“And even before the pandemic it was still missing basic stuff like playgrounds and dog parks and a normal non-Whole Foods grocery store that I could walk to,” Woods said. He said he was able to find dependable stores and restaurants that stayed open at night, but then the pandemic came and downtown became “like a moonscape” for more than a year. Jordan Woods, a 33-year-old federal government contractor, moved to an apartment in downtown Washington in 2019, attracted in part by the appeal of being able to walk to work. “How do you make it a neighborhood that has a vibe where young people want to be?” “You have to make downtown a neighborhood - somewhere that’s living and playful and active,” Pittsburgh Mayor Ed Gainey told an panel at the United States Conference of Mayors meetings in Washington last January. But the city needs another 6 million square feet converted to meet her goal of 15,000 new downtown residents. Her “comeback plan” for the capital city, announced earlier this year, seeks to add 15,000 new residents to the downtown area, adding to the approximately 25,000 who already live here.īowser’s administration says about 1 million square feet of downtown real estate is already transitioning from commercial to residential. In the nation’s capital, Mayor Muriel Bowser has made office-to-housing conversions a cornerstone of her plan to repopulate and revitalize the district’s downtown. And Seattle launched a competition in April for downtown building owners and design firms to come up with conversion ideas. In January, Pittsburgh announced it was accepting proposals to produce more affordable housing through the “conversion of fallow and underutilized office space.” Boston released a plan in October aimed at revitalizing downtown that included a push for more housing, some of which would come from office conversions. Multiple cities are offering serious tax breaks for developers to incentivize office-to-housing conversions - provided that a certain percentage of apartments are offered at affordable below-market prices. The conversion push is marked by an emphasis on affordability. “We’re taking a vacant building and pouring life not only into this building, but this entire neighborhood,” said Joey Chilelli, managing director of real estate firm Vanbarton Group, which is doing the conversion.Īcross the country, office-to-housing conversions are being pursued as a potential lifeline for struggling downtown business districts that emptied out during the coronavirus pandemic and may never fully recover. The building, empty since 2021, is being converted to 588 market-rate rental apartments that will house about 1,000 people. It has become commonplace for Trump to threaten to skip debates dating back to his time as a candidate for the Republican nomination during the 2016 primary.NEW YORK (AP) - On the 31st floor of what was once a towering office building in downtown Manhattan, construction workers lay down steel bracing for what will soon anchor a host of residential amenities: a catering station, lounge, fire pit and gas grills. The date of the second has not yet been announced.įormer President Donald Trump is questioning the need to attend the GOP primary debates due to his commanding lead in the polls. The first GOP primary debate is set for August in Milwaukee. Trump also took issue with plans to hold the second planned GOP debate at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library in California, noting that Fred Ryan, publisher of The Washington Post, is chairman of the board of trustees at the Reagan library. “When you’re leading by seemingly insurmountable numbers, and you have hostile Networks with angry, TRUMP & MAGA hating anchors asking the ‘questions,’ why subject yourself to being libeled and abused?” “I see that everybody is talking about the Republican Debates, but nobody got my approval, or the approval of the Trump Campaign, before announcing them,” Trump wrote on Truth Social. Former President Trump on Tuesday raised the prospect of skipping the two Republican White House primary debates that have been announced thus far, suggesting he should not have to subject himself to such scrutiny given his commanding lead in the polls.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |