Early in the morning, through a revolving wooden door, the Pittsfield Cafe bustles in downtown Chicago. If you look up from your plate of flapjacks, you’ll notice that much of its historic home, the 38-story Pittsfield Building, is empty office space.
That could soon change, however, as the Chicago City Council recently approved the Art Deco skyscraper built in 1927 to be converted into 214 residential apartmentsadding to the 228 apartments previously approved.
As the nation recovers from a housing crisis, office to home conversions are taking off in cities across the country. New York City, for example, saw annual office conversions increase from 1.6 million square feet in 2023 to 3.3 million square feet last year.
Illinois Politics, a non-partisan advocacy organizationsays Chicago, which faces an affordable price housing deficit of roughly 100,000 homes, could do more to follow New York’s example.
“Chicago’s commercial vacancies could help its residential shortage if policymakers are willing to make it a priority,” the organization said in a recent analysis.
Chicago currently has a higher proportion of downtown office vacancies than New York City, estimated at 28% compared to New York’s 13%.
Unlike New York, Chicago takes a “narrower, case-by-case approach” to financial assistance for office-to-residential conversion projects, IP said.
Currently at least there is 11 planned office conversion projects in the works in Chicago, much of the city’s plans to revitalize the LaSalle Street corridor, contributing 1,765 mixed-income housing units in its center and reuse 2 million square feet of empty space.
The Illinois policy offered three recommendations for how the city could encourage more office-to-housing conversions downtown:
- Revise the city’s Affordable Requirements Ordinance, which currently requires residential projects with more than 10 units to make 20% of the units affordable. Instead, the city should adopt a property tax abatement model that New York City uses, IP said.
- Make commercial to residential conversions a bigger part of the city in the long term center growth planwhich aims to energize the city center as a neighborhood and “not only as a business”.
- Streamline zoning approvals and eliminate regulatory barriers that “slow down the process.”
“Converting vacant office space to housing won’t solve Chicago’s housing shortage overnight, but it can make a significant impact while revitalizing the city’s commercial core,” the Illinois policy said.
The new apartments in the Pittsfield building will be a mix of studios, one-, two- and three-bedroom units, Block Club Chicago reported. Under the Affordable Requirements Ordinance, 20% will be affordable.
