Published on March 29, 2024
Originally published in Geekwire
Written by Chuck Wolfe, longtime affiliate associate professor in College of Built Environments at the University of Washington.
Office-to-residential conversions are frequent fodder in discussions of the post-pandemic city, downtown regeneration, and hopes to contain rising housing costs. Remote work is here to stay, especially in hybrid form in the tech-centric Seattle area. Office buildings are partially occupied or empty and no longer needed for their former use. Cities need to generate tax revenue.
Earlier this month, Seattle Mayor Bruce Harrell put forth a proposal to ease the conversion approval process — exemptions from design review standards and the Mandatory Housing Affordability (MHA) requirements. The idea suggested that such incentives could be a lynchpin of Seattle’s downtown recovery.
But the difficulty of office conversions go beyond simply clearing the path to do so.
One is the cost. Office buildings were not designed for residential use, and significant renovations are often required to allow for livable spaces. For instance, new kitchens and bathrooms must be built, and more natural light is needed via alterations to facades, ceilings, stairways, and walls.
These changes are expensive, and alterations require upgrades based on land use, building, and energy codes. Code requirements for residential uses can look very different from those for commercial counterparts.
More broadly, building residential real estate may not be lucrative to developers, says Kevin Wallace, president of Wallace Properties.
“The problems with office conversions go well beyond MHA and design review, and converting office to [residential] is a distraction from the bigger issue — it no longer makes financial sense to build housing in Seattle,” he said.
Al Levine, a former director of affordable housing at the nonprofit Seattle Housing Authority, said the proposed concessions from Mayor Harrell “are like using a band-aid to heal open heart surgery,” adding that conversion costs are often higher than new construction.
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Office-to-residential conversions are frequent fodder in discussions of the post-pandemic city, downtown regeneration, and hopes to contain rising housing costs. Remote work is here to stay, especially in hybrid form in the tech-centric Seattle area. Office buildings are partially occupied or empty and no longer needed for their former use. Cities need to generate tax revenue.