[adamjcook]

Not to challenge your comment, but we have been converting office high-rises into apartments all over Detroit seemingly quite successfully and tastefully - with buildings built in the 1920s no less.

I am living in a converted office high-rise (built in 1914) right now in fact: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kales_Building

And there is another in the middle of conversion right next door: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Artists_Theatre_Build...

It is hard to generalize, but I would be willing to bet that it is cheaper to convert more modern, recently built or still under-construction office high-rises.

[TMWNN]

> It is hard to generalize, but I would be willing to bet that it is cheaper to convert more modern, recently built or still under-construction office high-rises.

No, it's harder.

As anyone who has visited a doctor's office or somesuch in an older office building knows, they tend to be already divided up into smaller, discrete spaces off hallways, like apartments, and often have individual plumbing into each space. Modern office buildings with big, open floors aren't like that.

[adamjcook]

In some cases, yes, but certainly not in all of them (or a majority of them) here in Detroit (based on photographs taken by urban explorers).

There are many department stores and theaters, for example, that had wide open floors.

Conversions of department stores to residential units is popular in Detroit since we had so many at one time.

The United Artists Theatre high-rise I mentioned has no divided offices from the photos taken by urban explorers: http://www.detroiturbex.com/content/parksandrec/uat/index.ht...

I believe that the Kales Building did not as well.

It is certainly not clear to me that, in many of these Detroit conversations, that just because the space was divided into discrete, smaller spaces that plumbing was run to them.