Boston’s One Lincoln office tower, seen from Devonshire Street. A new study shows the largely-vacant building can be partly converted into housing while keeping existing office tenants in place. Photo by James Sanna | Banker & Tradesman Staff
Boston’s commercial building stock ranges from early 20th century masonry buildings to post-1960 towers, the latter characterized by deeper floor plates and aging infrastructure. While this architectural diversity adds richness to the city’s urban fabric, it presents real challenges when considering adaptive reuse.
As office distress and housing shortages become ubiquitous, cities nationwide are exploring conversions to residential use.
In Boston, the focus has remained on lower-rise, pre-WWII office buildings, amid a general perception that larger, post-1960s towers are too complex or costly to repurpose.
Deep floor plates and core configurations are often cited as deal-breakers. However, with careful study and a creative design approach, many towers can offer sustainable, high-impact housing solutions.
Why Study Boston’s One Lincoln?
To explore the potential for converting a post-1960 office tower into housing, we and our colleagues – Adam Weisenberg from Nixon Peabody and Tom Erickson and Ryan Bourque from AECOM Tishman – studied One Lincoln, an existing 75 percent-vacant, 1.1 million-square-foot office building located near South Station.
Our team chose One Lincoln as a conceptual case study because it was in financial distress and was ultimately foreclosed on for approximately 40 percent of its 2022 value. Given where leases remained in place within the tower stack, we focused on the nine-floor mid-rise stack, testing whether a conversion to approximately 180 rental units could be both spatially feasible and financially viable.
Although this column does not discuss financial viability, our case study showed a yield on cost between 7 and 8.25 percent.
The principal design hypothesis was that large floorplates, often viewed as a barrier to residential use, can work with thoughtful design supported by carefully targeted and cost-efficient modifications to existing structure, facade and MEP services.
Our study showed that post-1960 office towers have advantages that pre-WWII Boston buildings lack: foundations and structure that would require little or no modification costs, floor systems that already satisfy fire ratings and can accept new floor penetrations at reasonable cost, MEP base building systems adaptable to residential uses, and exterior walls that may not require substantial retrofitting to meet natural light and ventilation requirements.
While not every floor of every building is a candidate, One Lincoln demonstrated that deep floorplates can support efficient, livable units without excessive intervention.
A study of vacant floors in the mid-rise stack of Boston’s One Lincoln office tower found that the tower’s large floorplate was not an obstacle to carving around 180 new apartments from unused office space. Image courtesy of Nixon Peabody, Gensler, AECOMTishman and Collaborative RED
Design Approach for Deep-Plan Conversions
Jenn Schultz
Assessing the viability of an office-to-residential conversion starts with understanding the building’s physical context, layout and condition.
To streamline early-stage evaluations, Gensler has developed a proprietary building analysis tool that quickly assesses five key criteria: site context, building form, floor plate, exterior envelope and vertical transport/MEP services.
At One Lincoln, the tool yielded an overall compatibility score of 85 percent – well above the 70–75 percent threshold Gensler has identified as warranting further study.
Among the five factors, form and floor plate have the most significant impact on planning efficiency and residential unit yield. While new construction typically targets a residential floor plate depth of 30–35 feet from exterior wall to corridor, depths of 40–50 feet can be made to work with the right planning strategies.
One Lincoln’s rectangular plan with sawtooth corners provided an opportunity for 12 corner units per floor – an unusually high-value configuration.
Mitch Green
The mid-rise stack we studied has its own bank of elevators, ideal for a contained residential zone. The proposed unit mix included studios, one- and two-bedrooms, and several three-bedroom corner units. Larger, regular floor plates also enabled an economic repetition of units and layouts, something that’s rarely possible with pre-war conversions. On-floor amenities – exercise rooms, coworking spaces, pet services, lounges and storage – compensated for lower planning efficiency and contributed immediately accessible communal offerings.
One Lincoln’s 2003 foundation and structure would not require seismic upgrades. Its concrete slabs over metal decking meet residential fire ratings and could be cored easily for new residential drain lines. The all-electric base building HVAC system could be adapted to serve fan coils for each unit, with hot water supplied by individual all-electric water heaters – now common in residential towers. Toilet and kitchen exhausts could be routed vertically to fans installed above or below, while fresh air to each apartment could be supplied by floor-by-floor ducted distribution.
Todd Dundon
NYC’s Case Study in Deep-Plan Conversion
While we used One Lincoln in Boston as a conceptual case study, Pearl House is a successful office-to-residential conversion of a 480,000-square-foot tower in Lower Manhattan made real.
The transformation into 588 apartments and 30,000-plus square feet of amenities addressed familiar challenges: deep floor plates, outdated systems.
To transform the floor plate, three blind shafts were introduced by removing structural bays at the deepest parts of the plan. The associated zoning floor area was reallocated to add five new floors at the top of the building and convert a former double-height mechanical floor into two new residential floors.
Architects at Gensler and developers at Vanbarton Group turned a New York City office tower into Pearl House, a 588-unit apartment building. The key tool: carving blind spaces out of the building’s center and reallocating that floor area to a vertical addition. Photo by Robert Deitchler | Courtesy of Gensler
This was enabled by replacing the centralized HVAC system with efficient, unit-controlled water-source heat pumps.
The original curtain wall was retained and upgraded with better insulation and operable double-pane windows, enabling the building to surpass New York City’s Local Law 97 greenhouse gas targets and reduce annual emissions from 5,000 to just over 1,400 metric tons of carbon dioxide. Compared to new construction, the conversion saved an estimated 20,000–25,000 metric tons of embodied carbon.
Leasing was phased over 12 months, reaching over 90 percent occupancy by completion. Today, the building is nearly 100 percent leased – demonstrating strong market demand for sustainable, well-located housing created through adaptive reuse.
Mark Mascia
Rethinking What’s Possible
Office-to-residential conversion has emerged as a credible, scalable response to the dual pressures of housing demand and office vacancies.
With the office landscape permanently changed, and Boston facing a persistent housing shortage, it’s time to shift the narrative. Large, underutilized office towers – once dismissed as too complex or costly to convert – can, in fact, become viable and vibrant housing through thoughtful design and strategic intervention.
Success lies not only in metrics but in mindset. Recognizing the true potential of these conversions requires a departure from conventional thinking and an embrace of creativity, flexibility and sustainability.
While not every building will qualify, those that do offer a rare opportunity to reshape the urban fabric – revitalizing neighborhoods, reducing carbon impact and delivering much-needed housing at scale – while addressing office market distress.
Jenn Schultz is a partner and leader of the nationwide real estate development team at Boston law firm Nixon Peabody. Mitch Green is a senior vice president at design and engineering firm AECOM Tishman. Todd Dundon is a principal at architecture firm Gensler’s Boston office. Mark Mascia is a partner at real estate development consultancy Collaborative RED.
