their pipeline, build relationships with public owners, and improve their bid-hit ratio. By following the funding, planning and approval phases of infrastructure, civic, utility and institutional projects, you can learn a lot as a forthcoming project takes shape in real time.
Even small public projects can prove to be real wins for local construction companies, so make it a point to review the agenda and minutes of public meetings during which project plans are discussed. Consider for example following the action of city council and school board meetings. Similarly, keep an eye on permits being filed, and the publication of environmental review notices.
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