At the corner of 100 S and 500 E in Salt Lake City sits a nondescript brick office tower — or at least it used to be an office building. What was once a University of Utah Health office is now called Arbor 515 and offers studio to 4-bedroom apartments for rent. Instead of workers filing in and out, families sit and eat lunch in the front courtyard, and children attend a Montessori school that occupies the ground floor.
Adaptive reuse like this has been gaining popularity since the COVID-19 pandemic led to more people working from home and more office space sitting vacant.
When it comes to Salt Lake City, the concept isn’t new.
“The first project that I can think of that did that was actually Palmer Court,” said city planning director Nick Norris. “That was way back 15 to 20 years ago.”
Palmer Court was a Holiday Inn before it was converted into residential housing in 2009. It is now permanent supportive housing for The Road Home social services agency.
Things really picked up, Norris said, in the last five years. According to his count, roughly a dozen similar projects have come across his desk in that time.
“You have these huge buildings, for the most part, that just were vacant, and so, what do you do with them at that point?” he said. “And especially when the office users weren't renewing leases or canceling leases, then that really became a ‘now what?’ type of scenario.”
In 2024, national office vacancy rates were at historic highs. With hybrid and remote work more commonplace and a growing housing crisis, converting unused office space into much-needed residential housing seems like an easy win.
But not every office building is a good candidate. For Norris, it really has to do with how the building was constructed.
“Right off the bat is the actual shape of the floor plates,” he said. “They have to be conducive to be converted to residential units because they just have a different layout than an office does.”
The biggest challenge is installing utilities like electrical and plumbing.
For example, a traditional office building might only have a couple of bathrooms per floor. A housing conversion would require plumbing lines throughout the entire building, something that just isn’t feasible in some cases.
“You have to be able to basically cut through the floor to get utilities,” said Norris. “A lot of things that are unknown, especially about the older office buildings, is how are those floors constructed? Can you really drill through and core-cut through without damaging the rebar and the steel and everything else that might be in there?”
Steven Paynter is an architect with design firm Gensler and has worked with cities across North America on this very issue. His analysis tool, called Conversions+, can analyze buildings to help determine if they would be good candidates for conversion into housing. Paynter and Gensler’s tool was recognized at the Oct. 29 Ivory Prize Summit for housing innovation at the University of Utah.
“That funnel approach has taken about 80% of the buildings out of consideration,” he said during a panel at the summit. “Which might sound like a lot, but most of our cities only have about 20% office vacancy, so we're there to figure out which ones can be converted and then guide city policy to make sure those happen.”
When a suitable building is identified, units can come on the market faster and cheaper than new construction. That’s if the right zoning and building regulations are in place — something Paynter said, in his experience, any city can do.
“You have to understand you have a problem,” he said. “There is a solution to it, but you have to, like, take a breath and actually engage with that solution, rather than panicking and thinking it won't work for you.”
In Salt Lake City, leadership is all-in on the adaptive reuse concept, said Community Reinvestment Agency communications director Tauni Barker.
“For us, it reuses underutilized space,” she said. “Often it's faster, low-impact redevelopment, so it's just going to move through that process faster. It adds housing in areas that are generally amenity-rich, and then it does support our sustainability and climate goals.”
When it comes to moving forward with the city’s conversion projects, Barker said it’s part luck and part opportunity.
“I think the push is there both on the developer side and on the city side, which is sometimes an unusual thing,” she said.
Salt Lake City is prepared to put its money where its mouth is when it comes to creative housing projects. The reinvestment agency’s role is to provide gap funding to help developers get projects off the ground. On Nov. 3, it announced $14.4 million to help fund housing projects in the city. Barker said adaptive reuse is something they will be looking for with this year’s applicants.
“An office-to-housing conversion is the perfect type of project to apply for,” she said.
Applications for that funding close Dec. 4.
