Office to residential – can it be done?
La Presse’s Maxime Bergeron says there’s one milion square feet of disused downtown office space that could be converted to residential. He seems to think this would ease the housing crisis, but is he right? Would we get housing, or would we just have a bigger glut of tiny but unaffordable condos?
Ian 10:35 on 2024-07-01 Permalink
It could more easily converted to “residences” than “residential” – most apartments expect an individual bathroom, shower, and kitchen per unit. Most office buildings have only one or two bathrooms per floor, and would have to be extensively retrofitted for individual units.
Also worth noting a lot of the excess disused office space was built decades ago and has to be retrofitted for modern HVAC, networking infra, LEED O&M et cetera, it’s less expensive for many companies to take on a new space that is ready to go. Property management companies look at office buildings that are more than 25 years old as white elephants. This was the case well before covid and is the driver for most new office space construction.
Kate 11:23 on 2024-07-01 Permalink
Could people be persuaded to live in the modern equivalent of rooming houses? I suppose if they were clean and affordable, it might be a solution for single people. Not very attractive for families.
Ian 12:18 on 2024-07-01 Permalink
It’s not completely uncommon in Toronto to rent rooms and have a shared kitchen and bathroom per floor. Basically boarding houses.
Kevin 13:09 on 2024-07-01 Permalink
Plumbing is not an insurmountable problem, especially if the offices have 12 foot ceilings.
It is harder to work around the internal stairway and elevator layout so you don’t have apartments with many windowless rooms.
It’s having to add a third or fourth room in addition to a third bedroom that drives up the price.
Ian 13:12 on 2024-07-01 Permalink
This is why a lot of converted warehouses are open studio concept.
Ephraim 15:31 on 2024-07-01 Permalink
If I remember correctly, in NYC, there is something about the spacing and some of the buildings have cut a space for windows and light through part of the centre of the building, creating a C shaped building. Some of them have even added stories, stores and amenities, like a pool.
But, we also REALLY REALLY REALLY need rooming houses and co-habitation spaces.Think of this to be something like co-working spaces. It’s co-living spaces. Imagine 6 bedrooms, 2 bathrooms, a kitchen a living room and a dining room space.
CE 16:49 on 2024-07-01 Permalink
A big reason why Toronto has a lot of housing types Ian describes is because the houses in the centre were generally built as single-family houses rather than apartments like our plexes. Our housing type is much more flexible than those big two and three storey houses in Toronto that require major retrofits to turn into apartments. I’ve been in the types of places Ian describes in Toronto. They require a communal living style that not everyone is good at.
Nicholas 17:27 on 2024-07-01 Permalink
This interesting 2016 Architecture thesis paper, which I only read parts of, describes the state of single-room occupancy buildings in Montreal and looks at some case studies, of which the city has acquired 65 of over the years with over 3,000 units. It used to be a common thing around the world, but tenements got a negative reputation (for good reasons in many cases), and many of them were torn down, and they were often made illegal (requiring units to all have kitchens, bathrooms, exterior light in bedrooms, etc.). There are pros and cons, but it does mean one step on the housing ladder has been taken away, which sometimes means people can only afford the prior step (being homeless). Some cities are now moving to allow them again.
Also worth pointing out we do have new SROs in some cases, where it’s encouraged: dorms and senior’s residences. I’ve certainly met people who like communal living, and some who absolutely never cook, and would be willing to live in smaller places with some others. It’ll be interesting to see if there’s a resurgence here, though converting office buildings is not necessarily easy, as they’re just designed differently.
Ian 07:14 on 2024-07-02 Permalink
Some buildings are easier to retrofit as residences in the sense that Nicholas describes – hotels, for example.
And yes, as CE notes,most of Toronto’s boarding houses are former multi-floor single-family dwellings. They weren’t building plexes in the late 19th/early 20th c like Montreal. Especially common in more traditionally residential parts of town where there aren’t apartment buildings, they are less common now than they were, say, 20 years ago – but are still fairly common. Even apartments that take up a full floor in a converted house may share an old-fashioned interior staircase.