September 13, 2024

An office conversion, but not to apartments

Photo by Brian Miller [enlarge]

Dearborn is at left, and Maynard at right (west).

Everyone's talking about converting empty old office buildings to higher, better use. Apartments are the goal, ideally with affordable rents. But not every old building pencils out financially for such noble purpose.

Case in point: the century-old RDA Building, at 800 Maynard Ave. S. in the International District. The family-owned structure is substantially empty, and Kidder Mathews put it on the market in April.

Now a prospective buyer has stepped forward: Tourbineau Real Estate Partners, which is led by former Unico executives Jonas Sylvester and Ben Wong. With Neiman Taber Architects, they filed an early plan this week to convert the RDA Building to self-storage.

With floorplates of about 13,850 square feet, the former Crescent Foods warehouse isn't really suited to residential use. You'd have to carve a new courtyard or light well into the four-story building for that. There's also only one small elevator, and apartments would require entirely new wiring, plumbing and other costly improvements.

Self-storage, on the other hand, might only require a new freight elevator, interior partitions, fire systems, etc. And the full basement gives the building about 72,000 gross square feet for conversion.

Alternative weekly the Stranger may be the RDA's only remaining office tenant. JTM Construction moved out last year, relocating to new digs in Georgetown. Part of the building is now used by a wine storage company.

Tourbineau says it's targeting underperforming Class B and Class C office or commercial buildings, fully to mostly vacant, for repositioning or conversion. Its website continues, “We seek out buildings where a plan for the next chapter needs to be formulated and then executed.”

Jeff Huntington and Tim Foster at Kidder Mathews are the Chow family's brokers, and they're also offering other portions of the same block — mostly surface parking, where Plus Investment once floated the idea of an 18-story condo tower.