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construction

NYC Architects Are Adding More Floors To Skyscrapers To Convert Empty Offices Into Apartments 

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New York City real estate is still recovering from the shifts in work from home culture that increased during the pandemic. This shift left many commercial real estate properties vacant. Now, architects and developers are converting these empty office spaces into housing. 

According to Business Insider Magazine, real estate development and investment firm the Vanbarton Group and architecture firm Gensler are currently finishing up a 1970s office tower on Water Street in lower Manhattan to become 586 apartments. 

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For most of the estimated 96 million-square-feet of vacant office spaces in New York City, it would be too expensive, or illegal, to turn into housing, however, in some cases it’s very doable. 

One of the biggest challenges is the lack of air flow and light in the center of many of the larger commercial spaces, as well as a lack of windows available for apartments, which could lead to pricey renovations. 

For the projects on Water Street, Vanbarton described that they needed to cut holes in the center of buildings, add new floors, and replace all of the windows to make the spaces livable. 

“There was essentially dead space at the back of these units, and so instead of adding that to the unit and creating these extremely long units, we took that out and then put it elsewhere in the building where it made much more sense,” Joey Chilelli, Vanbarton’s managing director, told Insider.

“The blind shafts were “probably the biggest planning challenge in the project. We couldn’t just wall it off and leave the floor slab. We had to physically remove the floor slabs so that it became a true shaft,” Robert Fuller, a principal at Gensler who led the design of 160 Water, said.

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Insider also reported that the team placed lateral reinforcements within the building to support the new floors they built. 

“The alternate to that would have been to reduce the size of the overbuild, but then you’re losing square footage. Most developers are not looking to lose square footage if they can avoid it. So it’s a cost-benefit analysis that the client has to do during design,” Fuller said. 

Fuller went on to discuss the potential opportunities in the financial district and midtown Manhattan for future developments like the one on Water Street. 

“Any good designer embraces that challenge, trying to come up with creative solutions. At first blush it would be easy to look at a building like 160 and say, ‘Oh, it doesn’t work. The floor plate is too deep.’ But we were able to come up with a solution,” he said.

“It really does breathe new life into these buildings. You’re creating this buzz and this new life, and you might have 1,000 or more residents and the effects of that on this street, this corner, this neighborhood and the amount of foot traffic as well as other retail activity — it really boosts the area and changes the streetscape,” Chilelli said.

rescue

Four Bodies Found In Aftermath Of Building Explosion In Marseille, France

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Four bodies have been found after an explosion demolished a four-story apartment building in Marseille, France. Local authorities on the scene stated that four other individuals remain unaccounted for as rescue efforts are ongoing, according to reports from BBC.

The cause of the explosion, which occurred early Sunday morning,  is still unclear. Authorities and investigators are currently looking into a potential gas leak that may have caused the explosion. 

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Oliver Klein, the housing minister, stated that the government will be supporting the victims’ families, and the discovery of the bodies was “gruesome, difficult and dramatic”. 

Around 200 people were evacuated from their homes while five individuals from adjacent buildings sustained minor injuries due to the explosion. 

Benoit Payan, the mayor of Marseille, told reporters Monday morning that there is still a risk that nearby buildings could collapse as over 100 firefighters attended to the blaze and damage caused by the explosion. 

Of the four individuals unaccounted for, two are a “young couple” who are believed to live in an apartment in the building; each floor of the building is said to house one apartment. The fire department stated that “given the difficulties of intervention, the extraction [of the bodies from the site] will take time.”

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Psychological support has been offered to individuals related to the explosion while a local gym and two schools have been opened up to accommodate anyone who has been displaced. 

French President Emmanuel Macron stated he was “thinking of those affected and their loved ones, [we thank] the emergency workers for their efforts.”

Mayor Benoît Payan said “rescuers remain determined to find people alive. Hope must hold us.”

Saveria Mosnier, who lives nearby, told local reporters: “I was sleeping and there was this huge blast that really shook the room. I was shocked awake as if I had been dreaming. We very quickly smelled a strong gas odor that hung around. We could still smell it this morning”.

Deputy Mayor Yannick Ohanessian told reporters that “several witnesses have reached us this morning to say there was a suspicious smell of gas.” 

Rescue and rehabilitation efforts are still under way as the investigation into the reasoning behind this tragedy are continued to be analyzed.

Real Estate Investing

The Pros and Cons of Investing in Real Estate

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Investments are a smart way to expand your wealth, as the returns on long-term investments can be substantial. However, when considering how to invest your money, it’s important to take into account various options. While investing in the stock market is common and relatively safe, it may be a better choice in some cases to invest in real estate instead. Buying land as an investment is fundamentally different from investing in stocks, and as such, before you make a decision, it’s best to consider how these differences are likely to impact your returns.

According to Andres Pira, the CEO of Blue Horizons Developments, there are many advantages to investing in real estate. When buying property instead of stocks, you have more control over your profits. Investing in the stock market requires buying stocks when they are low and selling them when they are high, and it can be difficult or sometimes impossible to predict how the stock market will behave. Real estate, on the other hand, is more fixed, as variables like size, location, and features remain in the buyer’s control. Additionally, when selling real estate, you have the power to negotiate your price depending on who you’re selling to, which you cannot do with stocks.

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Another advantage of real estate investments is found in their consistency. If you’re a landlord, you can expect a consistent cash flow in the form of regular monthly payments from your tenants. Generally, as time goes on, the cost of rent increases to match inflation, meaning that if you’re a landlord, you can expect monthly payments to increase with time. While the stock market offers the potential for an unexpectedly high payout, it carries with it a risk of losing a substantial amount of money, given the difficulty of predicting economic changes.

Investing in real estate is also unique in the sense that it enables certain tax advantages. For instance, real estate owners can take advantage of a depreciation expense, which allows them to save money on their taxes significantly and use those savings to reinvest, pay back loans, and more. Real estate can be a tricky market to invest in, however, and investors need to be careful about the property they choose to buy by putting substantial time and effort into research and other due diligence.

There are also a number of disadvantages to real estate investments. For one, property is very expensive; while you can invest in the stock market with a relatively small amount of money and still expect moderate returns on your investment in due time, properties that are worth investing in require a substantial down payment and other upfront costs such as improvements and repairs, as well as ongoing payments like property taxes, insurance, and more. 

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And while investing in the stock market can be as easy as signing up for an app, real estate investments take a substantial amount of your time, particularly if you’re new to the business, as there is a lot to learn when managing real estate investments, during which time mistakes can be very costly.

If you want to invest in real estate, you can be expected to be in it for the long haul, as the best way to invest in real estate involves taking advantage of a long-term strategy for maximizing profits. And while being a landlord seems to be an easy way to generate passive income, tenants can cause any number of problems, and sometimes even sue their landlords over disagreements about their living situation. To make matters worse, the law in many jurisdictions tends to favor tenants over landlords, as a tenant’s right to a suitable living environment is weighted against a landlord’s right to make money off their investment. For these reasons and more, it is essential to exercise good judgment and care when expanding your investment portfolio to include real estate, but managing properties successfully can be very profitable.