Commercial buildings can't be easily converted into housing that provides the same return. Once the current owners have gone out of business it'll be profitable to turn them into flats.
The arguments against conversion assume you care about the current owner's financial situation.
It's not so much the owner's financial situation, but rather that it'd be cheaper to build new homes than to retrofit a ten floor+ building's plumbing.
You'd also have to install a bunch of showers, which could be a significant problem on its own.
And then there's the increased amount of sewage, which the building might not be able to handle - even the local sewers might not be equipped to handle the uh... Load a large commercial building would generate with 24/7 occupancy vs 8/5 occupancy.
The reason you don't see folks converting commercial spaces into residential isn't because it's not wildly profitable, but because building new purpose-built residential buildings would be cheaper than a conversion for anything other than one or two floors.
> You'd also have to install a bunch of showers, which could be a significant problem on its own.
Compared to installing a new domestic water pipe riser and drains in an office tower (plus pumps, pressure tanks, etc), installing a shower in each unit is essentially free.
Connect the in-unit supply lines to the tap, core drill a hole in the floor to get to the floor below and connect to the drain piping, done.
You can also just raise the shower and toilet on a platform, plumb the waste directly to the wall while depending on the platform to buy you some vertical slope on the way out, and drill right through the side of the building and run the waste vertically down the side. It's not going to freeze on the way down unless you're in Yakutsk. The supply lines you might not even have to retrofit, just put a pressure tank on each floor for peak loads that are slowly topped off by the undersized supply lines.
More toilets, more sinks, plus laundry. A floor of apartments will use far more water than a floor used by an office tenant. A 20k sqft office tower floor might have 6-8 toilets and 6-8 sinks that see light usage for 40 hours a week.
> I always assumed that one of the benefits of AI was "anyone can do this". Then I realized a lot of people I interact with don't really understand the problem they're trying to solve all that well
I've been through a handful of "anyone can do this" epiphanies since the 90s and have come to realize the full statement should be "anyone can do this if they care about the problem space".
> The problem with that is there are women that will scoff at a man trying to do something casual like coffee, tea, or ice cream for a first date.
You're using the casual meeting as a filter for certain personalities.
There are plenty of people out there who prefer a more formalized approach to dating, and good for them. You have a different preference. Being selective is good because it saves both of you time and there are no hard feelings.
> They want to be wined and dined and treated like a princess right off the bat. They think they're a prize to be won simply by being a woman.
Thinking about people you aren't interested in will just grind your gears.
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