☕ Downtown reinvention

Can we actually convert offices into apartments? Together with [Percent]( [July 16, 2023]( | [View Online]( | [Sign Up]( | [Shop]( [An artist holds on to a lamppost as he performs with a ball in the Montmatre district of Paris] In a scene coming to a Pixar movie near you, an artist holds on to a lamppost as he performs with a ball in the Montmartre district of Paris. Sergei Gapon/AFP via Getty Images [CLICK]( THIS TO REMAIN A SUBSCRIBER Clicking on newsletter links is the only way for us to know you are reading (and enjoying) Morning Brew. If you don't click by next month, you will stop receiving this newsletter. [Click here]( to let us know that you’re still an active subscriber. Thanks!  BROWSING  [Classifieds banner image]( The wackiest headlines from the week as they would appear in a Classifieds section. Careers SEAWORTHY CAPTAIN (MUST WORK HOLIDAYS): The Hallmark Channel is hosting a [Christmas cruise]( in 2024 for fans of its Yuletide films. Your trip will begin by walking into your assigned cabin and finding it’s been double-booked with a hunky tree salesman who will teach you the true meaning of the season. GAME HUNTER: A new study found that 87% of all classic video games released in the US are [endangered]( and at risk of disappearing altogether. The Oregon Trail is apparently laid up with dysentery. Personal SOME QUESTIONS: A judge ruled that Lady Gaga doesn’t need to pay her dognapper’s accomplice half a million dollars. Gaga originally said she’d give anyone $500,000 “no questions asked” if they returned her French bulldogs that were stolen in 2021. SEEKING NEW PARROTHEAD HANGOUT: The property developer that owns the ultra-kitschy Times Square Margaritaville Resort filed for [bankruptcy](. But it’s open o’clock somewhere—the [first Margaritaville ski resort location]( will launch in Lake Tahoe by the end of the year. For sale OVERFLOW EVS: About three months’ worth of unsold electric vehicles are [waiting]( patiently on dealer lots to be purchased by someone ready to save the planet. Salespeople will even throw in a free “My dad is so mad I bought this” bumper sticker. SLIGHTLY SAFER SUB: A yacht broker is trying to [sell]( a less infamous OceanGate submersible called Antipodes for $795,000. There’s nothing wrong with it (unless you consider that it once carried the rapper Macklemore a bad thing), and all of its past expeditions were successful. Also, OceanGate didn’t build it.—MM  TOGETHER WITH PERCENT APY to the sky [Percent]( Look up! It’s a bird! It’s a plane! Nah…it’s a sky-high APY rate that can help diversify your portfolio. How high? A whopping 17.8%, and here’s how to get it: Say hi to Percent. Percent offers exclusive private credit deals up to 20% APY and previously out of reach to most investors. We’re talkin’ short-term, income-generating investments between 9 months and several years + available liquidity in as little as one month. And get this: Percent offers [a generous welcome bonus of up to $500]( on your first investment, low starting minimums of just $500, and access to SMB lending in Latin America and US merchant cash advances, to name a few. Anyone can sign up, but you do have to be an [accredited investor]( to invest in a deal. [Take your portfolio to the next level](.  SNAPSHOT  [Photo of the week](#) [People watch flowing lava during an volcanic eruption near Litli Hrutur, south-west of Reykjavik in Iceland on July 10, 2023. A volcanic eruption started on July 10, 2023 around 30 kilometres (19 miles) from Iceland's capital Reykjavik, the country's meteorological office said, marking the third time in two years that lava has gushed out in the area.]Kristinn Magnusson/AFP via Getty Images A volcanic eruption has to be the apex background for a silhouette. This week, a volcano about 19 miles outside Iceland’s capital, Reykjavik, began belching lava—the area’s third eruption in the past two years.  SCIENCE  [Dept. of Progress](#) [The first anniversary image from NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope displays star birth like it’s never been seen before, full of detailed, impressionistic texture. The subject is the Rho Ophiuchi cloud complex, the closest star-forming region to Earth. ]NASA, ESA, CSA, STScI, Klaus Pontoppidan (STScI) Here are some illuminating scientific discoveries from the week to help you live better and enjoy the silence. These intergalactic snapshots will make you gasp. Happy first anniversary to the James Webb Space Telescope clocking in to work. NASA celebrated this week by releasing a new image of a star birth that’s so aesthetically pleasing, you’d think it was AI-generated. The colorful close-up showcases the Rho Ophiuchi cloud complex, a glowing, swirling collection of 50 young stars that are similar in mass to Earth’s sun—hinting at what our solar system may have looked like in its infancy. JWST is the most powerful telescope ever sent into space, and since last July, it has sent back dozens of snapshots of the [cosmos]( to remind us just how small we really are. 🪺 When life gives you spikes, make nests. Crows and magpies living in urban areas of Belgium and the Netherlands are flipping the bird at anti-bird infrastructure. The inventive avians have been ripping out the metal spikes attached to building ledges and repurposing them as construction material. City-dwelling birds have been observed incorporating metals, and even barbed wire and syringes, into their abodes before, but one biologist described these [spiky tree homes]( as “the craziest bird nests” he’s ever seen. And the magpies seem to have taken it a step further: They’re using the spikes to make prickly roofs on their nests, which might serve as a predator defense. The hills are alive with the sound of silence. If a tree doesn’t fall in the woods, new research suggests that we’d still consider its lack of sound to be…a sound. A Johns Hopkins study has found that people hear silence as a kind of sound rather than an absence of noise. Researchers discovered this by running “sonic illusions,” which typically compare one moment of noise to two shorter moments of noise that together last the same amount of time. Listeners tend to wrongly perceive the uninterrupted moment as lasting longer, and the same thing happened when the single moment of noise was subbed out for [silence](. This might not have happened if our brains didn’t consider silence to be a sound, scientists say.—ML  FROM THE CREW [The Crew]( How to battle burnout in IT. Burnout is real, but how can we beat it? Signature HealthCARE CIO and VP [Nick Szymanski]( shared ways to provide relief to an IT crew that’s working around the clock, including one key practice: recognition. [Read about the challenges he’s faced]( the practices he relies on, and the lessons he’s learned.  NEWS ANALYSIS  [Extreme Makeover: Office Edition]( [Man sleeping in cubicle]( images/Getty images Working full time from a home office is so 2021. These days, it’s all about living like a junior investment banker by shacking up in an office tower. With some downtowns looking like ghost towns as many workers stay remote, city leaders nationwide want to turn empty conference rooms into living quarters as an inventive fix. And there are plenty to work with: National office vacancies are at a persistent high of 19.2% (compared to 12.6% in early 2020), according to Cushman & Wakefield. McKinsey predicts that remote work will erase $800 billion from urban office real estate values. Boston is down with it, being the revolutionary place it is: The city is testing an [incentive program]( for developers to convert empty downtown offices into housing. Mayor Michelle Wu announced this week that the owners of repurposed buildings could get a wicked deal—up to 75% off on their property taxes. New York City Mayor Eric Adams is also proposing incentives to unlock 136 million square feet of office space for residential development, and Seattle held a competition to solicit conversion ideas with cash prizes of $10,000 and $7,500 offered for the top solutions. Office-to-home advocates say the process will… - Help drive foot traffic to downtown businesses struggling from a lack of commuters. - Bolster municipal coffers, as cities often rely on property taxes from office buildings. This revenue would ensure funding for services that make cities attractive places to live and work, like transportation and public safety. - Supply much-needed housing amid a shortage that has many urbanites paying exorbitant rents. It’s worked before: A 1995 tax break for conversions helped create 13,000 new apartment units in Lower Manhattan, per the Citizens Budget Commission. But living in an office probably won’t go mainstream Due to restrictive zoning and cumbersome regulations, making an office tower liveable is much harder than simply bulldozing cubicles and installing bathtubs in the bathrooms. Making Lower Manhattan residential again in the ’90s mostly involved converting prewar buildings that more closely resembled typical apartment buildings. Modern offices, however, aren’t known for having natural lighting, which the best homes tend to have. Developers converting [JPMorgan’s old NYC office]( into 1,300 apartments plan to create two sunlight-filled courtyards to keep the new pads from resembling dungeons. Slimmer office towers with less shadowy floor space tend to be easier to repurpose, the national director for office analytics at CoStar Group, Phil Mobley, told Morning Brew. Some urban experts caution that office-to-home conversions are as comprehensive a remedy for urban planning woes as e-scooters are for transit issues. Since few office buildings are truly suited for conversion, it’s often more straightforward for developers to knock down the existing structure and build condos from scratch. As such, the conversion process is likely to supply only a small portion of the residential square footage that cities need, [according]( to analysis from the Brookings Institution think tank. The researchers note that humans tend to require more than a cubicle’s worth of living space, so less people can reside in an office than work in it. That means focusing on condos exclusively might not be the best way to make downtowns vibrant. They suggest that cities also consider filling unused office space with crowd magnets like restaurants, nightclubs, and academic facilities. Brookings argues for relaxed zoning and financial incentives for new housing construction to boost housing supply. Looking ahead…it’s unclear how long offices will remain empty and available to convert: The amount of newly leased space [ticked up]( last quarter—a sign that talk of an office apocalypse might be premature.—SK  BREW'S BEST  # [To-do list graphic] Meal prep: Roll up to the BBQ with this glam version of [cornbread]( feat. ricotta. Book rec: Dive into the story of an illicit affair set against the backdrop of the fall of the Berlin Wall in [Kairos]( by Jenny Erpenbeck. Music rec: Swedish folk duo First Aid Kit is on tour for their newest album, [Palomino](. Check them out if you like breezy sounds accompanied by lyrics that cut deep. Watch: [Swarm]( is a dark comedy about a pop-star obsession gone wrong. Dominique Fishback, who stars in the show, just earned an Emmy nom for her performance. Art rec: Soeun Lee [gives]( the ancient art of stained glass a modern facelift. Revisit a classic: David Foster Wallace’s commencement address, “[This Is Water]( is still freakishly relatable nearly 20 years later. Big numbers: Morning Brew engages a community of 22m+ (who are 1.7x more likely to have a household income of $150k+, btw ). Wanna tap in? [Work with us](.  DESTINATIONS  [Place to be: ‘The greatest outdoor show on Earth’](#) [Brody Cress from Hillsdale, Wyoming rides Friday Glory during the Saddle Broinc Championship at the Calgary Stampede]Leah Hennel/Getty Images It’s a big world out there. In this section, we’ll teleport you to an interesting location—and hopefully give you travel ideas in the process. For 10 days in July, Calgary in Alberta, Canada, hosts a massive party celebrating the Western way of life called the Calgary Stampede, an exhibition/rodeo/festival trifecta commonly known as “The greatest outdoor show on Earth.” This summer’s event wraps up today, but if you enjoy dressing like you’re in the cast of Yellowstone, observing large domesticated animals, drinking beer, and gorging yourself on pancakes, you might want to book your ticket to next year’s Stampede now. Did we mention the pancakes? They’re a pretty big deal. Free pancake breakfasts have been handed out at the Stampede since 1923, when the Calgary Exhibition and Stampede merged to lay the foundation for the event we know of today. And on the 100th anniversary of the pancake breakfasts this year, Calgary turned up. Organizers handed out 17,182 pancakes during an eight-hour period, which [broke the Guinness World Record]( (even though 15 pancakes were ultimately disqualified). The Stampede isn’t without controversy. Animal rights activists have protested the rodeo events, particularly the popular chuckwagon races, which have led to horse deaths. Those concerns haven’t deterred crowds of wannabe cowboys from descending on Calgary. In 2019, a record 1.28 million visitors attended the Stampede over the 10 days, and this year’s attendance could be the highest yet.—NF  COMMUNITY  [Crowd work](#) Last week we asked: What clothing item from your childhood are you hoping makes a comeback? Here are our favorite answers. - “Heelys. Nothing like cruising through Home Depot aisles while your dad yells at the shelves.”—Kevin from Rochester, NY - “Rolling bags/backpacks. It would be so nice if some influencer out there could make those cool again.”—Jill from Atlanta, GA - “Puka shell necklaces.”—Emily from Denver, CO - “We need to revive capes. Because sometimes you just need an excuse to do your Bela Lugosi impression.”—Nate from MA - “Nothing could possibly express my creativity and individualism like a red Converse All Star high-top on my left foot and a teal one on my right. Bring back the mix & match!”—Eric from Dallas, TX - “House dresses. My mom wore comfortable, simple cotton dresses all day, every day. Jeans or pants of any kind were not an option for a farmer’s wife in the ’40s. I tried to find that kind of day dress with no luck until I came across Lands’ End nightgowns and beach cover-ups. I constantly get asked, ‘Where did you find that great dress?’” —Bonnie from Longmont, CO This week’s question Barbie and Oppenheimer both open this week, joining the new Mission: Impossible in a stacked lineup at the box office. If you could only see one of these movies in theaters, which would you pick? [Share your response here](.  SHARE THE BREW  # [Share Morning Brew]( with your friends, acquire free Brew swag, and then acquire more friends as a result of your fresh Brew swag. We’re saying we’ll give you free stuff and more friends if you share a link. One link. Your referral count: 0 [Click to Share]( Or copy & paste your referral link to others: [morningbrew.com/daily/r/?kid=4904f90a](  AROUND THE BREW  [Hear from GM, Duolingo, and OKCupid]( [ ]( Didn’t make it to our marketing summit this year? Luckily for you, Marketing Brew has made all of the sessions available on demand. [Check them out here](. Learn what it takes to turn a product idea into reality at the next [Tech Brew event](. Written by [Neal Freyman]( [Cassandra Cassidy]( [Matty Merritt]( [Abigail Rubenstein]( [Molly Liebergall]( and Sam Klebanov Was this email forwarded to you? 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