The project is maybe not the worst idea, the $1400 rent a month though…
Oh and this was not the first plan:
“We were thinking of turning it into a WeWork space, a concert hall, a beer garden. We had no shortage of ideas on what to do with the space,”
The literal only other time I have seen a school turned into apartments was for subsidized housing, they needed to all but gut the inside of the building to make it work. This was not done here, these are class rooms with extra plumbing.
The overlap of the good news posts and dystopian posts have always been oddly large.
Your article says they had trees growing inside the building…
And that they worked with a parks department to maintain the original look.
So ironically, them trying to maintain the history is why you think they’re overcharging.
They wanted to make it a “we work” at first, its not the overcharging that is the issue. The issue (at least for me) is turning every thing into a business venture. This was once a public building for teaching kids and was bought on the cheap to turn into another trendy revenue source.
I wanted to disagree with you at first, because I love the idea of repurposing old structures instead of building yet another soulless, “modern” apartment building, but yeah, they’re clearly doing this with the intent of turning a profit when it could have been another example of non-market housing, where the cost of rent simply covers the cost of building maintenance and actually helps to stabilize rent costs in an area.
TL;DR: Once again, a cool thing is made less cool by the profit motive.
Maybe that is why I got a “dystopia” feel from this more then anything, its almost a cool thing. I would be I think much more willing to go along with this if it was not put up as a “feel good” story that to me has very little good. I get more “we work” style hipster scam then a long term usable housing solution.
Lol what a comment