Reply to Real talk about the city’s economy, federal buildings leases, and telework impacts

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]Who would live downtown if they converted office buildings to housing? There is nothing open in some areas, it is empty at night and there are homeless people camping all over the place.  I work downtown and it sucks now.[/quote]

Large and reasonably priced loft style condos from older buildings would be a huge attraction, but there just isn't enough of that type of building I think to make it happen. A lot of DC's commercial building stock is 1970s/1980s generation. Maybe Metro Center area has some buildings that could be attractive for conversions? Not many though.[/quote]
The problem with these buildings from the 70s/80s is that they fill out the whole developable envelope. “Leave no FAR behind”. So they lack things like internal atria that would facilitate conversion due to their huge floor plates that leave interior areas without access to natural light. The industrial loft conversions mitigated this problem with tall ceilings and floor to ceiling windows, both of which are things that these buildings lack.

As a result, there are very few buildings that would be good candidates for conversion. The National Press Club building is a good example of a building that should be an excellent candidate except for the fact that there would is a lot of unusable floor space because it’s just a big box and the interiors lack access to natural light. [/quote]

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