MILWAUKEE — A downtown office building is set to find new life as affordable housing, as demand for office space declines post-pandemic.
Josh Jeffers, president of J. Jeffers & Co., specializes in finding ways to repurpose unused buildings. His company bought the Clark Building at 633 W. Wisconsin Ave. as an investment property in 2017 and didn’t originally plan to convert it into housing. He says that changed in 2021 as demand for offices fell sharply during the pandemic, as more people started to work from home.
Jeffers said, “Over time, the occupancy level just dwindled. It’s falling more and more and now we’re at a point where occupancy levels are about 52% and by this time next year it should be down in the 20’s.”
He said this is true nationwide and has let to a trend of converting old office spaces into housing or hotels. He noted many office buildings can’t be converted because of the physical limitations of the building.
“Office buildings are designed to be used primarily during the day. People are not sleeping overnight in office buildings.” he added, “One of the other trends we found is that, in general, buildings that are a little bit older — historic buildings — those tend to be a little bit more conducive to to conversion.”
He say’s the height of the Clark building and the views from its window line made it particularly attractive to convert to housing, something he says is in high demand.
“We do feel like there is a particularly high demand for more affordable housing, workforce housing, right in downtown Milwaukee. There has not been a lot of affordable housing development built downtown in the last 10 or 15 years as downtown has experienced a huge boom and new housing developments. I feel like we might be able to bring a lot more affordability to downtown.”
Jeffers sees the older office buildings downtown as a good way to meet that demand. He adds there is a lot of opportunity to find new uses for disused or under -used buildings throughout the city, especially as construction costs remain high and renovations can be less expensive than new developments.
