{"id":10366,"date":"2025-10-21T06:15:18","date_gmt":"2025-10-21T06:15:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/10366\/"},"modified":"2025-10-21T06:15:18","modified_gmt":"2025-10-21T06:15:18","slug":"new-york-city-is-having-an-office-to-housing-conversion-boom-could-chicago-be-next","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/10366\/","title":{"rendered":"New York City is having an office-to-housing conversion boom. Could Chicago be next?"},"content":{"rendered":"

This story was originally published on Smart Cities Dive<\/a>. To receive daily news and insights, subscribe to our free daily Smart Cities Dive newsletter<\/a>. <\/p>\n

In the early hours of the morning, through a wooden revolving door, the Pittsfield Cafe bustles in downtown Chicago. If you look up from your plate of flapjacks, you\u2019ll notice that much of its historic home, the 38-story Pittsfield Building, is vacant office space.\u00a0<\/p>\n

That could change soon, however, as the Chicago City Council recently approved the Art Deco skyscraper built in 1927 to be converted into 214 residential apartments<\/a>, adding to the 228 apartments previously approved.<\/p>\n

As the nation reels from a housing crisis, office-to-housing conversions<\/a> are taking off in cities across the country. New York City, for example, saw annual office conversions surge from 1.6 million square feet in 2023 to 3.3 million square feet last year<\/a>.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Illinois Policy, a nonpartisan advocacy organization<\/a>, says Chicago \u2014 which faces an affordable housing shortfall<\/a> of roughly 100,000 homes \u2014 could do more to follow New York\u2019s lead.<\/p>\n

\u201cChicago\u2019s commercial vacancies could help its residential shortage if policymakers are willing to make it a priority,\u201d the organization said in a recent analysis<\/a>.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Chicago currently has a greater proportion of vacant downtown office space than New York City \u2014 estimated at 28% compared with New York\u2019s 13%.<\/p>\n

Unlike New York, Chicago takes \u201ca more narrow, case-by-case approach\u201d to financial assistance for office-to-residential conversion projects, IP stated.<\/p>\n

There are currently at least 11 planned office conversion<\/a> projects in the works in Chicago, many part of the city\u2019s plans to revitalize the LaSalle Street corridor, bringing 1,765 units of mixed-income housing to its downtown and repurposing 2 million square feet of vacant space<\/a>.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Illinois Policy provided three recommendations for how the city could encourage more office-to-housing conversions downtown:<\/p>\n

Revise the city\u2019s Affordable Requirements Ordinance, which currently requires residential projects with more than 10 units to make 20% of the units affordable. The city should instead embrace a property tax abatement model New York City uses, IP said.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Make commercial-to-residential conversions a larger part of the city\u2019s long-term downtown growth plan<\/a>, which aims to revitalize the downtown area as a neighborhood and \u201cnot just as a business.\u201d<\/p>\n

Streamline zoning approvals and remove regulatory barriers that \u201cslow the process.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cConverting empty office space into housing won\u2019t solve Chicago\u2019s housing shortage overnight, but it can make a meaningful dent while revitalizing the city\u2019s commercial core,\u201d Illinois Policy stated.<\/p>\n

The new apartments in the Pittsfield Building will be a mix of studio, one-, two- and three-bedroom units, Block Club Chicago reported. Per the Affordable Requirements Ordinance, 20% will be affordable.<\/p>\n

Recommended Reading <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"This story was originally published on Smart Cities Dive. To receive daily news and insights, subscribe to our…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":10367,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[8287,8504,8505,6721,9,24,55,54,56,2344,8507,8506],"class_list":{"0":"post-10366","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-new-york-city","8":"tag-chicago","9":"tag-chicago-city-council","10":"tag-downtown-chicago","11":"tag-housing-crisis","12":"tag-new-york","13":"tag-new-york-city","14":"tag-new-york-city-headlines","15":"tag-new-york-city-news","16":"tag-ny","17":"tag-office-space","18":"tag-pittsfield-building","19":"tag-residential-apartments"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10366","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10366"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10366\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/10367"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10366"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10366"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10366"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}