FORT WORTH – The city has been exploring the role office-to-residential conversions could play in addressing the affordable housing crisis.
One example of this approach is downtown’s Historic Electric Building, which was converted into apartments in 1996.
More recent projects include the Oil & Gas/Star-Telegram Building, purchased by Dallas-based Bluelofts in January 2023. The site will house 180 apartment units and amenities, as well as retail on the ground floor.
The new Georgian Oaks project will repurpose the Binyon-O’Keefe Building, former office space for XTO Energy, into 76 multifamily units.
Joe Slezak, CEO of commercial property firm 3L Real Estate, said there are many benefits to these conversions. Rather than building affordable housing from the ground up, which can be expensive, starting with a shell allows these types of projects to be more viable. Plus, a lot of these sites, if historic, can qualify for historic preservation tax credits or low-income housing tax credits that help alleviate costs.
According to Downtown Fort Worth Inc.’s 2022 State of Downtown, the average downtown apartment rent price was about $1,700. Downtown Fort Worth Inc. President Andy Taft said the rental cost of some of the new apartments will be lower than the average.
With plenty of projects underway to give former office spaces downtown a second life, it’s hard to predict how long this trend will continue as buildings come onto the market and economic conditions change.
“This trend comes in waves,” Taft said. “There are a handful of other buildings in downtown that might be candidates in the future, but, for the most part, there’s very little inventory left available for this kind of adaptive reuse.”
For more on this trend, read “A Towering Task: Logistical Challenges of Office-to-Residential Conversions.”