Want to reside in a skyscraper?
Your lofty desires is likely to be a step nearer after town’s planning company agreed to spend $100,000 to try changing downtown workplace house to residential makes use of.
“This study will be part of an ongoing effort alongside planned downtown to generate strategies that can revitalize downtown in the wake of the COVID 19 pandemic,” Senior Planner Andrew Nahmias of the Boston Planning & Development Agency informed the board on Thursday. “The primary goal of the study will be to identify highly actionable funding and land-use strategies to help successfully convert vacant downtown office spaces to viable uses.”
Basically, they’re trying to see if a number of the older workplace towers will be changed into flats or condos, as another cities have had good luck doing.
The BPDA board voted with little dialogue to award the contract for the $100,000 research to HR&A Advisors, one of many seven proposals the BPDA obtained following an open request in November.
Mayor Michelle Wu final 12 months launched a report her administration had commissioned from consulting agency BGC that’s meant to rejuvenate downtown, which has had a tough time shaking off the results of the lengthy pandemic and the following work-from-home adjustments that imply fewer workplace people are on its streets.
“Downtown contains many older class B and C office buildings that are less desirable to office tenants and have floorplate sizes well suited to residential conversion,” the plan reads. The lessons of workplace house primarily differ by degree of swank, with A being the most recent and highfalutin and B and C much less so.
The report famous that on the time 28% of the sq. footage permitted downtown was residential, a quantity Wu and firm need to stand up to be able to transfer the world nearer to a 24/7 neighborhood.
t a research analyzing the monetary and architectural feasibility of residential and different potential conversions and figuring out particular areas and constructing sorts the place conversions may very well be profitable
There has been some fretting about impending office-space vacancies over the following few years as some corporations look to downsize their bodily footprint on this post-pandemic period when many extra individuals work remotely.
The conversion thought could be to do that in a approach to be “avoiding vacancies while preserving downtown’s historic charm for future generations.”
Source: www.bostonherald.com”
