What do we do with all the Empty Office Buildings?

The planned “return to office” has stalled out as office are still half empty. So what should be done with all of the empty office buildings?

One answer, High-Rise Mixed Use.

We’ve seen this before. In the 1970s NYC abandoned urban industrial buildings found new life as residential lofts were created from the available space. This helped to provide additional low cost housing options in dense urban areas.

While residential conversion is possible in many cases, it may not be enough by itself. Deep floor plates and centralized plumbing in newer buildings create additional costs to conversion such as unconventional layouts and windowless bedrooms. So what to do with additional space or buildings that may be a less than ideal fit for apartment conversions?

Parts of a building for conversion could be made into non-residential uses such as retail, gyms, and work centers.

A great example is the John Hancock Center in Chicago, which is notable for having a supermarket on the 44th floor.

Other buildings could be converted into hotels, Japanese office buildings are frequently converted into into low cost capsule hotels. In Italy, vacant office building can find new life as vertical hostels. This limits the overall costs for conversion and can be put into an existing office building on a floor by floor basis.

There are also opportunities for retail, cafe’s, restaurants, nightclubs, gyms, and more. The options are truly only limited by our imagination.

However, the biggest impediment to these types of conversions in the US is office-only zoning. If we can change these laws to allow flexible use in our cities, we will find endless creative re-uses in even the most awkward office buildings.

I’ll end with the movie scene that inspired this post, the office building karaoke lounge from the 2003 film “Lost In Translation”