🕷️ Crawler Inspector

URL Lookup

Direct Parameter Lookup

Raw Queries and Responses

1. Shard Calculation

Query:

Response:

Calculated Shard: 163 (from laksa162)

2. Crawled Status Check

Query:

curl -X POST \
  'http://laksa163.int.ahrefs:8124/' \
  -H 'Content-Type: text/plain' \
  -H 'X-ClickHouse-Database: crawler3' \
  -H 'Authorization: Basic YXBpOg==' \
  -d 'SELECT getAhrefsURLFromUnparsed(src_unparsed) AS found_url, ifNull(toUnixTimestamp(download_stamp), 0) AS crawl_time, ifNull(toUnixTimestamp(props_url_first_seen), 0) AS first_indexed_time, download_http_code AS http_code, src_unparsed AS src_unparsed, src_root_hash AS src_root_hash, history_drop_reason AS history_drop_reason, meta_title AS meta_title, meta_descriptions AS meta_descriptions, attrs_boilerpipe_text AS attrs_boilerpipe_text, attrs_markdown AS attrs_markdown, attrs_readable_markdown AS attrs_readable_markdown, meta_canonical AS meta_canonical FROM crawler3.page_info_local FINAL PREWHERE (src_root_hash, src_unparsed) IN ((getAhrefsRootHashFromUnparsed(getAhrefsUnparsedNoserviceFromURL(\'https://www.sfchronicle.com/sf/article/housing-office-conversions-boston-21363021.php\')), getAhrefsUnparsedNoserviceFromURL(\'https://www.sfchronicle.com/sf/article/housing-office-conversions-boston-21363021.php\'))) FORMAT JSONEachRow'

Response:

{"found_url":"https:\/\/www.sfchronicle.com\/sf\/article\/housing-office-conversions-boston-21363021.php","crawl_time":1775974897,"first_indexed_time":1771864017,"http_code":200,"src_unparsed":"com,sfchronicle!www,\/sf\/article\/housing-office-conversions-boston-21363021.php s443","src_root_hash":"14097438092688553363","history_drop_reason":null,"meta_title":"Boston turns empty offices into 1,500 homes, San Francisco hasn't","meta_descriptions":["Boston is turning empty office buildings into 1,500 new homes since 2023. Meanwhile, San Francisco has zero conversions done."],"attrs_boilerpipe_text":"John Weil stands inside 263 Summer St. in Boston, an office building being transformed into housing. It’s part of Boston’s successful office to residential conversion program, which Weil runs.\nSimon Simard\/For the S.F. Chronicle\nSan Francisco\nand\nBoston\nare coastal cousins: a pair of historic cities full of character and culture, narrow alleys and stately avenues, seafood and salty waterfronts, old money and new, left-leaning politics sprouting from roots in ever-evolving ethnic neighborhoods.\nAnd by early 2023 both cities were grappling with the same questions: What would it take to \ncreate housing out of the office buildings\nthat had emptied out since the pandemic? How to\nrevive hollowed downtown neighborhoods\nby injecting thousands of residents while also reducing the glut of ghosted office space that had crushed property values?\nBoth cities responded by launching office-to-residential programs around the same time. Three years later they are in very different places. Boston’s conversion program is a wild success. San Francisco’s has yet to get off the ground.\nArticle continues below this ad\nSince Boston’s program launched in 2023, the city has received 22 applications to convert 1.25 million square feet of office space into 1,517 units. From the city’s Seaport and Back Bay to the South End and Financial District, developers are snapping up historic buildings — many of them brick-and-beam structures with wood floors and arched windows — and reinventing them as living spaces.\nThe Boston skyline as seen from the Cambridge side of the Charles River.\nSimon Simard\/For the S.F. Chronicle\nMeanwhile in San Francisco, despite extensive efforts — the city has cut fees, sliced red tape, relaxed zoning restrictions, and eliminated both affordable housing requirements and transfer taxes — not one conversion project has started construction. One project announced in January of 2024, Forge Development Partners’ \n124-unit conversion of the Humboldt Bank building\nat 785 Market St., stalled out due to lack of financing. The developer now hopes to start construction in 2027. Another, a conversion of the\nWarfield office building\non Market Street, was foreclosed on by its lender before construction started and sold to a nonprofit.\nSan Francisco Chronicle Logo\nMake us a Preferred Source to get more of our news when you search.\nAdd Preferred Source\nSo why is Boston’s conversion program generating so much housing while San Francisco is still waiting for applications to come in? There are a couple of obvious reasons.\nArticle continues below this ad\nOne is that Boston’s strong mayoral system allowed Mayor Michelle Wu to move fast to offer financial incentives for conversions, without passing local or state legislation. In July 2023, Wu announced that developers willing to convert downtown office buildings to housing would be eligible to\nreceive a 75% property tax abatement\nover 29 years.\nBoston Mayor Michelle Wu’s Office to Residential Conversion Program has made it easier to transform underutilized office space into residential housing units.\nBoston Herald\/MediaNews Group via Getty Images\nAdam Burns, who heads up Pinnacle Development, which last year completed Boston’s first conversion and has two others in the pipeline, said the tax abatement is helpful — but the finances have to make sense. \n“It doesn’t turn a bad deal into a good deal,” he said. “You still can’t pay someone $600 a foot for a vacant office building, but it can move the needle from something that is marginal to something that really does work.”\nIn contrast, what Wu did with the swoop of a pen has taken San Francisco more than a year of complicated political and legislative maneuvering.\nArticle continues below this ad\nLast week, Mayor Daniel Lurie signed a bill establishing a\ndowntown financing district\n. Eligible projects in the district — it covers the Financial District, Union Square, parts of SoMa and the Market Street corridor from the Embarcadero to Civic Center — will receive annual incentive payments over 30 years to offset development costs of converting office buildings to residences. The payments are backed by the increases in future property tax revenue that will be generated once the struggling office buildings become apartments or condos.\nThe Humboldt Bank building was going to be one of San Francisco’s first conversion projects, but it stalled out due to a lack of financing.\nBenjamin Fanjoy\/For the S.F. Chronicle\nWhile city planners estimate the payments will amount to about $100,000 per unit for a typical project, establishing the program was not easy. It required both the state Assembly and the San Francisco Board of Supervisors to approve legislation. An independent board of directors was formed to oversee the district and sign off on qualified projects.\n“The city is doing all the right things to get there, but boy did it take a long time,” Forge Development CEO Richard Hannum said after the vote. \nLisa Follman, an architect with San Francisco’s Skidmore Owings & Merrill said she hopes the new financing district “will ignite a fire” under building owners who have considered converting but not done it.\nArticle continues below this ad\n“Boston did three years ago what San Francisco did last week,” Follman said. “It takes time for those financial incentives to play out.”\nBut, beyond the political advantages, Boston has another secret weapon: A senior-level manager who is in charge of personally ushering every project through every step from pre-application to construction permitting.\nThat person, John Weil, is a former real estate developer who pounds the pavement looking for potential conversion candidates. Rather than submitting plans to all the relevant departments — public works, fire, building — developers only have to hand the application to Weil. Once a project qualifies for the program, he takes over.\nThe building at 263 Summer St. in Boston is under construction and will become another office transformed into housing.\nSimon Simard\/For the S.F. Chronicle\n“We have one point of contact — it sounds silly and mundane, but it’s actually very important,”  said Prataap Patrose, senior adviser to the chief of planning for Boston. “It’s truly one stop. John is that one person to call.”\nArticle continues below this ad\nWeil started in the summer of 2023 after a consultant had studied 380 buildings that would qualify for the program. He looked into how much debt there was on each property, what the ownership structure was, how much of it was leased and for how long. He sought out owners who might be interested in selling and developers who might be interested in buying.\n“I try to come at this from a developer’s mentality. I spent my days walking the buildings, calling the owners, and saying, ‘What else do you own?’” he said. “My card has my cell phone number on it. I expect it to ring seven days a week — and it does.”\nWeil encourages developers and building owners to come to the city early in the process. \n“Don’t wait until you have a fully baked concept to call me,” he said. “Call me literally when you have a street address, and I will walk you through what I know about that building, whether I think it’s a good candidate for conversion.”\nThe inside of 263 Summer St. in Boston shows a mural representing the famed sign on top of the building that will become housing.\nSimon Simard\/For the S.F. Chronicle\nAnd there are so many good candidates. In Boston’s Seaport District, Burns is converting an old dry goods warehouse on 263 Summer St. with its famous “Boston Wharf Co. Industrial Real Estate” red neon rooftop sign. It will yield 77 apartments. \nThen there is the 11-story, 255-unit conversion project in the pipeline next to the South Meeting House on Washington Street, where Samuel Adams and the Sons of Liberty hatched a plan to dump 342 chests of British East India Co. tea into Boston Harbor in 1773. Next to the Custom House Tower and a pocket park, 18 units are being built out at 150 Milk St.\n“It’s definitely one of those ‘Paul Revere slept here’ buildings,” Weil said. “You come out on a snowy evening and squint, and it feels like it’s 150 years ago.”\nBurns said the buildings for conversions tend to be naturally affordable because they lack the yoga rooms and rooftop fire pits and gyms that add to the cost of modern residential high-rises. His first project, and the first to be completed under Boston’s program, leased up right away.\n“It’s the sort of building where you look up at the beams and see the names of the guys who framed it or the ship that it came off of,” Burns said.\nWhile San Francisco is far behind Boston’s conversions progress, local developers and architects say it’s not for lack of trying. The city has eliminated planning code requirements and streamlined permitting and approval processes. Former Mayor London Breed successfully passed Proposition C in 2024, which waived transfer tax fees for office-to-residential conversions once the building is converted to housing.\n“I have been practicing in San Francisco for 20 years now, and I have never seen as much movement as I have in the last 18 months,” Follman, the architect, said. “The planning code has been rewritten. The zoning has changed. One of the huge barriers (to conversions) is people don’t know how much the city has done.”\nDowntown San Francisco, seen from the peak of Mount Davidson, has yet to start an office-to-housing conversion.\nMinh Connors\/For the S.F. Chronicle\nStill, San Francisco has unique challenges. Construction costs are the highest in the country, and many conversions will require seismic upgrades — something Boston doesn’t have to worry about.\nJacob Bintliff, manager of economic recovery initiatives for the San Francisco Office of Economic and Workforce Development, said recently that interest in the city’s conversions program has grown as the financing district got closer to launching. \n“We have been fielding a couple of inquiries a week over the last few weeks. People are saying, ‘Let me see if I understand this right, I am interested. I am looking at buildings,’ he said. ‘We are encouraged by the level of interest and the level of detail that people are asking about.’\nThere are about 518 buildings within San Francisco’s new financing district, about 50 of which the city has identified as being good candidates for conversion. If they were all to be converted to housing, it would produce about 4,400 units.\nOnce the math makes sense, it can be an efficient way to produce housing with tons of character in the heart of the city, Burns said. While his Boston firm has mostly built new multifamily complexes, conversions are appealing because they provide “compression on the rate of return” — basically, new housing can be delivered faster so revenue starts rolling in sooner.\n“If you already have a foundation, you already have a utility structure, you already have a facade, roof, windows — all that saves time,” he said. “The faster we can purchase something and bring it online, the better our returns are.”\nFeb 23, 2026\nReporter\nJ.K. Dineen covers housing and real estate development. He joined The Chronicle in 2014 covering San Francisco land use politics for the City Hall team. He has since expanded his focus to explore housing and development issues throughout Northern California. He is the author of two books: \"Here Tomorrow\" (Heyday, 2013) and \"High Spirits\" (Heyday, 2015).","attrs_markdown":"San Francisco Chronicle Logo\n\nHearst Newspapers Logo\n\n[Skip to main content](https:\/\/www.sfchronicle.com\/sf\/article\/housing-office-conversions-boston-21363021.php#content)\n\n[Subscribe](https:\/\/www.sfchronicle.com\/hamburgerbutton)\n\n[Bay Area](https:\/\/www.sfchronicle.com\/bayarea\/)\n\n- [San Francisco](https:\/\/www.sfchronicle.com\/sf\/)\n- [Transit](https:\/\/www.sfchronicle.com\/transit\/)\n- [Crime](https:\/\/www.sfchronicle.com\/crime\/)\n- [Drug Crisis](https:\/\/www.sfchronicle.com\/opioid-epidemic\/)\n- [Golden Gate Park](https:\/\/www.sfchronicle.com\/goldengatepark\/)\n- [COVID-19](https:\/\/www.sfchronicle.com\/health\/coronavirus\/)\n- [Health](https:\/\/www.sfchronicle.com\/health\/)\n- [Data Spotlight](https:\/\/www.sfchronicle.com\/data\/)\n- [PG\\&E](https:\/\/www.sfchronicle.com\/pge\/)\n- [Season of 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Why can’t San Francisco?\nBy [J.K. Dineen](https:\/\/www.sfchronicle.com\/author\/j-k-dineen\/), Staff Writer\n\nFeb 23, 2026\n\n![John Weil stands inside 263 Summer St. in Boston, an office building being transformed into housing. It’s part of Boston’s successful office to residential conversion program, which Weil runs.]()\n\nJohn Weil stands inside 263 Summer St. in Boston, an office building being transformed into housing. It’s part of Boston’s successful office to residential conversion program, which Weil runs.\n\nSimon Simard\/For the S.F. Chronicle\n\n[San Francisco](https:\/\/www.sfchronicle.com\/politics\/article\/daniel-lurie-california-democrats-21367510.php) and [Boston](https:\/\/www.sfchronicle.com\/totalsf\/article\/boston-radio-hosts-super-bowl-tirade-sf-21333628.php) are coastal cousins: a pair of historic cities full of character and culture, narrow alleys and stately avenues, seafood and salty waterfronts, old money and new, left-leaning politics sprouting from roots in ever-evolving ethnic neighborhoods.\n\nAnd by early 2023 both cities were grappling with the same questions: What would it take to [create housing out of the office buildings](https:\/\/www.sfchronicle.com\/realestate\/article\/how-many-homes-office-conversions-sf-incentives-20331553.php) that had emptied out since the pandemic? How to [revive hollowed downtown neighborhoods](https:\/\/www.sfchronicle.com\/opinion\/article\/san-francisco-downtown-building-21360989.php) by injecting thousands of residents while also reducing the glut of ghosted office space that had crushed property values?\n\nBoth cities responded by launching office-to-residential programs around the same time. Three years later they are in very different places. Boston’s conversion program is a wild success. San Francisco’s has yet to get off the ground.\n\nAdvertisement\n\nArticle continues below this ad\n\nSince Boston’s program launched in 2023, the city has received 22 applications to convert 1.25 million square feet of office space into 1,517 units. From the city’s Seaport and Back Bay to the South End and Financial District, developers are snapping up historic buildings — many of them brick-and-beam structures with wood floors and arched windows — and reinventing them as living spaces.\n\n![The Boston skyline as seen from the Cambridge side of the Charles River.]()\n\nThe Boston skyline as seen from the Cambridge side of the Charles River.\n\nSimon Simard\/For the S.F. Chronicle\n\nMeanwhile in San Francisco, despite extensive efforts — the city has cut fees, sliced red tape, relaxed zoning restrictions, and eliminated both affordable housing requirements and transfer taxes — not one conversion project has started construction. One project announced in January of 2024, Forge Development Partners’ [124-unit conversion of the Humboldt Bank building](https:\/\/www.sfchronicle.com\/bayarea\/article\/sf-office-housing-conversion-18603643.php) at 785 Market St., stalled out due to lack of financing. The developer now hopes to start construction in 2027. Another, a conversion of the [Warfield office building](https:\/\/www.sfchronicle.com\/sf\/article\/historic-s-f-building-could-be-city-s-first-17670623.php) on Market Street, was foreclosed on by its lender before construction started and sold to a nonprofit.\n\nSan Francisco Chronicle Logo\n\n### See more S.F. Chronicle on Google\nMake us a Preferred Source to get more of our news when you search.\n\n[Add Preferred Source](https:\/\/www.google.com\/preferences\/source?q=sfchronicle.com)\n\nSo why is Boston’s conversion program generating so much housing while San Francisco is still waiting for applications to come in? There are a couple of obvious reasons.\n\nAdvertisement\n\nArticle continues below this ad\n\nOne is that Boston’s strong mayoral system allowed Mayor Michelle Wu to move fast to offer financial incentives for conversions, without passing local or state legislation. In July 2023, Wu announced that developers willing to convert downtown office buildings to housing would be eligible to [receive a 75% property tax abatement](https:\/\/www.bostonherald.com\/2025\/12\/13\/boston-mayor-wu-extends-office-to-residential-conversion-program-for-year-aims-to-build-1000-new-homes\/) over 29 years.\n\n![Boston Mayor Michelle Wu’s Office to Residential Conversion Program has made it easier to transform underutilized office space into residential housing units.]()\n\nBoston Mayor Michelle Wu’s Office to Residential Conversion Program has made it easier to transform underutilized office space into residential housing units.\n\nBoston Herald\/MediaNews Group via Getty Images\n\nAdam Burns, who heads up Pinnacle Development, which last year completed Boston’s first conversion and has two others in the pipeline, said the tax abatement is helpful — but the finances have to make sense.\n\n“It doesn’t turn a bad deal into a good deal,” he said. “You still can’t pay someone \\$600 a foot for a vacant office building, but it can move the needle from something that is marginal to something that really does work.”\n\nIn contrast, what Wu did with the swoop of a pen has taken San Francisco more than a year of complicated political and legislative maneuvering.\n\nAdvertisement\n\nArticle continues below this ad\n\nLast week, Mayor Daniel Lurie signed a bill establishing a [downtown financing district](https:\/\/www.sfchronicle.com\/sf\/article\/downtown-office-conversions-21345575.php). Eligible projects in the district — it covers the Financial District, Union Square, parts of SoMa and the Market Street corridor from the Embarcadero to Civic Center — will receive annual incentive payments over 30 years to offset development costs of converting office buildings to residences. The payments are backed by the increases in future property tax revenue that will be generated once the struggling office buildings become apartments or condos.\n\n![The Humboldt Bank building was going to be one of San Francisco’s first conversion projects, but it stalled out due to a lack of financing.]()\n\nThe Humboldt Bank building was going to be one of San Francisco’s first conversion projects, but it stalled out due to a lack of financing.\n\nBenjamin Fanjoy\/For the S.F. Chronicle\n\nWhile city planners estimate the payments will amount to about \\$100,000 per unit for a typical project, establishing the program was not easy. It required both the state Assembly and the San Francisco Board of Supervisors to approve legislation. An independent board of directors was formed to oversee the district and sign off on qualified projects.\n\n“The city is doing all the right things to get there, but boy did it take a long time,” Forge Development CEO Richard Hannum said after the vote.\n\nLisa Follman, an architect with San Francisco’s Skidmore Owings & Merrill said she hopes the new financing district “will ignite a fire” under building owners who have considered converting but not done it.\n\nAdvertisement\n\nArticle continues below this ad\n\n“Boston did three years ago what San Francisco did last week,” Follman said. “It takes time for those financial incentives to play out.”\n\nBut, beyond the political advantages, Boston has another secret weapon: A senior-level manager who is in charge of personally ushering every project through every step from pre-application to construction permitting.\n\nThat person, John Weil, is a former real estate developer who pounds the pavement looking for potential conversion candidates. Rather than submitting plans to all the relevant departments — public works, fire, building — developers only have to hand the application to Weil. Once a project qualifies for the program, he takes over.\n\n![The building at 263 Summer St. in Boston is under construction and will become another office transformed into housing.]()\n\nThe building at 263 Summer St. in Boston is under construction and will become another office transformed into housing.\n\nSimon Simard\/For the S.F. Chronicle\n\n“We have one point of contact — it sounds silly and mundane, but it’s actually very important,” said Prataap Patrose, senior adviser to the chief of planning for Boston. “It’s truly one stop. John is that one person to call.”\n\nAdvertisement\n\nArticle continues below this ad\n\nWeil started in the summer of 2023 after a consultant had studied 380 buildings that would qualify for the program. He looked into how much debt there was on each property, what the ownership structure was, how much of it was leased and for how long. He sought out owners who might be interested in selling and developers who might be interested in buying.\n\n“I try to come at this from a developer’s mentality. I spent my days walking the buildings, calling the owners, and saying, ‘What else do you own?’” he said. “My card has my cell phone number on it. I expect it to ring seven days a week — and it does.”\n\nWeil encourages developers and building owners to come to the city early in the process.\n\n“Don’t wait until you have a fully baked concept to call me,” he said. “Call me literally when you have a street address, and I will walk you through what I know about that building, whether I think it’s a good candidate for conversion.”\n\n![The inside of 263 Summer St. in Boston shows a mural representing the famed sign on top of the building that will become housing.]()\n\nThe inside of 263 Summer St. in Boston shows a mural representing the famed sign on top of the building that will become housing.\n\nSimon Simard\/For the S.F. Chronicle\n\nAnd there are so many good candidates. In Boston’s Seaport District, Burns is converting an old dry goods warehouse on 263 Summer St. with its famous “Boston Wharf Co. Industrial Real Estate” red neon rooftop sign. It will yield 77 apartments.\n\nThen there is the 11-story, 255-unit conversion project in the pipeline next to the South Meeting House on Washington Street, where Samuel Adams and the Sons of Liberty hatched a plan to dump 342 chests of British East India Co. tea into Boston Harbor in 1773. Next to the Custom House Tower and a pocket park, 18 units are being built out at 150 Milk St.\n\n“It’s definitely one of those ‘Paul Revere slept here’ buildings,” Weil said. “You come out on a snowy evening and squint, and it feels like it’s 150 years ago.”\n\nBurns said the buildings for conversions tend to be naturally affordable because they lack the yoga rooms and rooftop fire pits and gyms that add to the cost of modern residential high-rises. His first project, and the first to be completed under Boston’s program, leased up right away.\n\n“It’s the sort of building where you look up at the beams and see the names of the guys who framed it or the ship that it came off of,” Burns said.\n\nWhile San Francisco is far behind Boston’s conversions progress, local developers and architects say it’s not for lack of trying. The city has eliminated planning code requirements and streamlined permitting and approval processes. Former Mayor London Breed successfully passed Proposition C in 2024, which waived transfer tax fees for office-to-residential conversions once the building is converted to housing.\n\n“I have been practicing in San Francisco for 20 years now, and I have never seen as much movement as I have in the last 18 months,” Follman, the architect, said. “The planning code has been rewritten. The zoning has changed. One of the huge barriers (to conversions) is people don’t know how much the city has done.”\n\n![Downtown San Francisco, seen from the peak of Mount Davidson, has yet to start an office-to-housing conversion.]()\n\nDowntown San Francisco, seen from the peak of Mount Davidson, has yet to start an office-to-housing conversion.\n\nMinh Connors\/For the S.F. Chronicle\n\nStill, San Francisco has unique challenges. Construction costs are the highest in the country, and many conversions will require seismic upgrades — something Boston doesn’t have to worry about.\n\nJacob Bintliff, manager of economic recovery initiatives for the San Francisco Office of Economic and Workforce Development, said recently that interest in the city’s conversions program has grown as the financing district got closer to launching.\n\n“We have been fielding a couple of inquiries a week over the last few weeks. People are saying, ‘Let me see if I understand this right, I am interested. I am looking at buildings,’ he said. ‘We are encouraged by the level of interest and the level of detail that people are asking about.’\n\nThere are about 518 buildings within San Francisco’s new financing district, about 50 of which the city has identified as being good candidates for conversion. If they were all to be converted to housing, it would produce about 4,400 units.\n\nOnce the math makes sense, it can be an efficient way to produce housing with tons of character in the heart of the city, Burns said. While his Boston firm has mostly built new multifamily complexes, conversions are appealing because they provide “compression on the rate of return” — basically, new housing can be delivered faster so revenue starts rolling in sooner.\n\n“If you already have a foundation, you already have a utility structure, you already have a facade, roof, windows — all that saves time,” he said. “The faster we can purchase something and bring it online, the better our returns are.”\n\nFeb 23, 2026\n\n![Photo of J.K. Dineen]()\n\n[J.K. Dineen](https:\/\/www.sfchronicle.com\/author\/j-k-dineen\/)\n\nReporter\n\nJ.K. Dineen covers housing and real estate development. He joined The Chronicle in 2014 covering San Francisco land use politics for the City Hall team. He has since expanded his focus to explore housing and development issues throughout Northern California. 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It’s part of Boston’s successful office to residential conversion program, which Weil runs.]()\n\nJohn Weil stands inside 263 Summer St. in Boston, an office building being transformed into housing. It’s part of Boston’s successful office to residential conversion program, which Weil runs.\n\nSimon Simard\/For the S.F. Chronicle\n\n[San Francisco](https:\/\/www.sfchronicle.com\/politics\/article\/daniel-lurie-california-democrats-21367510.php) and [Boston](https:\/\/www.sfchronicle.com\/totalsf\/article\/boston-radio-hosts-super-bowl-tirade-sf-21333628.php) are coastal cousins: a pair of historic cities full of character and culture, narrow alleys and stately avenues, seafood and salty waterfronts, old money and new, left-leaning politics sprouting from roots in ever-evolving ethnic neighborhoods.\n\nAnd by early 2023 both cities were grappling with the same questions: What would it take to [create housing out of the office buildings](https:\/\/www.sfchronicle.com\/realestate\/article\/how-many-homes-office-conversions-sf-incentives-20331553.php) that had emptied out since the pandemic? How to [revive hollowed downtown neighborhoods](https:\/\/www.sfchronicle.com\/opinion\/article\/san-francisco-downtown-building-21360989.php) by injecting thousands of residents while also reducing the glut of ghosted office space that had crushed property values?\n\nBoth cities responded by launching office-to-residential programs around the same time. Three years later they are in very different places. Boston’s conversion program is a wild success. San Francisco’s has yet to get off the ground.\n\nArticle continues below this ad\n\nSince Boston’s program launched in 2023, the city has received 22 applications to convert 1.25 million square feet of office space into 1,517 units. From the city’s Seaport and Back Bay to the South End and Financial District, developers are snapping up historic buildings — many of them brick-and-beam structures with wood floors and arched windows — and reinventing them as living spaces.\n\n![The Boston skyline as seen from the Cambridge side of the Charles River.]()\n\nThe Boston skyline as seen from the Cambridge side of the Charles River.\n\nSimon Simard\/For the S.F. Chronicle\n\nMeanwhile in San Francisco, despite extensive efforts — the city has cut fees, sliced red tape, relaxed zoning restrictions, and eliminated both affordable housing requirements and transfer taxes — not one conversion project has started construction. One project announced in January of 2024, Forge Development Partners’ [124-unit conversion of the Humboldt Bank building](https:\/\/www.sfchronicle.com\/bayarea\/article\/sf-office-housing-conversion-18603643.php) at 785 Market St., stalled out due to lack of financing. The developer now hopes to start construction in 2027. Another, a conversion of the [Warfield office building](https:\/\/www.sfchronicle.com\/sf\/article\/historic-s-f-building-could-be-city-s-first-17670623.php) on Market Street, was foreclosed on by its lender before construction started and sold to a nonprofit.\n\nSan Francisco Chronicle Logo\n\nMake us a Preferred Source to get more of our news when you search.\n\n[Add Preferred Source](https:\/\/www.google.com\/preferences\/source?q=sfchronicle.com)\n\nSo why is Boston’s conversion program generating so much housing while San Francisco is still waiting for applications to come in? There are a couple of obvious reasons.\n\nArticle continues below this ad\n\nOne is that Boston’s strong mayoral system allowed Mayor Michelle Wu to move fast to offer financial incentives for conversions, without passing local or state legislation. In July 2023, Wu announced that developers willing to convert downtown office buildings to housing would be eligible to [receive a 75% property tax abatement](https:\/\/www.bostonherald.com\/2025\/12\/13\/boston-mayor-wu-extends-office-to-residential-conversion-program-for-year-aims-to-build-1000-new-homes\/) over 29 years.\n\n![Boston Mayor Michelle Wu’s Office to Residential Conversion Program has made it easier to transform underutilized office space into residential housing units.]()\n\nBoston Mayor Michelle Wu’s Office to Residential Conversion Program has made it easier to transform underutilized office space into residential housing units.\n\nBoston Herald\/MediaNews Group via Getty Images\n\nAdam Burns, who heads up Pinnacle Development, which last year completed Boston’s first conversion and has two others in the pipeline, said the tax abatement is helpful — but the finances have to make sense.\n\n“It doesn’t turn a bad deal into a good deal,” he said. “You still can’t pay someone \\$600 a foot for a vacant office building, but it can move the needle from something that is marginal to something that really does work.”\n\nIn contrast, what Wu did with the swoop of a pen has taken San Francisco more than a year of complicated political and legislative maneuvering.\n\nArticle continues below this ad\n\nLast week, Mayor Daniel Lurie signed a bill establishing a [downtown financing district](https:\/\/www.sfchronicle.com\/sf\/article\/downtown-office-conversions-21345575.php). Eligible projects in the district — it covers the Financial District, Union Square, parts of SoMa and the Market Street corridor from the Embarcadero to Civic Center — will receive annual incentive payments over 30 years to offset development costs of converting office buildings to residences. The payments are backed by the increases in future property tax revenue that will be generated once the struggling office buildings become apartments or condos.\n\n![The Humboldt Bank building was going to be one of San Francisco’s first conversion projects, but it stalled out due to a lack of financing.]()\n\nThe Humboldt Bank building was going to be one of San Francisco’s first conversion projects, but it stalled out due to a lack of financing.\n\nBenjamin Fanjoy\/For the S.F. Chronicle\n\nWhile city planners estimate the payments will amount to about \\$100,000 per unit for a typical project, establishing the program was not easy. It required both the state Assembly and the San Francisco Board of Supervisors to approve legislation. An independent board of directors was formed to oversee the district and sign off on qualified projects.\n\n“The city is doing all the right things to get there, but boy did it take a long time,” Forge Development CEO Richard Hannum said after the vote.\n\nLisa Follman, an architect with San Francisco’s Skidmore Owings & Merrill said she hopes the new financing district “will ignite a fire” under building owners who have considered converting but not done it.\n\nArticle continues below this ad\n\n“Boston did three years ago what San Francisco did last week,” Follman said. “It takes time for those financial incentives to play out.”\n\nBut, beyond the political advantages, Boston has another secret weapon: A senior-level manager who is in charge of personally ushering every project through every step from pre-application to construction permitting.\n\nThat person, John Weil, is a former real estate developer who pounds the pavement looking for potential conversion candidates. Rather than submitting plans to all the relevant departments — public works, fire, building — developers only have to hand the application to Weil. Once a project qualifies for the program, he takes over.\n\n![The building at 263 Summer St. in Boston is under construction and will become another office transformed into housing.]()\n\nThe building at 263 Summer St. in Boston is under construction and will become another office transformed into housing.\n\nSimon Simard\/For the S.F. Chronicle\n\n“We have one point of contact — it sounds silly and mundane, but it’s actually very important,” said Prataap Patrose, senior adviser to the chief of planning for Boston. “It’s truly one stop. John is that one person to call.”\n\nArticle continues below this ad\n\nWeil started in the summer of 2023 after a consultant had studied 380 buildings that would qualify for the program. He looked into how much debt there was on each property, what the ownership structure was, how much of it was leased and for how long. He sought out owners who might be interested in selling and developers who might be interested in buying.\n\n“I try to come at this from a developer’s mentality. I spent my days walking the buildings, calling the owners, and saying, ‘What else do you own?’” he said. “My card has my cell phone number on it. I expect it to ring seven days a week — and it does.”\n\nWeil encourages developers and building owners to come to the city early in the process.\n\n“Don’t wait until you have a fully baked concept to call me,” he said. “Call me literally when you have a street address, and I will walk you through what I know about that building, whether I think it’s a good candidate for conversion.”\n\n![The inside of 263 Summer St. in Boston shows a mural representing the famed sign on top of the building that will become housing.]()\n\nThe inside of 263 Summer St. in Boston shows a mural representing the famed sign on top of the building that will become housing.\n\nSimon Simard\/For the S.F. Chronicle\n\nAnd there are so many good candidates. In Boston’s Seaport District, Burns is converting an old dry goods warehouse on 263 Summer St. with its famous “Boston Wharf Co. Industrial Real Estate” red neon rooftop sign. It will yield 77 apartments.\n\nThen there is the 11-story, 255-unit conversion project in the pipeline next to the South Meeting House on Washington Street, where Samuel Adams and the Sons of Liberty hatched a plan to dump 342 chests of British East India Co. tea into Boston Harbor in 1773. Next to the Custom House Tower and a pocket park, 18 units are being built out at 150 Milk St.\n\n“It’s definitely one of those ‘Paul Revere slept here’ buildings,” Weil said. “You come out on a snowy evening and squint, and it feels like it’s 150 years ago.”\n\nBurns said the buildings for conversions tend to be naturally affordable because they lack the yoga rooms and rooftop fire pits and gyms that add to the cost of modern residential high-rises. His first project, and the first to be completed under Boston’s program, leased up right away.\n\n“It’s the sort of building where you look up at the beams and see the names of the guys who framed it or the ship that it came off of,” Burns said.\n\nWhile San Francisco is far behind Boston’s conversions progress, local developers and architects say it’s not for lack of trying. The city has eliminated planning code requirements and streamlined permitting and approval processes. Former Mayor London Breed successfully passed Proposition C in 2024, which waived transfer tax fees for office-to-residential conversions once the building is converted to housing.\n\n“I have been practicing in San Francisco for 20 years now, and I have never seen as much movement as I have in the last 18 months,” Follman, the architect, said. “The planning code has been rewritten. The zoning has changed. One of the huge barriers (to conversions) is people don’t know how much the city has done.”\n\n![Downtown San Francisco, seen from the peak of Mount Davidson, has yet to start an office-to-housing conversion.]()\n\nDowntown San Francisco, seen from the peak of Mount Davidson, has yet to start an office-to-housing conversion.\n\nMinh Connors\/For the S.F. Chronicle\n\nStill, San Francisco has unique challenges. Construction costs are the highest in the country, and many conversions will require seismic upgrades — something Boston doesn’t have to worry about.\n\nJacob Bintliff, manager of economic recovery initiatives for the San Francisco Office of Economic and Workforce Development, said recently that interest in the city’s conversions program has grown as the financing district got closer to launching.\n\n“We have been fielding a couple of inquiries a week over the last few weeks. People are saying, ‘Let me see if I understand this right, I am interested. I am looking at buildings,’ he said. ‘We are encouraged by the level of interest and the level of detail that people are asking about.’\n\nThere are about 518 buildings within San Francisco’s new financing district, about 50 of which the city has identified as being good candidates for conversion. If they were all to be converted to housing, it would produce about 4,400 units.\n\nOnce the math makes sense, it can be an efficient way to produce housing with tons of character in the heart of the city, Burns said. While his Boston firm has mostly built new multifamily complexes, conversions are appealing because they provide “compression on the rate of return” — basically, new housing can be delivered faster so revenue starts rolling in sooner.\n\n“If you already have a foundation, you already have a utility structure, you already have a facade, roof, windows — all that saves time,” he said. “The faster we can purchase something and bring it online, the better our returns are.”\n\nFeb 23, 2026\n\n![Photo of J.K. Dineen]()\n\nReporter\n\nJ.K. Dineen covers housing and real estate development. He joined The Chronicle in 2014 covering San Francisco land use politics for the City Hall team. He has since expanded his focus to explore housing and development issues throughout Northern California. He is the author of two books: \"Here Tomorrow\" (Heyday, 2013) and \"High Spirits\" (Heyday, 2015).","meta_canonical":null}

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Meta Title	Boston turns empty offices into 1,500 homes, San Francisco hasn't
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Boilerpipe Text	John Weil stands inside 263 Summer St. in Boston, an office building being transformed into housing. It’s part of Boston’s successful office to residential conversion program, which Weil runs. Simon Simard/For the S.F. Chronicle San Francisco and Boston are coastal cousins: a pair of historic cities full of character and culture, narrow alleys and stately avenues, seafood and salty waterfronts, old money and new, left-leaning politics sprouting from roots in ever-evolving ethnic neighborhoods. And by early 2023 both cities were grappling with the same questions: What would it take to create housing out of the office buildings that had emptied out since the pandemic? How to revive hollowed downtown neighborhoods by injecting thousands of residents while also reducing the glut of ghosted office space that had crushed property values? Both cities responded by launching office-to-residential programs around the same time. Three years later they are in very different places. Boston’s conversion program is a wild success. San Francisco’s has yet to get off the ground. Article continues below this ad Since Boston’s program launched in 2023, the city has received 22 applications to convert 1.25 million square feet of office space into 1,517 units. From the city’s Seaport and Back Bay to the South End and Financial District, developers are snapping up historic buildings — many of them brick-and-beam structures with wood floors and arched windows — and reinventing them as living spaces. The Boston skyline as seen from the Cambridge side of the Charles River. Simon Simard/For the S.F. Chronicle Meanwhile in San Francisco, despite extensive efforts — the city has cut fees, sliced red tape, relaxed zoning restrictions, and eliminated both affordable housing requirements and transfer taxes — not one conversion project has started construction. One project announced in January of 2024, Forge Development Partners’ 124-unit conversion of the Humboldt Bank building at 785 Market St., stalled out due to lack of financing. The developer now hopes to start construction in 2027. Another, a conversion of the Warfield office building on Market Street, was foreclosed on by its lender before construction started and sold to a nonprofit. San Francisco Chronicle Logo Make us a Preferred Source to get more of our news when you search. Add Preferred Source So why is Boston’s conversion program generating so much housing while San Francisco is still waiting for applications to come in? There are a couple of obvious reasons. Article continues below this ad One is that Boston’s strong mayoral system allowed Mayor Michelle Wu to move fast to offer financial incentives for conversions, without passing local or state legislation. In July 2023, Wu announced that developers willing to convert downtown office buildings to housing would be eligible to receive a 75% property tax abatement over 29 years. Boston Mayor Michelle Wu’s Office to Residential Conversion Program has made it easier to transform underutilized office space into residential housing units. Boston Herald/MediaNews Group via Getty Images Adam Burns, who heads up Pinnacle Development, which last year completed Boston’s first conversion and has two others in the pipeline, said the tax abatement is helpful — but the finances have to make sense. “It doesn’t turn a bad deal into a good deal,” he said. “You still can’t pay someone $600 a foot for a vacant office building, but it can move the needle from something that is marginal to something that really does work.” In contrast, what Wu did with the swoop of a pen has taken San Francisco more than a year of complicated political and legislative maneuvering. Article continues below this ad Last week, Mayor Daniel Lurie signed a bill establishing a downtown financing district . Eligible projects in the district — it covers the Financial District, Union Square, parts of SoMa and the Market Street corridor from the Embarcadero to Civic Center — will receive annual incentive payments over 30 years to offset development costs of converting office buildings to residences. The payments are backed by the increases in future property tax revenue that will be generated once the struggling office buildings become apartments or condos. The Humboldt Bank building was going to be one of San Francisco’s first conversion projects, but it stalled out due to a lack of financing. Benjamin Fanjoy/For the S.F. Chronicle While city planners estimate the payments will amount to about $100,000 per unit for a typical project, establishing the program was not easy. It required both the state Assembly and the San Francisco Board of Supervisors to approve legislation. An independent board of directors was formed to oversee the district and sign off on qualified projects. “The city is doing all the right things to get there, but boy did it take a long time,” Forge Development CEO Richard Hannum said after the vote. Lisa Follman, an architect with San Francisco’s Skidmore Owings & Merrill said she hopes the new financing district “will ignite a fire” under building owners who have considered converting but not done it. Article continues below this ad “Boston did three years ago what San Francisco did last week,” Follman said. “It takes time for those financial incentives to play out.” But, beyond the political advantages, Boston has another secret weapon: A senior-level manager who is in charge of personally ushering every project through every step from pre-application to construction permitting. That person, John Weil, is a former real estate developer who pounds the pavement looking for potential conversion candidates. Rather than submitting plans to all the relevant departments — public works, fire, building — developers only have to hand the application to Weil. Once a project qualifies for the program, he takes over. The building at 263 Summer St. in Boston is under construction and will become another office transformed into housing. Simon Simard/For the S.F. Chronicle “We have one point of contact — it sounds silly and mundane, but it’s actually very important,” said Prataap Patrose, senior adviser to the chief of planning for Boston. “It’s truly one stop. John is that one person to call.” Article continues below this ad Weil started in the summer of 2023 after a consultant had studied 380 buildings that would qualify for the program. He looked into how much debt there was on each property, what the ownership structure was, how much of it was leased and for how long. He sought out owners who might be interested in selling and developers who might be interested in buying. “I try to come at this from a developer’s mentality. I spent my days walking the buildings, calling the owners, and saying, ‘What else do you own?’” he said. “My card has my cell phone number on it. I expect it to ring seven days a week — and it does.” Weil encourages developers and building owners to come to the city early in the process. “Don’t wait until you have a fully baked concept to call me,” he said. “Call me literally when you have a street address, and I will walk you through what I know about that building, whether I think it’s a good candidate for conversion.” The inside of 263 Summer St. in Boston shows a mural representing the famed sign on top of the building that will become housing. Simon Simard/For the S.F. Chronicle And there are so many good candidates. In Boston’s Seaport District, Burns is converting an old dry goods warehouse on 263 Summer St. with its famous “Boston Wharf Co. Industrial Real Estate” red neon rooftop sign. It will yield 77 apartments. Then there is the 11-story, 255-unit conversion project in the pipeline next to the South Meeting House on Washington Street, where Samuel Adams and the Sons of Liberty hatched a plan to dump 342 chests of British East India Co. tea into Boston Harbor in 1773. Next to the Custom House Tower and a pocket park, 18 units are being built out at 150 Milk St. “It’s definitely one of those ‘Paul Revere slept here’ buildings,” Weil said. “You come out on a snowy evening and squint, and it feels like it’s 150 years ago.” Burns said the buildings for conversions tend to be naturally affordable because they lack the yoga rooms and rooftop fire pits and gyms that add to the cost of modern residential high-rises. His first project, and the first to be completed under Boston’s program, leased up right away. “It’s the sort of building where you look up at the beams and see the names of the guys who framed it or the ship that it came off of,” Burns said. While San Francisco is far behind Boston’s conversions progress, local developers and architects say it’s not for lack of trying. The city has eliminated planning code requirements and streamlined permitting and approval processes. Former Mayor London Breed successfully passed Proposition C in 2024, which waived transfer tax fees for office-to-residential conversions once the building is converted to housing. “I have been practicing in San Francisco for 20 years now, and I have never seen as much movement as I have in the last 18 months,” Follman, the architect, said. “The planning code has been rewritten. The zoning has changed. One of the huge barriers (to conversions) is people don’t know how much the city has done.” Downtown San Francisco, seen from the peak of Mount Davidson, has yet to start an office-to-housing conversion. Minh Connors/For the S.F. Chronicle Still, San Francisco has unique challenges. Construction costs are the highest in the country, and many conversions will require seismic upgrades — something Boston doesn’t have to worry about. Jacob Bintliff, manager of economic recovery initiatives for the San Francisco Office of Economic and Workforce Development, said recently that interest in the city’s conversions program has grown as the financing district got closer to launching. “We have been fielding a couple of inquiries a week over the last few weeks. People are saying, ‘Let me see if I understand this right, I am interested. I am looking at buildings,’ he said. ‘We are encouraged by the level of interest and the level of detail that people are asking about.’ There are about 518 buildings within San Francisco’s new financing district, about 50 of which the city has identified as being good candidates for conversion. If they were all to be converted to housing, it would produce about 4,400 units. Once the math makes sense, it can be an efficient way to produce housing with tons of character in the heart of the city, Burns said. While his Boston firm has mostly built new multifamily complexes, conversions are appealing because they provide “compression on the rate of return” — basically, new housing can be delivered faster so revenue starts rolling in sooner. “If you already have a foundation, you already have a utility structure, you already have a facade, roof, windows — all that saves time,” he said. “The faster we can purchase something and bring it online, the better our returns are.” Feb 23, 2026 Reporter J.K. Dineen covers housing and real estate development. He joined The Chronicle in 2014 covering San Francisco land use politics for the City Hall team. He has since expanded his focus to explore housing and development issues throughout Northern California. He is the author of two books: "Here Tomorrow" (Heyday, 2013) and "High Spirits" (Heyday, 2015).
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Why can’t San Francisco? By [J.K. Dineen](https://www.sfchronicle.com/author/j-k-dineen/), Staff Writer Feb 23, 2026 ![John Weil stands inside 263 Summer St. in Boston, an office building being transformed into housing. It’s part of Boston’s successful office to residential conversion program, which Weil runs.]() John Weil stands inside 263 Summer St. in Boston, an office building being transformed into housing. It’s part of Boston’s successful office to residential conversion program, which Weil runs. Simon Simard/For the S.F. Chronicle [San Francisco](https://www.sfchronicle.com/politics/article/daniel-lurie-california-democrats-21367510.php) and [Boston](https://www.sfchronicle.com/totalsf/article/boston-radio-hosts-super-bowl-tirade-sf-21333628.php) are coastal cousins: a pair of historic cities full of character and culture, narrow alleys and stately avenues, seafood and salty waterfronts, old money and new, left-leaning politics sprouting from roots in ever-evolving ethnic neighborhoods. And by early 2023 both cities were grappling with the same questions: What would it take to [create housing out of the office buildings](https://www.sfchronicle.com/realestate/article/how-many-homes-office-conversions-sf-incentives-20331553.php) that had emptied out since the pandemic? How to [revive hollowed downtown neighborhoods](https://www.sfchronicle.com/opinion/article/san-francisco-downtown-building-21360989.php) by injecting thousands of residents while also reducing the glut of ghosted office space that had crushed property values? Both cities responded by launching office-to-residential programs around the same time. Three years later they are in very different places. Boston’s conversion program is a wild success. San Francisco’s has yet to get off the ground. Advertisement Article continues below this ad Since Boston’s program launched in 2023, the city has received 22 applications to convert 1.25 million square feet of office space into 1,517 units. From the city’s Seaport and Back Bay to the South End and Financial District, developers are snapping up historic buildings — many of them brick-and-beam structures with wood floors and arched windows — and reinventing them as living spaces. ![The Boston skyline as seen from the Cambridge side of the Charles River.]() The Boston skyline as seen from the Cambridge side of the Charles River. Simon Simard/For the S.F. Chronicle Meanwhile in San Francisco, despite extensive efforts — the city has cut fees, sliced red tape, relaxed zoning restrictions, and eliminated both affordable housing requirements and transfer taxes — not one conversion project has started construction. One project announced in January of 2024, Forge Development Partners’ [124-unit conversion of the Humboldt Bank building](https://www.sfchronicle.com/bayarea/article/sf-office-housing-conversion-18603643.php) at 785 Market St., stalled out due to lack of financing. The developer now hopes to start construction in 2027. Another, a conversion of the [Warfield office building](https://www.sfchronicle.com/sf/article/historic-s-f-building-could-be-city-s-first-17670623.php) on Market Street, was foreclosed on by its lender before construction started and sold to a nonprofit. San Francisco Chronicle Logo ### See more S.F. Chronicle on Google Make us a Preferred Source to get more of our news when you search. [Add Preferred Source](https://www.google.com/preferences/source?q=sfchronicle.com) So why is Boston’s conversion program generating so much housing while San Francisco is still waiting for applications to come in? There are a couple of obvious reasons. Advertisement Article continues below this ad One is that Boston’s strong mayoral system allowed Mayor Michelle Wu to move fast to offer financial incentives for conversions, without passing local or state legislation. In July 2023, Wu announced that developers willing to convert downtown office buildings to housing would be eligible to [receive a 75% property tax abatement](https://www.bostonherald.com/2025/12/13/boston-mayor-wu-extends-office-to-residential-conversion-program-for-year-aims-to-build-1000-new-homes/) over 29 years. ![Boston Mayor Michelle Wu’s Office to Residential Conversion Program has made it easier to transform underutilized office space into residential housing units.]() Boston Mayor Michelle Wu’s Office to Residential Conversion Program has made it easier to transform underutilized office space into residential housing units. Boston Herald/MediaNews Group via Getty Images Adam Burns, who heads up Pinnacle Development, which last year completed Boston’s first conversion and has two others in the pipeline, said the tax abatement is helpful — but the finances have to make sense. “It doesn’t turn a bad deal into a good deal,” he said. “You still can’t pay someone \$600 a foot for a vacant office building, but it can move the needle from something that is marginal to something that really does work.” In contrast, what Wu did with the swoop of a pen has taken San Francisco more than a year of complicated political and legislative maneuvering. Advertisement Article continues below this ad Last week, Mayor Daniel Lurie signed a bill establishing a [downtown financing district](https://www.sfchronicle.com/sf/article/downtown-office-conversions-21345575.php). Eligible projects in the district — it covers the Financial District, Union Square, parts of SoMa and the Market Street corridor from the Embarcadero to Civic Center — will receive annual incentive payments over 30 years to offset development costs of converting office buildings to residences. The payments are backed by the increases in future property tax revenue that will be generated once the struggling office buildings become apartments or condos. ![The Humboldt Bank building was going to be one of San Francisco’s first conversion projects, but it stalled out due to a lack of financing.]() The Humboldt Bank building was going to be one of San Francisco’s first conversion projects, but it stalled out due to a lack of financing. Benjamin Fanjoy/For the S.F. Chronicle While city planners estimate the payments will amount to about \$100,000 per unit for a typical project, establishing the program was not easy. It required both the state Assembly and the San Francisco Board of Supervisors to approve legislation. An independent board of directors was formed to oversee the district and sign off on qualified projects. “The city is doing all the right things to get there, but boy did it take a long time,” Forge Development CEO Richard Hannum said after the vote. Lisa Follman, an architect with San Francisco’s Skidmore Owings & Merrill said she hopes the new financing district “will ignite a fire” under building owners who have considered converting but not done it. Advertisement Article continues below this ad “Boston did three years ago what San Francisco did last week,” Follman said. “It takes time for those financial incentives to play out.” But, beyond the political advantages, Boston has another secret weapon: A senior-level manager who is in charge of personally ushering every project through every step from pre-application to construction permitting. That person, John Weil, is a former real estate developer who pounds the pavement looking for potential conversion candidates. Rather than submitting plans to all the relevant departments — public works, fire, building — developers only have to hand the application to Weil. Once a project qualifies for the program, he takes over. ![The building at 263 Summer St. in Boston is under construction and will become another office transformed into housing.]() The building at 263 Summer St. in Boston is under construction and will become another office transformed into housing. Simon Simard/For the S.F. Chronicle “We have one point of contact — it sounds silly and mundane, but it’s actually very important,” said Prataap Patrose, senior adviser to the chief of planning for Boston. “It’s truly one stop. John is that one person to call.” Advertisement Article continues below this ad Weil started in the summer of 2023 after a consultant had studied 380 buildings that would qualify for the program. He looked into how much debt there was on each property, what the ownership structure was, how much of it was leased and for how long. He sought out owners who might be interested in selling and developers who might be interested in buying. “I try to come at this from a developer’s mentality. I spent my days walking the buildings, calling the owners, and saying, ‘What else do you own?’” he said. “My card has my cell phone number on it. I expect it to ring seven days a week — and it does.” Weil encourages developers and building owners to come to the city early in the process. “Don’t wait until you have a fully baked concept to call me,” he said. “Call me literally when you have a street address, and I will walk you through what I know about that building, whether I think it’s a good candidate for conversion.” ![The inside of 263 Summer St. in Boston shows a mural representing the famed sign on top of the building that will become housing.]() The inside of 263 Summer St. in Boston shows a mural representing the famed sign on top of the building that will become housing. Simon Simard/For the S.F. Chronicle And there are so many good candidates. In Boston’s Seaport District, Burns is converting an old dry goods warehouse on 263 Summer St. with its famous “Boston Wharf Co. Industrial Real Estate” red neon rooftop sign. It will yield 77 apartments. Then there is the 11-story, 255-unit conversion project in the pipeline next to the South Meeting House on Washington Street, where Samuel Adams and the Sons of Liberty hatched a plan to dump 342 chests of British East India Co. tea into Boston Harbor in 1773. Next to the Custom House Tower and a pocket park, 18 units are being built out at 150 Milk St. “It’s definitely one of those ‘Paul Revere slept here’ buildings,” Weil said. “You come out on a snowy evening and squint, and it feels like it’s 150 years ago.” Burns said the buildings for conversions tend to be naturally affordable because they lack the yoga rooms and rooftop fire pits and gyms that add to the cost of modern residential high-rises. His first project, and the first to be completed under Boston’s program, leased up right away. “It’s the sort of building where you look up at the beams and see the names of the guys who framed it or the ship that it came off of,” Burns said. While San Francisco is far behind Boston’s conversions progress, local developers and architects say it’s not for lack of trying. The city has eliminated planning code requirements and streamlined permitting and approval processes. Former Mayor London Breed successfully passed Proposition C in 2024, which waived transfer tax fees for office-to-residential conversions once the building is converted to housing. “I have been practicing in San Francisco for 20 years now, and I have never seen as much movement as I have in the last 18 months,” Follman, the architect, said. “The planning code has been rewritten. The zoning has changed. One of the huge barriers (to conversions) is people don’t know how much the city has done.” ![Downtown San Francisco, seen from the peak of Mount Davidson, has yet to start an office-to-housing conversion.]() Downtown San Francisco, seen from the peak of Mount Davidson, has yet to start an office-to-housing conversion. Minh Connors/For the S.F. Chronicle Still, San Francisco has unique challenges. Construction costs are the highest in the country, and many conversions will require seismic upgrades — something Boston doesn’t have to worry about. Jacob Bintliff, manager of economic recovery initiatives for the San Francisco Office of Economic and Workforce Development, said recently that interest in the city’s conversions program has grown as the financing district got closer to launching. “We have been fielding a couple of inquiries a week over the last few weeks. People are saying, ‘Let me see if I understand this right, I am interested. I am looking at buildings,’ he said. ‘We are encouraged by the level of interest and the level of detail that people are asking about.’ There are about 518 buildings within San Francisco’s new financing district, about 50 of which the city has identified as being good candidates for conversion. If they were all to be converted to housing, it would produce about 4,400 units. Once the math makes sense, it can be an efficient way to produce housing with tons of character in the heart of the city, Burns said. While his Boston firm has mostly built new multifamily complexes, conversions are appealing because they provide “compression on the rate of return” — basically, new housing can be delivered faster so revenue starts rolling in sooner. “If you already have a foundation, you already have a utility structure, you already have a facade, roof, windows — all that saves time,” he said. “The faster we can purchase something and bring it online, the better our returns are.” Feb 23, 2026 ![Photo of J.K. Dineen]() [J.K. Dineen](https://www.sfchronicle.com/author/j-k-dineen/) Reporter J.K. Dineen covers housing and real estate development. He joined The Chronicle in 2014 covering San Francisco land use politics for the City Hall team. He has since expanded his focus to explore housing and development issues throughout Northern California. 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Readable Markdown	![John Weil stands inside 263 Summer St. in Boston, an office building being transformed into housing. It’s part of Boston’s successful office to residential conversion program, which Weil runs.]() John Weil stands inside 263 Summer St. in Boston, an office building being transformed into housing. It’s part of Boston’s successful office to residential conversion program, which Weil runs. Simon Simard/For the S.F. Chronicle [San Francisco](https://www.sfchronicle.com/politics/article/daniel-lurie-california-democrats-21367510.php) and [Boston](https://www.sfchronicle.com/totalsf/article/boston-radio-hosts-super-bowl-tirade-sf-21333628.php) are coastal cousins: a pair of historic cities full of character and culture, narrow alleys and stately avenues, seafood and salty waterfronts, old money and new, left-leaning politics sprouting from roots in ever-evolving ethnic neighborhoods. And by early 2023 both cities were grappling with the same questions: What would it take to [create housing out of the office buildings](https://www.sfchronicle.com/realestate/article/how-many-homes-office-conversions-sf-incentives-20331553.php) that had emptied out since the pandemic? How to [revive hollowed downtown neighborhoods](https://www.sfchronicle.com/opinion/article/san-francisco-downtown-building-21360989.php) by injecting thousands of residents while also reducing the glut of ghosted office space that had crushed property values? Both cities responded by launching office-to-residential programs around the same time. Three years later they are in very different places. Boston’s conversion program is a wild success. San Francisco’s has yet to get off the ground. Article continues below this ad Since Boston’s program launched in 2023, the city has received 22 applications to convert 1.25 million square feet of office space into 1,517 units. From the city’s Seaport and Back Bay to the South End and Financial District, developers are snapping up historic buildings — many of them brick-and-beam structures with wood floors and arched windows — and reinventing them as living spaces. ![The Boston skyline as seen from the Cambridge side of the Charles River.]() The Boston skyline as seen from the Cambridge side of the Charles River. Simon Simard/For the S.F. Chronicle Meanwhile in San Francisco, despite extensive efforts — the city has cut fees, sliced red tape, relaxed zoning restrictions, and eliminated both affordable housing requirements and transfer taxes — not one conversion project has started construction. One project announced in January of 2024, Forge Development Partners’ [124-unit conversion of the Humboldt Bank building](https://www.sfchronicle.com/bayarea/article/sf-office-housing-conversion-18603643.php) at 785 Market St., stalled out due to lack of financing. The developer now hopes to start construction in 2027. Another, a conversion of the [Warfield office building](https://www.sfchronicle.com/sf/article/historic-s-f-building-could-be-city-s-first-17670623.php) on Market Street, was foreclosed on by its lender before construction started and sold to a nonprofit. San Francisco Chronicle Logo Make us a Preferred Source to get more of our news when you search. [Add Preferred Source](https://www.google.com/preferences/source?q=sfchronicle.com) So why is Boston’s conversion program generating so much housing while San Francisco is still waiting for applications to come in? There are a couple of obvious reasons. Article continues below this ad One is that Boston’s strong mayoral system allowed Mayor Michelle Wu to move fast to offer financial incentives for conversions, without passing local or state legislation. In July 2023, Wu announced that developers willing to convert downtown office buildings to housing would be eligible to [receive a 75% property tax abatement](https://www.bostonherald.com/2025/12/13/boston-mayor-wu-extends-office-to-residential-conversion-program-for-year-aims-to-build-1000-new-homes/) over 29 years. ![Boston Mayor Michelle Wu’s Office to Residential Conversion Program has made it easier to transform underutilized office space into residential housing units.]() Boston Mayor Michelle Wu’s Office to Residential Conversion Program has made it easier to transform underutilized office space into residential housing units. Boston Herald/MediaNews Group via Getty Images Adam Burns, who heads up Pinnacle Development, which last year completed Boston’s first conversion and has two others in the pipeline, said the tax abatement is helpful — but the finances have to make sense. “It doesn’t turn a bad deal into a good deal,” he said. “You still can’t pay someone \$600 a foot for a vacant office building, but it can move the needle from something that is marginal to something that really does work.” In contrast, what Wu did with the swoop of a pen has taken San Francisco more than a year of complicated political and legislative maneuvering. Article continues below this ad Last week, Mayor Daniel Lurie signed a bill establishing a [downtown financing district](https://www.sfchronicle.com/sf/article/downtown-office-conversions-21345575.php). Eligible projects in the district — it covers the Financial District, Union Square, parts of SoMa and the Market Street corridor from the Embarcadero to Civic Center — will receive annual incentive payments over 30 years to offset development costs of converting office buildings to residences. The payments are backed by the increases in future property tax revenue that will be generated once the struggling office buildings become apartments or condos. ![The Humboldt Bank building was going to be one of San Francisco’s first conversion projects, but it stalled out due to a lack of financing.]() The Humboldt Bank building was going to be one of San Francisco’s first conversion projects, but it stalled out due to a lack of financing. Benjamin Fanjoy/For the S.F. Chronicle While city planners estimate the payments will amount to about \$100,000 per unit for a typical project, establishing the program was not easy. It required both the state Assembly and the San Francisco Board of Supervisors to approve legislation. An independent board of directors was formed to oversee the district and sign off on qualified projects. “The city is doing all the right things to get there, but boy did it take a long time,” Forge Development CEO Richard Hannum said after the vote. Lisa Follman, an architect with San Francisco’s Skidmore Owings & Merrill said she hopes the new financing district “will ignite a fire” under building owners who have considered converting but not done it. Article continues below this ad “Boston did three years ago what San Francisco did last week,” Follman said. “It takes time for those financial incentives to play out.” But, beyond the political advantages, Boston has another secret weapon: A senior-level manager who is in charge of personally ushering every project through every step from pre-application to construction permitting. That person, John Weil, is a former real estate developer who pounds the pavement looking for potential conversion candidates. Rather than submitting plans to all the relevant departments — public works, fire, building — developers only have to hand the application to Weil. Once a project qualifies for the program, he takes over. ![The building at 263 Summer St. in Boston is under construction and will become another office transformed into housing.]() The building at 263 Summer St. in Boston is under construction and will become another office transformed into housing. Simon Simard/For the S.F. Chronicle “We have one point of contact — it sounds silly and mundane, but it’s actually very important,” said Prataap Patrose, senior adviser to the chief of planning for Boston. “It’s truly one stop. John is that one person to call.” Article continues below this ad Weil started in the summer of 2023 after a consultant had studied 380 buildings that would qualify for the program. He looked into how much debt there was on each property, what the ownership structure was, how much of it was leased and for how long. He sought out owners who might be interested in selling and developers who might be interested in buying. “I try to come at this from a developer’s mentality. I spent my days walking the buildings, calling the owners, and saying, ‘What else do you own?’” he said. “My card has my cell phone number on it. I expect it to ring seven days a week — and it does.” Weil encourages developers and building owners to come to the city early in the process. “Don’t wait until you have a fully baked concept to call me,” he said. “Call me literally when you have a street address, and I will walk you through what I know about that building, whether I think it’s a good candidate for conversion.” ![The inside of 263 Summer St. in Boston shows a mural representing the famed sign on top of the building that will become housing.]() The inside of 263 Summer St. in Boston shows a mural representing the famed sign on top of the building that will become housing. Simon Simard/For the S.F. Chronicle And there are so many good candidates. In Boston’s Seaport District, Burns is converting an old dry goods warehouse on 263 Summer St. with its famous “Boston Wharf Co. Industrial Real Estate” red neon rooftop sign. It will yield 77 apartments. Then there is the 11-story, 255-unit conversion project in the pipeline next to the South Meeting House on Washington Street, where Samuel Adams and the Sons of Liberty hatched a plan to dump 342 chests of British East India Co. tea into Boston Harbor in 1773. Next to the Custom House Tower and a pocket park, 18 units are being built out at 150 Milk St. “It’s definitely one of those ‘Paul Revere slept here’ buildings,” Weil said. “You come out on a snowy evening and squint, and it feels like it’s 150 years ago.” Burns said the buildings for conversions tend to be naturally affordable because they lack the yoga rooms and rooftop fire pits and gyms that add to the cost of modern residential high-rises. His first project, and the first to be completed under Boston’s program, leased up right away. “It’s the sort of building where you look up at the beams and see the names of the guys who framed it or the ship that it came off of,” Burns said. While San Francisco is far behind Boston’s conversions progress, local developers and architects say it’s not for lack of trying. The city has eliminated planning code requirements and streamlined permitting and approval processes. Former Mayor London Breed successfully passed Proposition C in 2024, which waived transfer tax fees for office-to-residential conversions once the building is converted to housing. “I have been practicing in San Francisco for 20 years now, and I have never seen as much movement as I have in the last 18 months,” Follman, the architect, said. “The planning code has been rewritten. The zoning has changed. One of the huge barriers (to conversions) is people don’t know how much the city has done.” ![Downtown San Francisco, seen from the peak of Mount Davidson, has yet to start an office-to-housing conversion.]() Downtown San Francisco, seen from the peak of Mount Davidson, has yet to start an office-to-housing conversion. Minh Connors/For the S.F. Chronicle Still, San Francisco has unique challenges. Construction costs are the highest in the country, and many conversions will require seismic upgrades — something Boston doesn’t have to worry about. Jacob Bintliff, manager of economic recovery initiatives for the San Francisco Office of Economic and Workforce Development, said recently that interest in the city’s conversions program has grown as the financing district got closer to launching. “We have been fielding a couple of inquiries a week over the last few weeks. People are saying, ‘Let me see if I understand this right, I am interested. I am looking at buildings,’ he said. ‘We are encouraged by the level of interest and the level of detail that people are asking about.’ There are about 518 buildings within San Francisco’s new financing district, about 50 of which the city has identified as being good candidates for conversion. If they were all to be converted to housing, it would produce about 4,400 units. Once the math makes sense, it can be an efficient way to produce housing with tons of character in the heart of the city, Burns said. While his Boston firm has mostly built new multifamily complexes, conversions are appealing because they provide “compression on the rate of return” — basically, new housing can be delivered faster so revenue starts rolling in sooner. “If you already have a foundation, you already have a utility structure, you already have a facade, roof, windows — all that saves time,” he said. “The faster we can purchase something and bring it online, the better our returns are.” Feb 23, 2026 ![Photo of J.K. Dineen]() Reporter J.K. Dineen covers housing and real estate development. He joined The Chronicle in 2014 covering San Francisco land use politics for the City Hall team. He has since expanded his focus to explore housing and development issues throughout Northern California. He is the author of two books: "Here Tomorrow" (Heyday, 2013) and "High Spirits" (Heyday, 2015).
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