Offices to mini-factories

The empty Industrial Trust Building in Providence.

Downtown Boston in June 2017

— Photo by AbhiSuryawanshi

Adapted from Robert Whitcomb’s “Digital Diary,’’ in GoLocal24.com

Proposals to fill up a lot of those post-pandemic and still partly empty downtown office buildings in Providence, Boston and other cities have usually focused on converting them to housing. But given their features, especially their large floor plates, high ceilings, utility layouts and huge windows, turning them into places for light assembly of high-tech and other  physical products makes more sense. Something like this has been underway in the past few years in Boston and Cambridge as biotech companies have  moved labs into some space previously used for offices for “white-collar” workers.

Call them mini-factories. We often forget that many Northeast city downtowns  once had substantial manufacturing operations, including, up until around 50 years ago, some heavy manufacturing. Reinvigorating downtown manufacturing would help create more diverse and thus healthier urban economies. It’s clear that in this age of remote work, many office workers won’t ever return to downtown office towers.

We must focus on building much more housing. Trying to transform office buildings into dwellings won’t help much.