January 27, 2025

4 office-to-residential projects for 2025

As part of BD+C's 2025 office roundup, we included a look at a few office-to-residential conversions. Here are four office-to-res projects completed in the past 18 months.

The Midland Lofts
Kansas City, Mo. 

The Midland Lofts was once home to the corporate headquarters of AMC Theatres, Russell Stover Chocolates, and the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA). Opened in 1927, the office building and the attached Midland Theatre were added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1977 to commemorate its 50th anniversary.

This “underutilized historic jewel” was due for an upgrade. Ten years after renovating the Theatre, Cordish Companies commissioned Helix Architecture + Design to convert the long-vacant Midland Office Building into much-needed workforce housing.

Cordish’s initial goal for the 12-story, 88,500-sf building was 117 units. Helix’s design began by leveraging the firm’s adaptive-reuse expertise to restore the historic façade, upgrading it with energy-efficient windows. Inside, Helix configured 135 apartments, significantly more than Cordish originally estimated. This helped achieve the developer’s goal of monthly rents beginning at less than $1,000, aided by the inclusion of micro-unit studio apartments ranging from 300 to 486 sf, and one-bedroom units spanning 478 to 975 sf.

“The adaptive reuse of the 1927 Midland Office Building into The Midland Lofts offered the opportunity to leverage Helix’s extensive design expertise with historic buildings to meet the current housing demand for the city’s workforce.” — Doug Stockman, AIA, Principal and Director of Architecture, Helix Architecture + Design

On the Building Team: 
Developer: The Cordish Companies 
Architects, Interior Designers: Helix Architecture + Design, RD Jones + Associates (amenity spaces) 
Structural Eng: Leigh & O'Kane 
Civil Eng: Taliaferro & Browne 
Historic Consultant: Rosin Preservation/Heritage Consulting Group 
Code Consulting: FSC Consulting Engineers 
General Contractor: Crossland Construction

Read more here.
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