ASKING THE IMPORTANT QUESTIONS: Can Turning Office Towers Into Apartments Save Downtowns? “Early in the conversion process, Berman’s construction team removed the fluorescent-tube lighting and the dropped PVC ceilings. Then workers knocked down the drywall that had once delineated corner offices, windowless offices, rest rooms, mop closets. “We do a very thorough gut renovation,” Berman told me. “We literally take everything out.” At 55 Broad, the result was nearly four hundred thousand square feet of raw space, with a potential to generate more than thirty million dollars in rental income annually. But Berman still had a major puzzle to solve: If no one wanted to work in a glum, out-of-date building, why would anyone want to live there?”

Conversions are expensive, time-consuming, and by themselves don’t do anything to address the policy decisions driving people away from Democrat-run urban centers.