Converting office buildings into apartments isn’t so easy
To the editor: Whereas I believe changing underused or vacant workplace buildings into housing is a fairly good concept, I believe most proponents are clueless about how a lot it prices to do that. (“Turning workplace buildings into residences is how California eases the housing disaster,” editorial, June 25)
I labored in an workplace that had a flooring house of about 10,000 sq. toes. There have been a set of loos on both finish. Every dice had one 15-amp electrical outlet, possibly two.
All that plumbing and electrical work to make the house appropriate for housing must be run. Then there’s the loading issues of constructing soundproof partitions, including water heaters and extra.
It’s not precisely a slam-dunk resolution to the housing downside. Residential conversion simply can’t be finished in lots of workplace buildings.
Gregg Ferry, Carlsbad
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To the editor: Conversion of vacant and underutilized industrial properties to create inexpensive housing is a superb concept. As you notice, such initiatives can revitalize neighborhoods, scale back environmental impacts and protect native structure and character.
That’s why such conversions have lengthy been favored by neighborhood activists who’re routinely dismissed as “NIMBYs,” for “not in my yard.”
Latest and pending laws that facilitates conversion and adaptive reuse deserves help, supplied the housing is definitely inexpensive. Might I modestly recommend that exemption waivers and incentives for inexpensive housing initiatives be contingent on thorough, rigorous monitoring and enforcement backed up by stiff penalties for violators?
Or is all that stuff simply too NIMBY to contemplate?
Shelley Wagers, Los Angeles
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To the editor: Recycling something is a good suggestion. And that features buildings. But the editor may have chosen a greater instance than the Crosby in Los Angeles’ Koreatown neighborhood for the image that ran with this editorial.
After I checked the constructing’s web site, the Crosby had 21 items out there all through the 12 flooring of the 2 buildings. A 715-square-foot studio with one toilet rents for $2,370. That’s hardly inexpensive.
Mark Stephen Mrotek, Carson
