From the outside, it’s not much of a stretch to envision the previous life of Park & Ford, a recently opened luxury apartment development in Alexandria. Though balconies have been added and the pair of concrete towers have been painted from brownish-beige to a more pleasant gray, they maintain the unmistakable, Brutalist-lite ambiance of a 1980s government office complex.
Yet there’s plenty to admire about the ingenuity on display: Former parking-garage entrances have been zhuzhed up with wood paneling, outdoor TVs, and patio furniture to become “cabanas.” What used to be surface parking has been fenced and synthetic-turfed into a huge, residents-only dog park. Original built-in planters, once barren, are thoughtfully landscaped. The whole scene is like one of those upcycled chandeliers made from plastic bottles—beautiful, in a slightly postapocalyptic kind of way.
“There really hasn’t been a time like right now, where office is on the decline to the point that an empty building is basically the same value as just the land.”
And, in fact, the last couple years have verged on something close to the end of the world for the region’s office market. Even before Covid, more efficient office layouts, the rise of coworking, and a growing supply of new trophy space were making older buildings an ever-harder sell. Then the pandemic shot Washington’s already high vacancy rates out of the stratosphere, and now it’s more apparent by the day that legions of white-collar employees will never return to an office full-time—if at all. The result has been an economic gut punch not only for the owners of obsolete buildings but also for the surrounding neighborhoods that counted on the tax revenue and vibrancy they used to generate.
“There really hasn’t been a time like right now, where office is on the decline to the point that [an empty building] is basically the same value as just the land,” says Lindsay Stroud, a structured-finance broker with the commercial real-estate firm Savills.
One possible solution: more office-to-residential conversions like Park & Ford.
Landlords, developers, and government officials are trying hard to make them happen. Nearly 4 million square feet of outdated office space in downtown DC is already being converted or is under evaluation for potential transformation, and the District has been soliciting input from builders on ways it can incentivize more such projects. Suburbs such as Alexandria and Reston are also increasingly catching the attention of developers interested in capitalizing on the potentially lucrative convergence of bargain-priced office buildings and the enormous regional demand for more housing.
Logical as it all sounds, turning a corporate floor plan into someplace livable is a lot more complicated than just replacing cubicles with bedrooms. “It is not for the faint of heart,” says Paul Dougherty, president of PRP Real Estate Investment, which was ahead of the curve when it converted a West End building into condos in 2018. “It is a very tough thing to pull off.”
Take a look at most downtown buildings and some problems are obvious. Many are smooshed between their neighbors, meaning they lack windows on at least two sides. They’re also typically much deeper and wider than standard residential construction—making the core of each floor cavernous, with no direct natural light. Then consider the complexity of adding hundreds of bathrooms and kitchens (not to mention the accompanying venting and plumbing), turning rooftops into amenity spaces, and rerouting elevators.
Developers, though, haven’t been deterred. Michael Abrams, managing director of Foulger-Pratt, says the pandemic spurred his company to focus on office…
Read More: Why Converting Office Buildings to Apartments is Difficult