May 6, 2024 Issue

Pick of the Issue this week is D. T. Max’s “Design for Living.” It’s about an intriguing form of real estate development currently trending in New York City’s financial district – the conversion of obsolete office towers into apartments. Max talks with Nathan Berman, a specialist in the business. He says of Berman, “He happily spends hours poring over blueprints, dividing former fields of cubicles into small but clever residences and reconceiving onetime copy-machine nooks as mini laundry rooms or skinny kitchens.”

Max reports that Berman, through his firm, Metro Loft Management, has turned eight Manhattan office towers into rental-apartment complexes. He’s currently converting a thirty-story office tower at 55 Broad Street. Max visits the site with Berman:

A visit to the sixth floor offered a bleak sight—it was an empty, dark space half the size of a football field, interrupted only by steel support beams and rusted copper waste pipes. The floor was unsealed concrete, and transverse beams along the ceiling were coated with intumescent paint, a fire-resistant covering that looks like bubbling-hot marshmallow. When I stood at the center of the building, the windows were so far away that they looked almost like portholes.

Berman gave me a detailed tour of the thirteenth floor. In his business, a crucial metric for turning a profit is the time lag between borrowing construction money and renting out units. So he works fast. Just four months had passed since Berman, Silverstein, and Rudin had closed their deal, but the thirteenth floor already felt like part of a new apartment complex. Workers were measuring, drilling, staple-gunning. Metal track had been laid down where new walls would go, and a few drywall panels had already been installed—they were covered in a playful-looking purple glaze, to make them resistant to mold. “It’s a little bit more expensive,” Berman said. “But we don’t want any issues down the road.” On one piece of drywall, “Apt. 10” was scratched in pen. There was even a handsome tub in a bathroom without walls, like a guest who’d arrived too early for a party.

It's writing like this that keeps me reading The New Yorker. Max puts me squarely there inside 55 Broad Street and immerses me in Berman’s project. 

An aspect of Berman’s conversions that strongly appeals to me is that they’re a form of recycling. Max writes, 

According to a recent paper by the National Bureau of Economic Research, converting an out-of-date office building into an apartment complex can increase its energy efficiency by as much as eighty per cent. (In a residential building, not everyone blasts the air-conditioning 24/7.) According to a report by the Arup Group, an engineering firm, converting a Manhattan office tower releases, on average, less than half the carbon that building one from scratch does.

“Design for Living” is a fascinating tour of the conversion business. I enjoyed it immensely.