The Trouble with Landmarks – Oct. 13, 2025
Longtime fixtures on their cities’ skylines, historic office towers may lack tenants yet resist efforts to convert them to other uses
Connect CRE recently reported on a surge in office-to-residential conversions in Manhattan, with the square footage of these projects year-to-date already more than triple the long-term annual average. In New York and other cities across the U.S., we have written about numerous specific examples of the conversion trend over the past several months.
Frequently, these properties are either older or architecturally undistinguished Class B stock of more recent vintage. As office properties, few if any would-be occupiers would miss them. But what about office towers that would be missed—but can’t find tenants?
That’s the dilemma playing out in downtown CBDs of smaller and larger cities across the U.S. Take the Superman Building at 111 Westminster St. in Providence, RI. Having gotten its nickname for its resemblance to the fictional headquarters of the Daily Planet, it has long been a mainstay of the city’s skyline. Yet it’s been vacant since 2013.
“This is the tallest building in the city,” Providence Mayor Brett Smiley told the Wall Street Journal. “It’s on every postcard. And it’s empty. That has a psychic effect.”
The property’s owner, developer David Sweetser, finally came up with a solution to this longstanding problem. He assembled financing for a residential conversion of the 26-story tower and secured hard-won city approval for the plan. But he passed away this summer, leaving the Superman Building’s future in limbo once again, the WSJ reported.
Along both coasts and in the central U.S., there are other such downtown fixtures, many born in the early 20th century. The WSJ listed a few of them: The Chrysler Building in New York. Times Mirror Square in Los Angeles. Renaissance Center in Detroit. The LaSalle Street corridor in Chicago. All are facing a conundrum that the WSJ put this way: “What do you do when your most prominent landmark is too historic to tear down, yet too costly to save?”
It’s a broad question with site-specific answers, and the WSJ noted that there have been some success stories. The upper floors of the Woolworth Building in Lower Manhattan were converted to high-end residential condominiums. Landmarked office towers in Philadelphia and Minneapolis now operate as hotels.
Other landmark revamps haven’t closed the loop yet, for various reasons. A planned overhaul of the Chrysler Building in Midtown Manhattan ran into the limitations imposed by landmark protections and a collapse of the office market during the pandemic. In LA, Vancouver-based Onni Group won city approval in 2021 to create two towers in Times Mirror Square, which includes several landmarked buildings. Yet the project hasn’t moved forward partly because inflation has driven costs higher, Onni chief of staff Duncan Wlodarczak told the WSJ. “Given market conditions, we’ve put that, among other projects, on hold,” he said.
Ironically, the high profile of downtown landmarks, which ought to be a marketing hook for any conversion projects, doesn’t offer much protection against the ravages of time. The WSJ noted that once vacancies pass a certain threshold, the problems tend to accelerate. Retail tenants may move out, for example. High vacancies make conversion a tough sell to lenders, unless the developer acquires the property at a very low basis.
Even if a landmarked property lends itself to conversion, “getting from blueprint to reality is a long and treacherous road in many places, particularly with inflation and high interest rates driving costs higher,” wrote the WSJ’s Peter Grant. “Often, conversion projects don’t pencil out unless governments provide generous subsidies.”
Those subsidies may be elusive. A plan to overhaul Detroit’s seven-building Renaissance Center, whose 1970s vintage makes it a relative youngster among landmarked office properties, has faced opposition over its request for public support. “We have other needs,” Michigan House Speaker Matt Hall told Grant. “We need to invest in roads and healthcare and public safety.”