NYC’s Commercial Reinvention: Office to Residential
With more than 25% of the country’s office stock projected to become obsolete by 2030, how is an international commercial hub like New York City adapting? Join STOBG’s SVP of Building Repositioning, Brooks McDaniel as he discusses the city’s trend towards residential conversion with commercial design leader and managing partner at MdeAS, Dan Shannon.
HOST
Brooks McDaniel
Senior Vice President, Building Repositioning, STOBGView Bio
GUEST
Dan Shannon
Managing Partner, MdeASView Bio
Narrator (00:05):
Welcome to Building Conversations, a construction podcast powered by the STO Building Group. On today’s episode, STO Building Group, senior Vice President of Building Repositioning, Brooks McDaniel, speaks with commercial design leader and managing partner at architecture firm, MDeAS, Dan Shannon, about the newest wave of building repositioning projects—office to residential conversions—particularly in New York City.
Brooks McDaniel (00:37):
Hello and welcome to Building Conversations, the STO Building Group podcast. I’m your host today, Brooks McDaniel, Senior Vice President of Building Repositioning at STOBG. And here with me is Dan Shannon, head of architecture firm, MDeAS. Dan is an internationally recognized leader in the design of new and redeveloped buildings. Today we’re going to be talking with Dan about commercial to residential conversions, which have become a hot topic in many cities, especially in our home base of New York City. Welcome, Dan. Thanks for joining us today.
Dan Shannon (01:04):
Brooks, thank you very much. Pleased to be here.
Brooks McDaniel (01:06):
Great. Dan, you’ve led some of the city’s most impressive repositioning projects throughout your career, many of which have been office-to-office repositioning projects, but you have a couple of fairly significant office-to-residential projects in the works as well. Can you describe the market for office-to-residential conversions in New York over the past few years?
Dan Shannon (01:24):
Brooks, what’s happening now is the commercial market is seeing a significant challenge. There are many factors on that, primarily a return to office transition that’s happened post pandemic as large commercial companies are beginning to get their hands around who’s coming back to the office and how people work effectively in the new modern workplace. On top of that is that a lot of the major players in commercial rental market have changed the quantity of office space they need, especially the tech sector, which had been pushing the growth throughout the pandemic and they’ve retreated. So as a result of those two primary factors and some other economic issues, there’s been a retreat on the quantity of office space that’s necessary in New York City. On top of that, there’s a lot of new product of office in the market as it’s necessary to keep a vibrant and competitive city in the world market.
Dan Shannon (02:32):
There’s not only new buildings, but as you said, renovated, repurposed buildings. So what are we going to do with available space in New York City? And it starts with the word adapt. We, in an industry of construction, design and development, have to find ways for these properties to adapt to the market. And in one of those is residential conversions. A lot of the cranes, you know, that are in the city right now are a new residential construction, but there is far greater number of existing buildings in important places that have the potential to be repurposed in use. And one of those uses, of course, is residential. And these buildings are big contributors to the economic vitality of this city, and they can’t stay empty. We have to find new uses for them.
Brooks McDaniel (03:33):
Yeah, cities certainly thrive with people in buildings, and that’s really what makes the city work, whether it’s the work produced in the office buildings or the tax revenue from those buildings as well, and people living in the city and spending money in the city. You’ve got two significant projects, one just being completed, One Wall Street, and one in the works right now, the McGraw Hill building. And they’re both office-to-residential conversions, and they’re very different. Can you talk about really the driving forces that led to those two projects moving forward?
Dan Shannon (04:08):
Brooks, those are two very exciting projects that we were fortunate to be part of the design team on. And as similar as they are, they can’t be more different. They are both capital landmarks in New York City, probably top 10, not only from, they’re part of the Landmarks and Preservation Commission and landmarked, but they’re also important pieces of architecture. One Wall Street was a bank downtown by Ralph Walker Thomas. It is the deco masterpiece sitting at the intersection of Broadway and Wall Street. And until recently it was an office building, a bank building. Harry Macklowe bought that property some years ago with the intention of a conversion to a condominium residential building. Originally, his idea development goal was to take the base of the building where the larger footprints are and have a commercial office and mixed use with residential in the tower. As he studied the building in greater depth, he recognized that from street to the clouds, it worked as a residential building, and that was our task as part of the team to convert that building to full residential condominiums.
Dan Shannon (05:31):
And that job is completed. Now. The first move-in of an owner was several weeks ago. That was a greatly celebrated moment, and it’s moving very well in the market. It is the top of the market in downtown condominium in terms of quality of offering. On the other hand, is the McGraw Hill building, which was designed by Raymond Hood, again in the ‘30s. Raymond Hood was the father of the skyscraper. He was also the head designer of Rockefeller Center. McGraw Hill was the commercial office building and publishing house, the executive offices and publishing house for McGraw & Hill when they came together. And because of where it is, it’s in a manufacturing district at the time, far West on 42nd Street. It’s a magnificent building. It had been an office building until recently. The primary tenant was the unions, and they have moved, and the owner of the building had hired us as their lead architect to bring the building up to standards and market for a Class A office building.
Dan Shannon (06:49):
And the headwinds led to a re-analysis of the property in terms of use, and we landed on that the base of the building, the first 300,000sf up to the 12th floor would stay commercial. And then the remaining 300,000sf above that initial setback would be residential. But because of the location it focuses on rental and a population of people that come into the city, very transportation dense area and feeding off of Hudson Yards, the growth there, to accommodate the people who are looking for homes in that area. And that’s our current plan right now and fully going forward in terms of its fully approved at landmarks. And we are in the process of changing the infrastructure of the building to accommodate residential.
Brooks McDaniel (07:47):
They’re two great projects. They’re beautiful buildings. They’re similar in some ways, but very different in other ways. And what’s interesting to me is the kind of unique incarnation of each project with One Wall Street being driven just by the visionary Harry Macklowe, who you know very well and have done several projects with him, and you could entertain us with stories about those projects, I’m sure all day. But Harry bought that building just knowing that he wanted it to be residential, just looking at the building and you see it now, and it, and it seems obvious that that’s what it should be. But that decision was made pre-COVID, right? He bought it in the teens and had a vision for what it was going to be. And here we are. And it’s been a successful journey. And now he has people moving in, which is great. And the McGraw Hill project is a little bit different. It’s an older building, like One Wall Street, but the decision was made as a result of COVID where, you know, they’re realizing that maybe it would be difficult to rent all the office space in this building, so let’s make it a hybrid building and go to residential. So, I think that’s two very different interesting examples.
Dan Shannon (08:53):
Yeah, 100%. Harry always leads with a vision. He wanted to create a opposite anchor to his success at 432 Park. And he certainly was able to do that. And what I like about Mount Graw Hill is the willingness to adapt, right? I think you see a change, you think about what’s best, not only for the building, but for your investors. And you are willing to study the alternatives and make a good decision on that. And we are able to bring in a lot of advisors, including yourself, to understand the ramifications of converting what was an office building its entire life to a residential building and purpose-built buildings often resist that change. And what’s unique about the downtown market is the buildings are a bit older and for a number of reasons, smaller sites, the technology of vertical transportation, slower elevators is what I’m referring to.
Dan Shannon (10:00):
And the lack of effective air conditioning—buildings were built with much smaller floor plates, as you know, and operable windows, which is an easier transition to residential buildings. And we have all seen the number of commercial office buildings masterpieces with very important names on them, such as the Woolworth Building, Waldorf Astoria, the Crown Building. You know, these are super important internationally known buildings that all have been able to change their identity into homes, which is remarkable as One Wall did. Whereas a building built for publishing <laugh> as McGraw Hill, those large floor plates with high floor to ceilings, slab to slabs and very, very big windows for work for actually making something. Those are harder to accommodate a change to residential use. You can imagine a giant printing machine versus a refrigerator. Two very different things. Whereas where the office executive offices were above the initial setback, the 12th floor, those still had good floor to floor heights, fantastic windows, unbelievable views, outdoor space, but smaller floor plates, they were much more adaptable to residential use. Those two things balanced each other and I think will be both successful conversions.
Brooks McDaniel (11:33):
Yeah, agreed. So, talk a little bit about, there’s several factors when you’re looking at a building and deciding whether it’s a good conversion target or not. And I’ve always said that almost any building can be converted. It’s just how challenging it is. And you obviously for economic reasons, want something with as few challenges as possible. So, you touched on floorplate depth. Why is the floorplate depth important?
Dan Shannon (11:56):
Uh, Brooks, I like the way he said it. Yeah. And it, and it is good for somebody representing construction <laugh> to always see challenge as an opportunity. And you’re mostly true. So many buildings can be converted, but it’s how much that building that location, that zoning, and those codes resist that in how much it’s going to cost not only economically, but in space and so on to overcome those. There are a number of challenges in front of all of us in these conversions, and it really starts with the idea that the city was built in a particular way that said where people would live, where people would work, and where people would build stuff. So, we have our residential districts, commercial districts (C), manufacturing districts (M), and although there’s some flexibility in that, they really were about saying, this is where these things are going to happen.
Dan Shannon (13:00):
That completely changed. The greatest example of that, as you know very well is SoHo and Tribeca, and still takes a unique strength to convert those beautiful loft buildings to extraordinary residential buildings, top of the market. You know, everybody would love to have such a place, but it’s not only the use district, the location of that, you’ve touched on some of them. The shape of the building is very important because the multiple dwelling unit codes for light and air, people when they live in a place in New York City, the city makes sure that we have windows for light and windows for air so that we can thrive in that residential setting where it’s not the case in America for office buildings. Simply put, there’s no restriction to how far away from a window you can be in an office building, but in a residential building, it can be as small as you know, to 15 feet, which is a significant restriction on depth and shape of a building.
Dan Shannon (14:05):
So that’s why I mentioned earlier, certain buildings, it’s easy. They’ve got the depth to, from the window to the core, adapts to that very easily. But when it gets deeper, you have to do a couple of things. You either have to find a different use for that space, or you’ve got to change shape of the building, which is happening downtown with your company’s very involved with carving out courtyards and changing the shape of building at great cost. But at times it proves to be the right thing to do. The other thing, which is interesting, and that is the positive aspect of the pandemic, we all learned to work differently. We can make decisions about where we work. And part of that is that we can work in our homes. As an architect of office buildings, we always say, well, if we can’t make a better workplace than your studio apartment, then we failed.
Dan Shannon (14:57):
On the other hand, we’re saying at times it makes sense to work from home for a myriad of reasons. And I think that flexibility is our way forward in our future. So, what I’m saying is in that additional depth, as you know, we’re incorporating everyone’s incorporating home offices into the design of the building. So after, let’s say 25 feet or so from the window, you can, if there’s space still available in the floor plate, we’re putting in home offices. So, you can see how well that would work. That if you stayed at home and there are two people at home and they wanted to work, there’s a purpose-built space for that person to find privacy and to actually have a workplace in the home rather than a dining room table, which you’ve got to continually move your work aside to eat your pasta. So, we don’t see that as the answer.
Dan Shannon (15:55):
We see new design in residential buildings to accommodate that. New York City has another issue. Is it there’s no place for your bicycle, there’s no place for your winter clothes, right? Where we specifically design efficient living spaces, that means small. So, we are finding that on the floor. We can also put storage for a big closet inside, outside of the space. So right across the hall you could find your winter wardrobe. And I think that’s a very effective use. And so now some of these buildings, these conversions are offering things that new construction can’t offer. And I think that’s unique as you know, because we make smaller living spaces, we have to provide greater amenity spaces or places to relax, places to entertain your friends and your colleagues, places to gather, work out, get away from your family and so on. And new buildings can program those into the design of the building from the beginning. Existing buildings, we find those spaces that are special. Setbacks, so you can go outside, or deeper spaces that have ceiling height, you know, or you remove floors. You can find places for music rooms now and libraries and climbing walls in those amenity spaces so that you have a full-service building. And that’s the market for all construction right now.
Brooks McDaniel (17:39):
So, you touched on some really interesting things, Dan, and it seems to me that the developer or the owner, in conjunction with the architect needs to really dig into the existing building, whereas with new construction, you can say, I want it to be exactly as, as space efficient and you know, the exact shape and floorplan that I want. Whereas with an existing building, you need to make sure that you’re checking a lot of boxes and reacting to the building and the site. You need to make sure that you have these legal windows that need to be operable, and you have a yard or a court or a street. And the depth of the apartment from the corridor to the window is very important. Whereas normally it would be 30 feet, right? Where you have a 20-foot wide, one bedroom that’s 30 feet deep, you’re a 600 square foot, one bedroom.
Brooks McDaniel (18:28):
Yeah. You’re, you’re right on the money. Whereas if you have a deeper floor plate, now you need to start thinking about what to do with it. And you can put in the home office, which instead of being deemed as maybe a detriment is actually a positive that you can sell it in a different way. And then if you have really deep space, you can look at storage or amenities. So, it’s something where, where you and your clients really need to dig deeper to figure out how to make it work.
Dan Shannon (18:52):
Absolutely true. And as you said, there’s with a challenge comes, an opportunity becomes a solution that all has to come together and balance itself with an economic reality and meet the market. There are other things, as you were saying, I was thinking of doing this, all the additional challenges. You mentioned light and air, you know the code so well because of your life as an architect, you know, the rear yard requirement in a office billing is 20 feet, whereas the rear yard requirement generally in a residential building is 30 feet. That means the distance from the property line in the back of the building. Well, you just can’t remove 10 feet of building. So, the city has to continually to accommodate the reality and facilitate these conversions. Parking. A lot of sites, you know this very well, requires off street parking in residential, not commercial.
Dan Shannon (19:53):
What do you do with that in an existing building when you can’t find a way to bring cars into the building? We have to work – the real estate industry, design and construction have to work with state and local regulators, the DOB, DCP and all the legislators to change, adapt, modify these rules to take over 100 million square feet of potential conversions and make them feasible and make them work for everybody. That progress is being made. We talk about it a little bit more, I’m certain, but it has to happen so that we can unlock the potential for so many other buildings in the city.
Brooks McDaniel (20:37):
Yeah, you know, I, I saw an interesting report recently, Dan published by Cushman & Wakefield called Obsolescence equals Opportunity, which I think is a great title of a report these days. And what they have determined is that 25% of the current office stock will be deemed obsolete by 2030. That’s 1.4 billion square feet across the country. I mean, huge, vast amounts of office space will need to be rethought and turned into something else. And you’re right, we do need, you know, state and city government to, uh, get on board and provide some incentives to do that. And there’s, there’s tax abatement and there’s changes to zoning and, uh, I think those are in the works and, and hopefully they arrive.
Dan Shannon (21:23):
Yeah, it’s an extraordinary number in the CW report. And, you know, there’s quite a bit of it just here in the city. And if you think that the answer is to remove those buildings, that’s an enormous misunderstanding of the entire implication of these buildings. One of the greatest motivators for renovating and finding use of building to sustainability on every level. But the amount of energy it took to build that building and add nearly an equal amount to remove that building and try to find a place to put it afterwards when we can only recycle maybe 10 or 15% of the building is an enormous waste. Enormous, you know, the greenest, most sustainable building ones that exist now, we can’t change the carbon that went into building them. We can change the carbon it takes to make them new again and not obsolete. Residential use is one of those great opportunities to do that.
Dan Shannon (22:30):
Schools, hospitals, cultural facilities, all of those will take a place of that. But I do think that the largest growth will be in good residential buildings, quality residential buildings. We’ve touched on some of the unique characteristics that might make them better than new. We have a saying that we got from a colleague of ours, Brad Zizmor, old buildings win, but we do need cooperation and partnership with state and local legislation and codes because it is extraordinary. Think about this, all these wonderful deco buildings that we love so much that turn into needles in the sky that are mostly becoming residential buildings now, you know, there’s a code for new construction that 50% of that land area has to be available for outdoor use. Well, these buildings are essentially pins with no ability to go outside unless you’re King Kong <laugh>. And that doesn’t work for most of us.
Dan Shannon (23:37):
So, we have to now go to city planning and get a waiver for that law because they’re landmarked and we can’t change the setbacks and allow people outside and where we can, we accommodate that because outdoor space, it’s not only a requirement, but it’s a marketing necessity for people to go outside and recreate. But the city isn’t in the business of granting waivers. They want codes that accommodate the needs today and in the future. And so those laws have to be adapted to what we didn’t see necessarily. What was the newest change in the code, the biggest one during the Bloomberg administration was advanced FAR increase in Midtown, right? So that we can do 30 plus FAR buildings.
Brooks McDaniel (24:28):
The East Midtown Subdistrict.
Dan Shannon (24:30):
Exactly. So, all of a sudden, the mayor saw that we were losing market share to London, Hong Kong, Shanghai, wherever, because of restriction on the size of our buildings.
Dan Shannon (24:42):
So very progressively made that change. And as a result of that One Vanderbilt, the JP Morgan Chase building, these very important economic machines for vital use here, but how many more are we going to build in the near future? So now we have to quickly pivot to making over 100 million square feet viable. You and I have talked about a number of these buildings in the fashion district, used to be the manufacturing district for clothing. And that’s between, from 23rd street up to 41st street. It’s all M and in the code right now for conversions, that is not adaptable. That’s not permissible. We have to change that. And what I think is so fascinating, those all those loft buildings accommodate residential in a fantastic way. Once again, high floor-to-floors or good floor-to-floors, large spans because manufacturing required larger spans.
Dan Shannon (25:49):
So, the columns were spaced, uh, nicely, big windows because they didn’t want to rely on the electricity and lighting, artificial lighting to fabricate some nice setbacks because of the tight zoning that was there. We’ve studied enough of them together, we know that they can change and ownership waiting for a simple change in the code that allows those to be converted. And it’s just not the economic vitality of a single building, it’s the entire district. Because what comes with residential? Families and people that need grocery stores, they need restaurants, they need services like dry cleaning and dog sitting and all those things that create a district and create a vital city. And that in the fashion district, although it’s, you know, pretty interesting now, I think it’s going to completely transform that. Schools, parks, all of those things that we associate with residential and not with commercial will transform districts like the fashion district in an incredible way.
Dan Shannon (26:59):
So, we can’t just look at it as a single address, right? And, and one person’s loan and their economic vitality. We have to look at it as a, as a city and completely changing that. And I think you predicted it. I see it as well that that area will become a fantastic and vital mixed-use area of some office, some institutional work, great transportation, already, very good light because there isn’t, it’s not all high rises there. And then we just bring in residential use to it. And I think we are really going to change the West Side.
Brooks McDaniel (27:36):
It’s great to think that the fashion district, the garment district could become the next SoHo. Because you walk around right now and it’s a single-use district, which is occupied during the day. It’s abandoned at night, and it’s not a great neighborhood. And as you said, you make that change. You bring people and make it a 24-hour neighborhood where you have people living there, working there, shopping there, playing there, and it completely transforms it and it creates value for the building owners and it creates value for the city. The tax revenue goes through the roof. I want to come back to something that you talked about, which was the sustainability aspect. The embodied carbon, where to tear the building down, you’re removing all that carbon and having to bring all of this carbon intensive materials and labor back to the building.
Brooks McDaniel (28:25):
And the flip side of that is economics. The owner and the developer is first and foremost beholden to their investors. And they might think, well, I’m not as concerned with sustainability as I am with making my investors happy. Even if they all have good intentions, they need to make a buck. But what’s interesting about the residential conversions and repositioning existing buildings is you can make a very strong economic case for it as well. That to tear the building down your plus tens of millions of dollars in demolition cost and maybe a year added to your schedule. Whereas if you keep the building, you are substantially cheaper and you can convert it in two years versus building a new building in four years.
Dan Shannon (29:11):
Brooke, you’re working off your own pitchbook <laugh>. Um, and I totally agree with you. First off, the cost of assembling a site is a long-term game in New York. You’ve worked with developers, you’ve worked for developers, you understand that to create a new building, somebody’s been thinking about that for probably 10 years in assembling a site and then commissioning and entitling a building with lots of issues around it, then removing tenancy, then removing the building, and then building new. And there is a reason for that, and we support that. But in the same case, you’ve got a building that’s there, and the conversion from a construction point of view is far more immediate. Therefore, you’re bringing the product to the market and you’re receiving income sometimes as much as two years before a building that is ground-up construction. And obviously, yes, there are enormous costs for changing a building, you know, completely new infrastructure, vertical transportation, moving stairs, so on to accommodate that use.
Dan Shannon (30:25):
But that is still less expensive than creating new superstructure for the building foundations, digging the hole and putting up a new building. So, the cost works, the timing works. I also think that the sustainability and environmental issues aren’t that easily ignored and are part of the story. People are looking in New York to find places that they connect to and they like the story. And if you can tell the story, what was here before didn’t end up in a landfill and it meant something to somebody else one day before. I think people connect to that. You know, New York City, there’s so much that you have to distinguish yourself every development, no matter how many buildings, every development’s looking for something that’s unique about it and you know, is saying, come here, I’m the one that offers everything to you. And I think there’s really no better story than the history of the building itself.
Dan Shannon (31:30):
What better story could there be for downtown than One Wall Street. A contributing building from a cultural heritage of the city, an important financial institution that is now home for over 500 families. It changed the first real grocery store in the financial district. You know, that Whole Foods is there. The day it opened, Harry had two wonderful experiences. One was with Steve Jobs opening the Apple Cube in the General Motors building and all the people that were around the street. And Harry feels a host to that. And he and Steve stood there with such pride that they brought this vitality to the Plaza District. That day that Whole Foods opened, Harry was there again, standing at the door greeting people too. They were there for sandwiches and not for iPads, but it was the same experience for him that the vitality of Broadway was there.
Dan Shannon (32:30):
They have pre-temp coming in as well as the fitness. And we’ve talked about the challenge of office buildings, but the challenge for retail on the ground floor is equally as strong and not seeing as much opportunity until we change a lot of things. But residential brings a certain amount of retail requirement to it. I love the story of old becoming new, who wouldn’t want to live in the McGraw Hill building, you know, with this great deco masterpiece with the name up on top of the building and understand that they’re part of the history of the city. And then the units themselves, if we are smart as marketers, designers and owners, to draw off of that strength, to not throw everything out, but to make it, yeah, I’m in a building that once published really important things, uh, books and so on. So, to have the design feed off of that and connect to that.
Dan Shannon (33:35):
And that’s what so much of the, the buildings like we all look forward to the return of the Waldorf Astoria and what that had contributed and will contribute again. Europe has all these beautiful Paris, London, Rome, beautiful buildings. And although you we’re seeing economic vitality in London with new buildings, there are so many converted buildings, mixed use buildings and so on that people choose as first choice. And that’s what’s happening here in the city. And, and once again, I don’t want to be mistaken that new buildings don’t have their place and especially for the new uses we’re seeing in housing as well as our cultural institutions, but to take the hundreds of millions of square feet that exist today that contributed to our city to find a new life for them, I think is very gratifying. Not just for architects, but construction and ownership. But everybody around it, it’s a terrific opportunity to beat this obsolescence problem.
Brooks McDaniel (34:48):
I couldn’t have said it better myself. And, and I think you, you make a great point that the story is even better from a marketing perspective when you’re talking about a building with history. And the transformation really helps to tell the tale and sell the space to the next generation. And so that brings me to my final question is how do you see the next few years playing out? How do you see the story of New York kind of progressing over the next few years with respect to repositionings and conversions?
Dan Shannon (35:19):
That’s an interesting, I gave a talk not four or five years ago where I ended with the future of the city as super talls, right? There’s a, there’s a, there’s a very, uh, compelling image of the city as it was and as it could be with the new zoning and how many sites are potential super tall. So, I was saying, let’s all look at the future and <laugh>, you know, I don’t think that’s it, right? Yeah, I don’t think that’s it. I think we’re looking at a, turning on the lights of so many buildings in all the boroughs of this city for new use. I think we’re, with the participation of state and city and finding an affordability quotient in all of this, I think we are looking much more to that. It doesn’t mean every once in a while, we’re not going to get another fantastic building that defies gravity.
Dan Shannon (36:15):
They’re compelling, they’re exciting to be a part of because of engineering and architectural issues. But that same creativity going into blocks from 23 to 42 to change a district, the financial district, that’s where our office is. It’s been since 1991. There’s a lot of vitality for that, but not to fill all of those buildings and they are continuing to be converted. When we first moved there, I don’t think there was any residential. We moved out of our building of 67 Wall Street because it was converted to residential in the early 2000s. And, but we’re going to just see more and more people living down there of all. First time I’ve got out of college and I moved to New York to people who have retired and have lived in Westchester to raise their family and they want to come back to the city. The financial district will continue to transform itself so that the lights are on at night now instead of going dark because people have left their workplace.
Dan Shannon (37:23):
So, the challenge of the pandemic has made all of us rethink on how we work, what a workplace is. You know, we’re here in Penn 1, which is a substantial transformation on how people work both individually and in community. What is public and what is private. It completely rewrote that story. And all of these buildings are continuing to do that. And we didn’t see this, obviously, we didn’t see the Coronavirus coming, but it cost an enormous toll of not only life, but of economic sustainability. But there’s a lot of change in architecture and real estate because of it. We’re working as much on how to get people back to work as we were on finding places for them to live that they hadn’t before. And the combination of the two, I think is going to make New York, unique and the of future city a little bit different than what we were seeing a couple years ago.
Brooks McDaniel (38:25):
I totally agree. I have high hopes and a very optimistic outlook for the city and cities across the country that are adapting to change and doing it well. Thanks for, uh, speaking with us today, Dan. I really enjoyed it.
Dan Shannon (38:37):
Brooks, thank you very much. It’s a great topic and it’s always a pleasure to speak with you.
Narrator (38:45):
Thanks for listening to Building Conversations. For more episodes like this, you can find us on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Audible, and the STO Building Group website.