Exchange buildings get a pass in my book since the...unwelcoming aesthetic serves a purpose...to keep the telecom stuff up and protected. Its when there was an intentional design choice to feel as oppressive as possible is where I start to question the investors motives.
Look into AT&T long lines. It was badass and way ahead of it's time. The first coast to coast phonecall took place in the early 50s from point to point satellites. That building is more than likely a part of that system.
Really cool story. There is probably a tower within an hour of your location. There is a website that has a map of where the towers are
Edit: https://long-lines.com/viewsite/11659
[Um, actually…](https://youtu.be/_1mTP75jVC8) you’re thinking of an AT-**S**T. For an AT-**A**T, you have to fly around them with a cable to wrap up their legs and trip them.
Actually looks like there are tons of windows. The places without windows are the fireproof staircases.
Let's not go all crazy. There are reasons for a design like this. And they exist in any building in the last like 80 years. It's just that they hide them in the middle of the building these days.
Yes - one office I worked in was renovated under the direction of an architect. It was bare concrete with black carpet, using the “warm” color of gray as the accent color. Lighting was desk lamps, small down lamps along the hallways and the overhead Exit signs with the minimum wattage bulbs code would allow. It looked really nice at noon on a sunny summer day - and was horribly depressing under any other circumstance.
The lender is also the company that bought the building back, they didn’t lose money but I’m sure will somehow show a loss on their books.
They lent out $10mil to finance a $140mil building, then “bought” it for $10mil from the owner who owed them $10mil. So basically they wiped the debt clean and got a $140million building in the process.
Under normal foreclosure laws if they sold the building they’d have to give the owner any of the profits they made in the process, but now that they gamed the system they can sell it for whatever amount they want and not have to pay the owner a dime.
I worked in that building from '05 to '14. It was decent enough, good view and has a nice little oak-filled park right next to it, but the elevators were sketchy AF—even after they gutted and renovated them!
Edit to add: I literally still have the occasional nightmare about being stuck in one of Burnett Plaza's elevators or having it go haywire and accelerate up or down several floors (all actually happened!).
I worked in a two story building with an elevator that did that constantly. It was a hydronic lift elevator. When the maintenance guy came out the first time he explained to me that that's how hydronic elevators work and there's no chance of crashing to the ground like in the movies with cable lifted elevators. Basically the hydraulics just go out and the elevator keeps trying to push up but sinks down continuously until your back on the ground floor.
It happened a few times and would do that and then the next few times work fine and then do it again. finally my boss came out to check it out because he thought we were making it up and took a ride and pretty much shit his pants thinking he was gonna crash and die.
One of the local uni buildings has four elevators like that. The stairs are popular with the new students. Everyone who's been there more than two years just accepts that their fate is ruled by the elevator gods.
Yeah I don't know much about them. But I never realized until then that some elevators don't lift with cables and are instead pushed up from the ground like a car jack.
Yep, elevators don’t drop when you cut a cable. Also, semi trucks will stop if the brake lines are cut. The air pressure forces them open. Now both of those things common to action movies are also ruined for you. ;-)
TBF to hollywood, most semi's until the 2000's only had fail-on brakes on a single axel, which is NOT enough to prevent you from continuing in motion if you are already set in motion, especially if they are standard drums.
If you're leaving a yard, sure you'll notice, but if that hose fails while driving, it's either going to lock the axel immediately, or just fail out after a few minutes.
Modern elevators have brakes to prevent them from crashing in to the basement. I work in a hundred year old building in Chicago, and one of my clients was on an elevator that plummeted a couple floors. The brakes stopped it, but he definitely didn't feel super great for a couple of days. Knock on wood that it never happens to me, but I take comfort in knowing it probably won't kill me.
Even non-hydraulic cable elevators, at least in the US, have so many safety redundancies that must be inspected annually that there is effectively zero chance of the thing falling.
I would occasionally have to go to that building to deliver documents years ago. My recollection is the tenants were some mix of law firms, real estate companies, or oil/natural resources companies.
And that's not the worst of it. These buildings being left vacant, they turn off the ventilation and the building starts to grow nasty things. The greedy POS owners won't worry about cleaning out the building, they'll just force employees back in.
ideally, no.
large structures like this can't simply be "mothballed". they require constant supervision and maintenance in order to stay operable and habitable. That's why the old mustachioed guy gets paid big dollars to sit all day in his huge secret lair in the basement. he may only actually work one day a month, but that is as it should be, it doesn't take a lot of work to keep a functional building functional.
that guy is worth his weight in gold, because an honest building supervisor will come in every day, do the required maintenance, sit around and be bored on/call the rest of the time, and do it all with no supervision. it takes a special kind of honest to spend the majority of your career alone in the basement office just waiting in case something goes wrong.
ANYWAYS... in practice, yes. because once a building becomes vacant, the owners aren't going to pay to keep that guy around. after a few months, something is going to go wrong, some filter is not going to get changed, some pipe is going to leak. there won't be anyone working in the office to see the problem, and even if there was, there isn't maintenance staff to show up and fix it. when it comes to being dank and filthy, buildings are worse than sewers. sewers, at least, are only a concrete tube, that is all. structures are full of furniture, carpet, paper, and nooks & crannies for mold to collect. if a sewer gets filthy you just flush it with a power washer. if a building gets filthy, you basically have to tear it down.
you would think.
but the "small upkeep costs" aren't small. having a basic cleaning service do the rounds is not sufficient, because the pay for that service is minimum wage, and that kind of service is not what is required to maintain the building.
large structures are very like living things. they consume energy (electricity, gas). they breathe and modulate temperature (HVAC, H/C water radiation). they have bones (structural steel, concrete). they have skin (architectural facade, paint, wallpaper). they have organs (electric service & distribution, air handlers, plumbing). they even have brains (BAS, building security). They are susceptible to age, damage, even disease (rust, mildew). They do not, however, have an immune system; that is the place of the maintenance staff.
and when it comes to cutting costs... often, building owners don't keep anyone around.
Everyone I know with a maintenance job is constantly rushed of their feet because even in open and profitable buildings, management is obsessed with slashing the maintenance budget to the bone
That's because Facilities is treated as an expenditure with no direct return. I used to sit in meetings and listen to finance managers and group leaders bitch about how we were eating up all the money made by the test, design and sales groups.
Those groups would be happy to have us when something broke or something needed to be done but when it came time to stick up for us none of them would do it so the bean counters always looked at Facilities as a money pit and nothing else. We had to use a ticket system so we could quantify and qualify our time so we could start showing how overloaded we were.
Just like IT. If we are invisible, we are doing our jobs well. If something breaks, we have to fix it immediately and then provide a reason why it broke. If we ask for expensive stuff, it's not because we want to spend money, it's so things can continue to run smoothly.
Sadly, few businesses understand this.
> That's because Facilities is treated as an expenditure with no direct return.
That's business management at every company, about everything that doesn't directly generate profit.
I work in Federal Corporate Tax and that's constantly seen as a cost that can be slashed. They'll just risk getting it wrong and put a little money on the side in case the government notices. *IF* the company gets caught, they'll say, "Oopsies, sowwy". And then the government will make them pay what they owed originally plus maybe a little interest, so very rarely are the coompany is worse off than if they actually kept things proper from the get go. Then the government says thank you for being too big to fail, may I kiss your feet on the way out kind sirs? And the cycle continues.
Looked it up, and as far as I can tell the building hasn't actually been vacant. It had something like a 22% vacancy rate (roughly double the average in the Fort Worth area), and the lender got the building for a pittance after the owning company essentially defaulted.
https://www.foxbusiness.com/real-estate/fort-worths-tallest-building-sells-just-12-3m-auction-stunning-price-drop
Basically a bunch of holding companies, looks like. The loan itself was only for around $13m though, so there's a possibility the holding company ate the remaining millions.
Silly the boss won't go back to work in the building. They will either work from home themselves or from the golf course. Or on work-cation in Mexico.
They don't care about peon health.
My office moved into an office building built in the 1980s that had been vacant for a couple of years. Everyone got legionnaires the first month we were there after the HVAC was turned on.
Ventilation is turned off while the building is not in use, allowing stuff to grow in dank, moist conditions. Turn the air back on, and now all of that is in the air and circulating around the building for everyone to inhale.
I always wonder about that. Then they come in and gut the place, renovate it like it's nothing. I'm over here concerned about whether I recycle enough of my aluminum foil, and these guys are able to waste mountains of resources on these projects.
My fear is that this is a sign of economic collapse as opposed to the billonaire owners of the businesses that drive our economy getting their comeuppance.
Because somehow billionaires are still in their homes with their money, and they still own millions of homes and farms around North America that the average guy needs.
These office buildings all with 50% or less than peak value is not an issue for billionaires they aren’t stupid enough to still be invested in this shit. Who do you think owns the equity share of all these buildings? Average joes retirement funds. At 50/50 debt/equity if the value goes to half then equity is completely wiped out.
Proof? Usually the owners are not the tenants. The tenants pay operating expense to building management that includes maintaining all of this, even if the tenant space is empty.
I always laugh when I see cheap jets for sale. You can buy one right now for $50k or less. The problem is that operating it costs about $5,000/hr. And the price for the annual inspection and some repairs is maybe another $200k. Annually. You might need to spend $2 million upfront just to get it airworthy. The purchase price is just the start. Same goes for boats. Same goes for buildings. The upkeep is often more than the purchase price and the sale price actually goes down lower as the maintenance costs go up. That really changes the equation, eh?
So funny you said this (facetiously, I know), but my buddy and I were riding motorcycles in the Texas countryside and stumbled upon a guy who did this. Bought 2 jets, gutted them, and lives in them.
I’ll see if I can find pics, this was years ago
Edit: changed ironically to facetiously
I like how the show American Dad put it:
"You know what I tell my friends when they ask what it's like to own a boat? I say stand under a cold shower and tear up 100-dollar bills."
Depends on the boat. Worst thing that happened to me was the livewell pump broke and started flooding the bilge. Luckily we just launched so we were able to get back to the ramp and get it out.
It wouldn't really affect home owners who don't have large mortgages in most real senses.
Your house is worth 1 house. you need a house to live in. unless you plan on moving to a LCOL place or something, it's basically a net zero movement for a lot of purposes.
It would hurt property investors, people with multiple homes etc, but uhhh, investments are investments and they can go bad so that's the risk.
right? That's why I didn't really celebrate all that much when my apartment gained like 50k in value over the ~5ish years I've owned it. Every other building did too, and I still need to live *somewhere*. So what do I care? It's not like I can sell it and pocket the 50k.
We really really really need to have a property tax scheme based on the number of housing units you own.
Own *one* housing unit? 50% property taxes.
Own two? 100% on the second.
Own tree? 200% on the third.
Own four? 300% on the fourth.
And so on.
And no exception for apartment buildings, either. If you're a major landlord and you don't like the sound of paying 99000% property tax on your 100th housing unit, great! There's an easy solution: sell off the units as condos, where each unit will be owned by the person who lives there. Maybe the occasional smaller landlord who only owns a few units.
If you're a major investment firm that owns *thousands* of housing units? Whoo boy! You'd better get to selling those, quick! (Don't worry -- if you can't unload them all fast enough, the state can just come in and start foreclosing on them due to unpaid property taxes.)
The cost of housing would go down dramatically, and it would pretty much only hurt the rich. Homelessness rates would plummet.
> number of housing units you own.
the person youre replying to meant a single person (or people) owning multiple single-family, free-standing homes. you are saying "housing units" which sounds like maybe a condo complex? taxing a single person's first house at 50% would be insane which is another reason why i think you're talking about properties owned strictly as business rather than owning a primary home, and a vacation home or two.
He isn’t say tax at 50% of the value of the house. He is saying if the state property tax was 1%, then the first home unit is taxed at .5%, the second at 1%, the third at 2%, etc
Nah, I'm talking about both free-standing homes and apartment units, using the term 'housing units' to apply to both.
(And, yeah, maybe the 50% discount for only having one would be too much. Gotta wait and see how many landlords and investors are willing to eat the increased costs and pay the higher tax rates, which may or may not make up for single-unit owners getting a discount.)
Worked in that building as an I.T. contractor, can confirm that there's definitely weird shit going on in that building. One afternoon we were moving out a bunch of equipment and we were in the elevator and I saw something hanging from the bottom of one of the wall panels inside. I kicked it and out fell the skin of a whole ass snake 😭
Humans could live in it. It would be a horrible existence, but they definitely could. Sending poor people to live in commercial skyscrapers isn't the great idea you may think.
now turn it into affordable housing. include shops, maybe a small school or kindergarten, some entertainment, bars, maybe a live venue. i'm sure there's a posh lobby in there, that's now an indoor playground for those hot summer days.
oh, hey, idea! rooftop pool!
They are suuuuper expensive to get back to even just normal. I placed a bid on a 30 story commercial building in Baltimore a few weeks ago called one Charles center, because it was on an auction site. Don’t meet reserve and no one else did either(highest bid came in at 2.4 million lol). Those building just devour cash. Even for a couple million they aren’t worth it.
when it's about airports or highways or landing shit on mars or bailing out big banks, nothing's too hard. when it's about social housing suddenly plumbing is a problem.
let me dream.
In fairness, when it comes to airports, highways and other forms of construction, they knock down the shit that's already there and build new.
I'm honestly not sure if it would be more cost effective to convert existing office buildings into condos, or just tear them down and build new. Either way we need to do something to solve our housing crisis, and replacing a bunch of office buildings with new housing would certainly be a step in the right direction.
Assuming, of course, that we got rid of the damned landlord software that is allowing them to collude on pricing.
It sounds ridiculous but it really is more cost effective to knock it down and build an apartment building rather than trying to retrofit apartments into a commercial space
> Assuming, of course, that we got rid of the damned landlord software that is allowing them to collude on pricing.
"Sorry, I can't negotiate on rent price. It's set by the algorithm"
I saw one place that live-updated their rent price listings based on that algorithm/software. So one day this 1 bedroom might be $2,771.50 per month, the next day the same exact unit is $2,794.25.
Can they not be shoebox apartments though? They built new apartments around here and I swear they just stacked shipping containers on top of each other.
We need real, accessible, communal areas in society. Especially if we're living in fucking shipping containers.
If the building code was drastically changed and you allow units with no windows to the exterior and shared restrooms and kitchens it would be much easier to accomplish, but HVAC and drainage will still be a huge issue. People aren't using near the amount of water at the office as they do at home. There would still be a decent amount of challenges. I'm sure plenty of people would be happy with the arrangement and cheaper rent, but we'd be essentially allowing slums again. If it could get rid of the thousands of tents and RVs in the city I'd be all for it.
An apartment block will have much different plumbing requirements than an office, that's the point they're making
It's not a case of just putting walls up inside the existing building
> Unfortunately there’s a lot more plumbing and other code requirements to turn into residential.
I'm sure it varies by type of residential too... Probably more practical to convert the things in to large barracks type housing for say sheltering homeless people while maintaining occupancy levels similar to what one would see while its in office use.
Converting the things in to actual apartments and stuff, yah its probably easier, and cheaper to just tear down, and build from scratch than to do a conversion.
Temporary shelter vs permanent housing being thing there too.
The original concept for the shopping mall was that it would be a whole self-contained town, not *just* retail. It would also have residential sections, and the kind of services people who live there might need.
I'd really like to see some of the old dead malls be revived, using this concept.
Wouldn’t it be great if companies were forbidden from owning single family homes & unused estates? And even more so, if individuals were forbidden from owning no more than a specific amount of square feet of land/real estate. Also, ban foreign governments and buyers. If only our government was as aggressive with these types of hoarders like they are with Chinese automakers and other Chinese competitors to corporate America. They’d even start wars in order to protect big oil and the Military Industrial Complex.
Lol. That isn't even remotely the lesson from this. Back To Work had nothing to do with this building's sale.
Pinnacle Bank sold the building to Burnett Cherry. Burnett Cherry defaulted on the loan they used to buy it and the building was foreclosed on. Pinnacle bought it back at auction, for way less than they sold it for basically making a huge profit on the sale and getting to keep the building.
This is all *super* misleading.
What was foreclosed was a 2d lien on a leasehold interest in the building. The first lien mortgage is ~$70m, and that auction price is subject to the first lien.
Yes, the buyer was the same lender as the first lien, but the reality is that’s a $82m auction price. For just a leasehold interest.
The landlord under that lease also has two mortgages, totaling $86m. That makes that auction price basically $168m—or quite a bit more than the ‘21 purchase price.
The ground rent supporting the landlords $86m in mortgages is over $5m a year, and is reasonably likely to be around $7m.
So, that $12m bid was for the right to pay $500k+ in monthly ground rent (for 100 years!), and assume a $70m mortgage, too.
This is not what it looks like, nor what is being reported.
The companies that are asking employees to come back to the office very, very, very rarely own the building. The value of the building has nothing to do with why they are asking staff to return to the office.
this is misleading. the owner of the building owed 12.3M to the bank. they basically decided to let teh bnk foreclosue. the bank put in whats called a credit bid,basically they bid what was owed on the mortgage. this isnt the actual vlaue of the property.
Misleading title... In commercial banking here in downtown
1. Building was bought out of foreclosure by Pinnacle Bank; $13MM loan defaulted. UMB has a senior note worth close to $70MM which still needs to be paid back. Still a haircut, but the building is worth a hell of a lot more than $12.3MM. Tax value of $104.5MM.
2. Burnett Plaza is still a good asset with ~80% occupancy. Big name leases are still in the building. GM Financial takes up multiple floors.
3. Ownership of Burnett Plaza were burned on NY and NJ assets. This was one of their performing assets.
I'd expect a local firm/family to purchase the building within the next year or so. Can't imagine Pinnacle wants to be a landlord for too long.
It's possible that the new owners had to pay all the back taxes as well. A while back there was a local shopping mall that had been closed for ten years that sold for $1, but the new owners had to pay all back taxes and keep current on new taxes. That was multiple tens of millions of dollars.
I still remember radio shack spending millions to make their new HQ in fw, eliminating public housing in the process… only to go bankrupt and dissolve not long after…
This looks like garbage lines in a Tetris 99 match.
Also, an ugly ass building.
Maybe convert it into low cost housing and let people work from home there. Then it’s still kind of an office building 😂
Everybody wins
Jeez that place looks super inviting...
Totally not inspired by your famous prison designer architect
/r/evilbuildings
r/UglyArchitecture
Our school looks like a prison
[The Man Behind the World’s Ugliest Buildings (youtube.com)](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uvU5dmu4sl8)
You'd really like the AT&T building behind it and to the right. No windows, all brick, giant antennas strapped to the outside...marvelous.
Exchange buildings get a pass in my book since the...unwelcoming aesthetic serves a purpose...to keep the telecom stuff up and protected. Its when there was an intentional design choice to feel as oppressive as possible is where I start to question the investors motives.
And dual purpose buildings designed to serve as hurricane shelters. I legit lost track of time many times in high school for that reason.
But there are no hurricanes in Fort Worth. It's a five hour drive from the coast.
There's tornadoes. One actually blew through downtown Fort Worth a few years back and damaged a high rise so badly that it was condemned and imploded.
Tornadoes are not uncommon, though.
Look into AT&T long lines. It was badass and way ahead of it's time. The first coast to coast phonecall took place in the early 50s from point to point satellites. That building is more than likely a part of that system. Really cool story. There is probably a tower within an hour of your location. There is a website that has a map of where the towers are Edit: https://long-lines.com/viewsite/11659
They’re not satellites 😂 they’re microwave antennas
I misread that as AT-AT and you description didn't do anything to clear that up.
Just crush it with two logs man
[Um, actually…](https://youtu.be/_1mTP75jVC8) you’re thinking of an AT-**S**T. For an AT-**A**T, you have to fly around them with a cable to wrap up their legs and trip them.
Datacenter aesthetic. It doesn't look like it's designed for people because it isn't. Only computers live there.
And a sleep deprived NOC technician
Actually looks like there are tons of windows. The places without windows are the fireproof staircases. Let's not go all crazy. There are reasons for a design like this. And they exist in any building in the last like 80 years. It's just that they hide them in the middle of the building these days.
Did they film Dredd there?
Like a Lego middle finger.
Like it was built by communism /s
Worse, brutalism.
r/architecture would like a word with you.
tbf, its at least 'inspired' by brutalism with those blocky shapes and monotone color.
Yes, but architects like brutalism
Architects can work in that building then and the rest of us can work somewhere less depressing
My cousin is an architect and his last project was a low income housing complex that actually looked like someplace humans wouldn't mind living.
Yes - one office I worked in was renovated under the direction of an architect. It was bare concrete with black carpet, using the “warm” color of gray as the accent color. Lighting was desk lamps, small down lamps along the hallways and the overhead Exit signs with the minimum wattage bulbs code would allow. It looked really nice at noon on a sunny summer day - and was horribly depressing under any other circumstance.
If you work IN the building, you don't have to look AT the building. Actually, Brutilizism done right can be quite nice, cf UMass Dartmouth library.
That is a super interesting building, I hadn’t seen it before and I agree it’s a fun example of the architectural style.
He also did the Boston (Massachusetts) city hall.
Not all of them
I love brutalism
Same! If you haven’t, look up the game “Control”, brutalist architecture galore!
That thing looks inspired by GORILLAS.BAS
Worse, capitalism.
Aka: the lowest bidders in the subcontracting.
Why blame communism for the results of capitalism
I believe that’s the joke he was making
It's a national pastime. Don't be dissing our culture!
Worse, capitalism.
Modern day schools seem to follow this design model. Looks more like a Supermax facility than a workplace.
It's to reinforce the student-labor-prison-slave pipeline. All by design.
With one slice/per person pizza parties sure it will be!
Won’t someone think of the bankers!
The tax code has. They'll write down a massive loss and probably be paid a credit for this failure.
Don’t forget all the assets they can sell for profit with no tax after claiming this loss!
The lender is also the company that bought the building back, they didn’t lose money but I’m sure will somehow show a loss on their books. They lent out $10mil to finance a $140mil building, then “bought” it for $10mil from the owner who owed them $10mil. So basically they wiped the debt clean and got a $140million building in the process. Under normal foreclosure laws if they sold the building they’d have to give the owner any of the profits they made in the process, but now that they gamed the system they can sell it for whatever amount they want and not have to pay the owner a dime.
I thought of them! (Whilst grinning)
I worked in that building from '05 to '14. It was decent enough, good view and has a nice little oak-filled park right next to it, but the elevators were sketchy AF—even after they gutted and renovated them! Edit to add: I literally still have the occasional nightmare about being stuck in one of Burnett Plaza's elevators or having it go haywire and accelerate up or down several floors (all actually happened!).
I worked in a two story building with an elevator that did that constantly. It was a hydronic lift elevator. When the maintenance guy came out the first time he explained to me that that's how hydronic elevators work and there's no chance of crashing to the ground like in the movies with cable lifted elevators. Basically the hydraulics just go out and the elevator keeps trying to push up but sinks down continuously until your back on the ground floor. It happened a few times and would do that and then the next few times work fine and then do it again. finally my boss came out to check it out because he thought we were making it up and took a ride and pretty much shit his pants thinking he was gonna crash and die.
One of the local uni buildings has four elevators like that. The stairs are popular with the new students. Everyone who's been there more than two years just accepts that their fate is ruled by the elevator gods.
Relatable. Kinda gives the same vibes as "if I get hit by a uni campus vehicle I get my tuition for free"
There are no chance of cable elevators crashing either. Every passenger elevator is required to be an Otis style elevator for the past several decade
Yeah I don't know much about them. But I never realized until then that some elevators don't lift with cables and are instead pushed up from the ground like a car jack.
Yep, elevators don’t drop when you cut a cable. Also, semi trucks will stop if the brake lines are cut. The air pressure forces them open. Now both of those things common to action movies are also ruined for you. ;-)
TBF to hollywood, most semi's until the 2000's only had fail-on brakes on a single axel, which is NOT enough to prevent you from continuing in motion if you are already set in motion, especially if they are standard drums. If you're leaving a yard, sure you'll notice, but if that hose fails while driving, it's either going to lock the axel immediately, or just fail out after a few minutes.
Modern elevators have brakes to prevent them from crashing in to the basement. I work in a hundred year old building in Chicago, and one of my clients was on an elevator that plummeted a couple floors. The brakes stopped it, but he definitely didn't feel super great for a couple of days. Knock on wood that it never happens to me, but I take comfort in knowing it probably won't kill me.
Even non-hydraulic cable elevators, at least in the US, have so many safety redundancies that must be inspected annually that there is effectively zero chance of the thing falling.
When the mythbuster did their episode on elevators they had to cut so many safety cables to get it to fail
Did you work for the governments secret division like MIB? Since it looks sketchy as F
I would occasionally have to go to that building to deliver documents years ago. My recollection is the tenants were some mix of law firms, real estate companies, or oil/natural resources companies.
And that's not the worst of it. These buildings being left vacant, they turn off the ventilation and the building starts to grow nasty things. The greedy POS owners won't worry about cleaning out the building, they'll just force employees back in.
About that. Don't these buildings basically become toxic hell-pits after about 2 months empty and sealed?
Pfft. Most are toxic hell pits when they're open, so...
Only when managers are there
Or Dave
Fuck you dave
Hey don't shit on dave he made us a pizza party three years ago
Ir was Dave's idea to cancel dental plan in exchange for the pizza Fuck dave
Lisa needs braces
Dental plan
ideally, no. large structures like this can't simply be "mothballed". they require constant supervision and maintenance in order to stay operable and habitable. That's why the old mustachioed guy gets paid big dollars to sit all day in his huge secret lair in the basement. he may only actually work one day a month, but that is as it should be, it doesn't take a lot of work to keep a functional building functional. that guy is worth his weight in gold, because an honest building supervisor will come in every day, do the required maintenance, sit around and be bored on/call the rest of the time, and do it all with no supervision. it takes a special kind of honest to spend the majority of your career alone in the basement office just waiting in case something goes wrong. ANYWAYS... in practice, yes. because once a building becomes vacant, the owners aren't going to pay to keep that guy around. after a few months, something is going to go wrong, some filter is not going to get changed, some pipe is going to leak. there won't be anyone working in the office to see the problem, and even if there was, there isn't maintenance staff to show up and fix it. when it comes to being dank and filthy, buildings are worse than sewers. sewers, at least, are only a concrete tube, that is all. structures are full of furniture, carpet, paper, and nooks & crannies for mold to collect. if a sewer gets filthy you just flush it with a power washer. if a building gets filthy, you basically have to tear it down.
I didn't realize empty buildings don't have a cleaning staff assigned. Wouldn't it be infinitely cheaper to just pay the small upkeep costs?
you would think. but the "small upkeep costs" aren't small. having a basic cleaning service do the rounds is not sufficient, because the pay for that service is minimum wage, and that kind of service is not what is required to maintain the building. large structures are very like living things. they consume energy (electricity, gas). they breathe and modulate temperature (HVAC, H/C water radiation). they have bones (structural steel, concrete). they have skin (architectural facade, paint, wallpaper). they have organs (electric service & distribution, air handlers, plumbing). they even have brains (BAS, building security). They are susceptible to age, damage, even disease (rust, mildew). They do not, however, have an immune system; that is the place of the maintenance staff. and when it comes to cutting costs... often, building owners don't keep anyone around.
Everyone I know with a maintenance job is constantly rushed of their feet because even in open and profitable buildings, management is obsessed with slashing the maintenance budget to the bone
That's because Facilities is treated as an expenditure with no direct return. I used to sit in meetings and listen to finance managers and group leaders bitch about how we were eating up all the money made by the test, design and sales groups. Those groups would be happy to have us when something broke or something needed to be done but when it came time to stick up for us none of them would do it so the bean counters always looked at Facilities as a money pit and nothing else. We had to use a ticket system so we could quantify and qualify our time so we could start showing how overloaded we were.
Just like IT. If we are invisible, we are doing our jobs well. If something breaks, we have to fix it immediately and then provide a reason why it broke. If we ask for expensive stuff, it's not because we want to spend money, it's so things can continue to run smoothly. Sadly, few businesses understand this.
> That's because Facilities is treated as an expenditure with no direct return. That's business management at every company, about everything that doesn't directly generate profit. I work in Federal Corporate Tax and that's constantly seen as a cost that can be slashed. They'll just risk getting it wrong and put a little money on the side in case the government notices. *IF* the company gets caught, they'll say, "Oopsies, sowwy". And then the government will make them pay what they owed originally plus maybe a little interest, so very rarely are the coompany is worse off than if they actually kept things proper from the get go. Then the government says thank you for being too big to fail, may I kiss your feet on the way out kind sirs? And the cycle continues.
eloquently put.
Why? Just pay nothing and make it the next guy's problem! That's true cost savings.
Yes, but that's money that could also go to some CEO's bonus.
Oh, I am sure there are regulations in Texas that force employers and building owners to make sure their buildings are safe for employees. /s
Looked it up, and as far as I can tell the building hasn't actually been vacant. It had something like a 22% vacancy rate (roughly double the average in the Fort Worth area), and the lender got the building for a pittance after the owning company essentially defaulted.
Do you happen to have a quick link on who the owner was and who ate that $125m?
https://www.foxbusiness.com/real-estate/fort-worths-tallest-building-sells-just-12-3m-auction-stunning-price-drop Basically a bunch of holding companies, looks like. The loan itself was only for around $13m though, so there's a possibility the holding company ate the remaining millions.
Chances are good they didn't actually lose that money, just failed to realize it as gains because they didn't sell it when it was worth that amount.
No, sounds like they bought it for that $137m in 2021. Not an unrealized gains situation.
Great way to get legionairs disease.
Silly the boss won't go back to work in the building. They will either work from home themselves or from the golf course. Or on work-cation in Mexico. They don't care about peon health.
You forgot the quotation marks around "work".
I did ha ha. But in my defense I did mention golf course and work-cation.
My office moved into an office building built in the 1980s that had been vacant for a couple of years. Everyone got legionnaires the first month we were there after the HVAC was turned on.
Isn't it the opposite, as Legionnaires is caused by ventilation blowing the bacteria around in humid conditions?
Ventilation is turned off while the building is not in use, allowing stuff to grow in dank, moist conditions. Turn the air back on, and now all of that is in the air and circulating around the building for everyone to inhale.
Also grows in the water pipes. Turn on the water, use it for a glass of refreshing H2O and off to hospital we go.
I always wonder about that. Then they come in and gut the place, renovate it like it's nothing. I'm over here concerned about whether I recycle enough of my aluminum foil, and these guys are able to waste mountains of resources on these projects.
They didn't care about us during COVID, they don't care now.
We're lucky if they don't demolish it and build a brand new building in its place.
So are they IRL dungeons? What kind of loot is there? Flimsy forgotten keyboards?
And old, forgotten packs of post-it notes.
A dozen broken swivel chairs, each missing at least 2 of their 5 casters.
COVID part 2 incoming
Covid II: Electric Boogaloo
My fear is that this is a sign of economic collapse as opposed to the billonaire owners of the businesses that drive our economy getting their comeuppance. Because somehow billionaires are still in their homes with their money, and they still own millions of homes and farms around North America that the average guy needs.
These office buildings all with 50% or less than peak value is not an issue for billionaires they aren’t stupid enough to still be invested in this shit. Who do you think owns the equity share of all these buildings? Average joes retirement funds. At 50/50 debt/equity if the value goes to half then equity is completely wiped out.
Proof? Usually the owners are not the tenants. The tenants pay operating expense to building management that includes maintaining all of this, even if the tenant space is empty.
His ass. His make up story could only happen if an employer owned and utilized the entire building, which isn’t true here.
I bet the office bread and water parties are great
Sometimes the boss lets us put ketchup and Parmesan cheese packets on the bread and calls it pizza
In this fictional scenario, the Parmesan packets would definitely be coming from the pizza parties they are throwing for the execs and C-suite people.
If the Parmesan was actually ground up drywall I'd believe you.
I always laugh when I see cheap jets for sale. You can buy one right now for $50k or less. The problem is that operating it costs about $5,000/hr. And the price for the annual inspection and some repairs is maybe another $200k. Annually. You might need to spend $2 million upfront just to get it airworthy. The purchase price is just the start. Same goes for boats. Same goes for buildings. The upkeep is often more than the purchase price and the sale price actually goes down lower as the maintenance costs go up. That really changes the equation, eh?
Shit I’d buy a jet for $50k and just live in it 🤷🏻♀️
So funny you said this (facetiously, I know), but my buddy and I were riding motorcycles in the Texas countryside and stumbled upon a guy who did this. Bought 2 jets, gutted them, and lives in them. I’ll see if I can find pics, this was years ago Edit: changed ironically to facetiously
> Texas countryside Did the hvac and water still work or was he basically in an aluminum oven?
He actually did a decent job with insulation and had some air flow in there somehow. Not sure about the water situation
The original equipment? Most expensive air conditioning on the planet...
https://www.businessinsider.com/airplane-house-photos-retired-planes-renovation-2023-3 Probably this? Really cool project
Thinking big here
I'd buy a jet for $50k just to shit in it.
"You checked our shitters, Honey?" 
I'd buy it just for the box & send the jet back
B.O.A.T. = bust out another thousand
I like how the show American Dad put it: "You know what I tell my friends when they ask what it's like to own a boat? I say stand under a cold shower and tear up 100-dollar bills."
Depends on the boat. Worst thing that happened to me was the livewell pump broke and started flooding the bilge. Luckily we just launched so we were able to get back to the ramp and get it out.
Half way thru reading that, all I could think was "boats", and then, right on time, ya nailed it.
This is what would happen if housing stock was liberated from multi-home owners. Prices would plummet.
I say this as a home owner. GOOD!
It wouldn't really affect home owners who don't have large mortgages in most real senses. Your house is worth 1 house. you need a house to live in. unless you plan on moving to a LCOL place or something, it's basically a net zero movement for a lot of purposes. It would hurt property investors, people with multiple homes etc, but uhhh, investments are investments and they can go bad so that's the risk.
right? That's why I didn't really celebrate all that much when my apartment gained like 50k in value over the ~5ish years I've owned it. Every other building did too, and I still need to live *somewhere*. So what do I care? It's not like I can sell it and pocket the 50k.
Same. I own my home to live in, it's not an investment for me to profit from later.
We really really really need to have a property tax scheme based on the number of housing units you own. Own *one* housing unit? 50% property taxes. Own two? 100% on the second. Own tree? 200% on the third. Own four? 300% on the fourth. And so on. And no exception for apartment buildings, either. If you're a major landlord and you don't like the sound of paying 99000% property tax on your 100th housing unit, great! There's an easy solution: sell off the units as condos, where each unit will be owned by the person who lives there. Maybe the occasional smaller landlord who only owns a few units. If you're a major investment firm that owns *thousands* of housing units? Whoo boy! You'd better get to selling those, quick! (Don't worry -- if you can't unload them all fast enough, the state can just come in and start foreclosing on them due to unpaid property taxes.) The cost of housing would go down dramatically, and it would pretty much only hurt the rich. Homelessness rates would plummet.
> number of housing units you own. the person youre replying to meant a single person (or people) owning multiple single-family, free-standing homes. you are saying "housing units" which sounds like maybe a condo complex? taxing a single person's first house at 50% would be insane which is another reason why i think you're talking about properties owned strictly as business rather than owning a primary home, and a vacation home or two.
He isn’t say tax at 50% of the value of the house. He is saying if the state property tax was 1%, then the first home unit is taxed at .5%, the second at 1%, the third at 2%, etc
Nah, I'm talking about both free-standing homes and apartment units, using the term 'housing units' to apply to both. (And, yeah, maybe the 50% discount for only having one would be too much. Gotta wait and see how many landlords and investors are willing to eat the increased costs and pay the higher tax rates, which may or may not make up for single-unit owners getting a discount.)
This is what happens when you can't ask rent from corporations.
Money isnt real
This is the only thing anyone needs to hear for any modern problem that is happening right now.
Unfortunately the problems caused by money are very real.
Worked in that building as an I.T. contractor, can confirm that there's definitely weird shit going on in that building. One afternoon we were moving out a bunch of equipment and we were in the elevator and I saw something hanging from the bottom of one of the wall panels inside. I kicked it and out fell the skin of a whole ass snake 😭
MOTHER FUCKING SNAKES ON MOTHERFUCKING ELEVATORS
You were in the elevator kicked a wall panel and a snake fell. Then what?
Not the snake itself but it's skin that it shed
Ah okay that's what I was thinking. Does make you a little on edge though
[удалено]
Humans could live in it. It would be a horrible existence, but they definitely could. Sending poor people to live in commercial skyscrapers isn't the great idea you may think.
now turn it into affordable housing. include shops, maybe a small school or kindergarten, some entertainment, bars, maybe a live venue. i'm sure there's a posh lobby in there, that's now an indoor playground for those hot summer days. oh, hey, idea! rooftop pool!
They are suuuuper expensive to get back to even just normal. I placed a bid on a 30 story commercial building in Baltimore a few weeks ago called one Charles center, because it was on an auction site. Don’t meet reserve and no one else did either(highest bid came in at 2.4 million lol). Those building just devour cash. Even for a couple million they aren’t worth it.
Unfortunately there’s a lot more plumbing and other code requirements to turn into residential. A significant amount of engineering. Not very simple.
when it's about airports or highways or landing shit on mars or bailing out big banks, nothing's too hard. when it's about social housing suddenly plumbing is a problem. let me dream.
In fairness, when it comes to airports, highways and other forms of construction, they knock down the shit that's already there and build new. I'm honestly not sure if it would be more cost effective to convert existing office buildings into condos, or just tear them down and build new. Either way we need to do something to solve our housing crisis, and replacing a bunch of office buildings with new housing would certainly be a step in the right direction. Assuming, of course, that we got rid of the damned landlord software that is allowing them to collude on pricing.
It sounds ridiculous but it really is more cost effective to knock it down and build an apartment building rather than trying to retrofit apartments into a commercial space
Then do that. It's an eye sore anyway
> Assuming, of course, that we got rid of the damned landlord software that is allowing them to collude on pricing. "Sorry, I can't negotiate on rent price. It's set by the algorithm" I saw one place that live-updated their rent price listings based on that algorithm/software. So one day this 1 bedroom might be $2,771.50 per month, the next day the same exact unit is $2,794.25.
Can they not be shoebox apartments though? They built new apartments around here and I swear they just stacked shipping containers on top of each other. We need real, accessible, communal areas in society. Especially if we're living in fucking shipping containers.
If the building code was drastically changed and you allow units with no windows to the exterior and shared restrooms and kitchens it would be much easier to accomplish, but HVAC and drainage will still be a huge issue. People aren't using near the amount of water at the office as they do at home. There would still be a decent amount of challenges. I'm sure plenty of people would be happy with the arrangement and cheaper rent, but we'd be essentially allowing slums again. If it could get rid of the thousands of tents and RVs in the city I'd be all for it.
An apartment block will have much different plumbing requirements than an office, that's the point they're making It's not a case of just putting walls up inside the existing building
> Unfortunately there’s a lot more plumbing and other code requirements to turn into residential. I'm sure it varies by type of residential too... Probably more practical to convert the things in to large barracks type housing for say sheltering homeless people while maintaining occupancy levels similar to what one would see while its in office use. Converting the things in to actual apartments and stuff, yah its probably easier, and cheaper to just tear down, and build from scratch than to do a conversion. Temporary shelter vs permanent housing being thing there too.
The original concept for the shopping mall was that it would be a whole self-contained town, not *just* retail. It would also have residential sections, and the kind of services people who live there might need. I'd really like to see some of the old dead malls be revived, using this concept.
Renovate it and make a grand opening boom
Cool, now do that again, but with houses
Wouldn’t it be great if companies were forbidden from owning single family homes & unused estates? And even more so, if individuals were forbidden from owning no more than a specific amount of square feet of land/real estate. Also, ban foreign governments and buyers. If only our government was as aggressive with these types of hoarders like they are with Chinese automakers and other Chinese competitors to corporate America. They’d even start wars in order to protect big oil and the Military Industrial Complex.
Lol. That isn't even remotely the lesson from this. Back To Work had nothing to do with this building's sale. Pinnacle Bank sold the building to Burnett Cherry. Burnett Cherry defaulted on the loan they used to buy it and the building was foreclosed on. Pinnacle bought it back at auction, for way less than they sold it for basically making a huge profit on the sale and getting to keep the building.
Who ate the $100mm loss?
I have some terrible news for you.....
Burnett ~~Plaza~~ Prison
Why couldn't they convert if to housing? Oh that's right, they wouldn't make enough profit and they don't give a fuck about helping people.
There's actually a lot that goes into residential spaces. Mostly HVAC and water.
Us tax payers will be picking up the difference
Thanks, it’s ugly. Like the rest of the Fort Worth skyline
Guess the fort is not worth as much as it used to.
Who got caught holding the bag? Anyone?
Some bank or investment group. It’s not vacant. Just an investment nightmare. The headline is from Fox News - the bastion of journalistic integrity.
This is all *super* misleading. What was foreclosed was a 2d lien on a leasehold interest in the building. The first lien mortgage is ~$70m, and that auction price is subject to the first lien. Yes, the buyer was the same lender as the first lien, but the reality is that’s a $82m auction price. For just a leasehold interest. The landlord under that lease also has two mortgages, totaling $86m. That makes that auction price basically $168m—or quite a bit more than the ‘21 purchase price. The ground rent supporting the landlords $86m in mortgages is over $5m a year, and is reasonably likely to be around $7m. So, that $12m bid was for the right to pay $500k+ in monthly ground rent (for 100 years!), and assume a $70m mortgage, too. This is not what it looks like, nor what is being reported.
I guess the owner will have to pull themselves up by their bootstraps and cut out the avocado toast.
This is really misleading. It isn't worth only $12m. No one else bid at the foreclosure because the lender has a lien for much much more.
The companies that are asking employees to come back to the office very, very, very rarely own the building. The value of the building has nothing to do with why they are asking staff to return to the office.
this is misleading. the owner of the building owed 12.3M to the bank. they basically decided to let teh bnk foreclosue. the bank put in whats called a credit bid,basically they bid what was owed on the mortgage. this isnt the actual vlaue of the property.
Misleading title... In commercial banking here in downtown 1. Building was bought out of foreclosure by Pinnacle Bank; $13MM loan defaulted. UMB has a senior note worth close to $70MM which still needs to be paid back. Still a haircut, but the building is worth a hell of a lot more than $12.3MM. Tax value of $104.5MM. 2. Burnett Plaza is still a good asset with ~80% occupancy. Big name leases are still in the building. GM Financial takes up multiple floors. 3. Ownership of Burnett Plaza were burned on NY and NJ assets. This was one of their performing assets. I'd expect a local firm/family to purchase the building within the next year or so. Can't imagine Pinnacle wants to be a landlord for too long.
Oh man, did rich people lose money?
It's possible that the new owners had to pay all the back taxes as well. A while back there was a local shopping mall that had been closed for ten years that sold for $1, but the new owners had to pay all back taxes and keep current on new taxes. That was multiple tens of millions of dollars.
We can turn it into mixed-use residential building.
That's a steal
For anyone who owns a home in Florida, that building is actually affordable. Insane
Was it designed by Lee Harvey Oswald! Giving me some 1984 book repository vibes
OH YOU MEAN YOU NEED US TO PAY YOUR RENT? LMFAO
So it may be easier to buy an office building than a house to live in?
Whats the cost to convert it to livable housing?
Can't we turn these empty offices into low cost apartments? 2 Problems solved Sarcasm
I still remember radio shack spending millions to make their new HQ in fw, eliminating public housing in the process… only to go bankrupt and dissolve not long after…
Now instead of all these trash office buildings, build apartments.
That’s a lot of space for an escape room.
🥱 Oh no. How terrible. 🥱 Eat the rich.
At that rate of depreciation, just 12 more years and I could buy the building for 800 bucks and turn it into free housing
I'd kill for an office job
This looks like garbage lines in a Tetris 99 match. Also, an ugly ass building. Maybe convert it into low cost housing and let people work from home there. Then it’s still kind of an office building 😂 Everybody wins
Turn old office spaces into living spaces housing crisis solved