Laurence Caudle talks office-to-residential conversions on Bisnow panel

Laurence Caudle, AIA, second from left

On Thursday, March 19, at The Westin in downtown Washington, DC, our Senior Principal and Director of Housing, Laurence Caudle, AIA, spoke on a panel at Bisnow‘s DMV Office Repositioning, Conversions and Creative Reuse Summit.

Laurence specifically offered insights into aligning design and development strategies to make conversion and reuse projects both feasible and compelling to investors.

“It’s all about having a strong, working relationship with the client to make sure these things pencil.”

“We look at the exterior skin to see if we have to re-skin or if we can just do something to erase the memory of an office building,” said Laurence regarding transforming underutilized office assets into residential units. “We’re really trying to help the client get to a place to understand how much we have to do from a design perspective to make it feel like it’s home. We always try to find something existing to work with when it comes to the facades. It’s all about having a strong, working relationship with the client to make sure these things pencil.”

Not far from where the summit was held is our latest office-to-residential conversion: 1125 15th Street NW. Dubbed the ‘goldilocks’ project, we transformed an outdated office building into 260 multifamily units. Ample tenant storage was able to be incorporated, along with a generous rooftop and penthouse amenities. Select floors were also combined to create a two-story breakout coworking space.

Check out our other office-to-residential conversion projects.