Converted Downtown Offices Set To Fuel New Living Boom

There have been times in the past when construction projects provided the most welcome relief from hard economic times, providing jobs when they were scarce elsewhere. This was often so in downtown areas, where famous skyscrapers like the Empire State Building – which was completed in 1931 during the Great Depression – is a prime example.

However, all of that means little if the building is half-empty when completed. In the case of the Empire State Building, its completion during the Depression meant much of its office space lay empty for years. Now, however, it is factors such as the growth of home working that is leading to the daytime populations of downtown areas shrinking.

The solution? Turn offices into residential buildings. As Channel News Asia reports, this is now happening across the US. While the article opened with a description of the construction work taking place on floor 31 of an empty Manhattan block to provide residential amenities, the same transition is happening in cities such as Pittsburgh, Boston and Washington DC.

However, converting office buildings alone is not the whole solution to making Downtown areas liveable. This was noted by the experience of 33-year-old Jordan Woods, a federal government contractor who moved to downtown Washington DC in 2019.

He observed some shortcomings in local amenities, commenting: “Even before the pandemic it was still missing basic stuff like playgrounds and dog parks and a normal non-Whole Foods grocery store that I could walk to.” That suggests there may be more construction recruitment needed to build extra amenities.

Downtown living is more familiar across the Atlantic in Europe, although some countries, like the UK, have only seen it take off in most cities fairly recently. While London has always been very liveable, others such as Manchester and Leeds have seen residential booms in central areas where once almost nobody lived.

That has meant playing catch-up with amenities – last year downtown Manchester opened its first new park in a century – but such transitions may showcase the way some US downtowns will soon look.