[zdragnar]

The alternative, as I mentioned in my earlier post, is to demolish the building and start over. That was the cheaper route, according to the contractor who had gotten a job to retrofit an existing office space.

To run new 240v to each apartment, plus water, plus septic, plus whatever additional load bearing requirements there are means you're effectively gutting the building anyway. Then, on top of that, you have to deal with light, fire escapes, etc. which may not be easy to do with the existing building's footprint.

[RC_ITR]

We just fundamentally disagree if your argument is tearing down high-rises is cheaper than retrofitting them. In the history of mankind we've only every voluntarily demolished like 30 buildings higher than 35 stories for that exact reason (and most of them were in situations where new taller highrises replaced them). [0]

I think your contractor is just way off base.

Maybe they're correct for 1-3 story office parks, but there aren't really many of those in SF.

[0]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_tallest_voluntarily_de...