The rise of remote work during the pandemic has cut demand for office space and left some American downtowns feeling like ghost towns. As a result, there’s been much talk of converting downtown offices into apartments. This could not only bail out owners of suddenly less-valuable commercial real estate, advocates say, but bring life to emptied-out neighborhoods, passengers to underused transit systems and affordable housing to cities that desperately need it.
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Could it work? Well, one iconic American downtown — New York’s Financial District, also known as Wall Street — embarked on just such a transformation several decades ago and has certainly succeeded in attracting residents. In 1970, the Manhattan census tracts south of Chambers Street on the west and the Brooklyn Bridge on the east had 833 inhabitants. As of the 2020 Census, there were 60,806.
That population may have dropped a bit during the pandemic. But with buyers beginning to move in this month to the area’s biggest office-to-residential conversion yet — Macklowe Properties’ 566-unit One Wall Street condominium building, in the former headquarters of Irving Trust — and more conversions and new residential buildings in the works, it appears to be returning to growth.
The basement of One Wall Street is also now home to a large Whole Foods supermarket, and the building will eventually house the first US outpost of the French department store chain Printemps. There’s a subway station right out front where residents can catch a train that gets them to Midtown in 15 minutes, as well as four other train lines, several ferries, a high-end shopping mall, museums, historical sites, fine restaurants and a waterfront park all within easy walking distance. The area was at the heart of city life for New York’s first couple of centuries but was later characterized by a “deathlike stillness ... after 5:30 and all day Saturday and Sunday,” as described in 1961 by urbanist Jane Jacobs in the Death and Life of Great American Cities. Now one encounters dog walkers in the early morning, diners and bargoers in the evening and hordes of tourists on weekends (weekdays, too, for that matter).
The neighborhood’s transformation has been all the more remarkable considering that in September 2001 terrorists destroyed its two biggest buildings, the twin towers of the World Trade Center, killing thousands of people and leaving the vicinity covered in debris and toxic ash. Now the World Trade Center is back, in altered but still impressive form. The 9/11 Memorial has become a big tourist draw. Downtown Manhattan seems unstoppable.
Read the full article here by Justin Fox, Advisor Perspectives.
