How do you add 10 stories to a building without adding a single square foot of floor area?

Brian McFarland and his team did exactly that at Soma at 25 Water in New York. Brian is a Principal at CetraRuddy Architecture, and he calls Soma the largest completed office-to-residential conversion in the U.S. to date.

The building was a late-1960s back office for a bank, built for computers, not people. Brick, very little glass, and a floor plate about 150 by 275 feet. In New York, every habitable room has to be within 30 feet of a window.

So the team cut two inner courts into the building for light and air. Then they used the zoning rules to move floor area that no longer counted up to the roof.

Soma started as a 22-story, 1.1 million square foot building. After 10 new stories, it is still 1.1 million square feet. In Brian’s words, it’s “all about the textual definition of floor area in the zoning resolution. It has nothing to do with the real world.”

In this episode, Brian and Rens dig into:

• How Soma at 25 Water added 10 stories with zero new floor area, and why the zoning text, not a tape measure, sets the number.

• How small deductions add up, from the extra 8 inches of a 44-inch stair to the recreation space a conversion has to provide.

• The “Malkovich floor” at Lirio: a 3-foot-tall space that keeps a building’s plumbing out of an MTA rail control center below.

• How the 467-m tax abatement and City of Yes pushed New York’s development market into conversions.

• Why most of CetraRuddy’s work is as of right, and how New York differs from cities that run on entitlements.

• Brian’s path from project architect to partner, four years leading VOA’s New York building practice, and his picks: The Search for Form in Art and Architecture by Eliel Saarinen and the Thomistic Institute podcast.

The lesson underneath the episode is bigger than conversions:

Know the rules better than anyone else at the table.

Brian’s team didn’t find 10 stories by making the building bigger on paper. They found them by reading how the zoning resolution defines floor area. That reading turned a 22-story building into a 32-story one with the same floor area.

Sometimes the space you need is already written into the rules.

Thanks for being part of the Design Development community.

New episodes drop every Wednesday, featuring leaders across real estate, design, and construction.

The goal is simple: learn from how great people think, lead, make decisions, navigate setbacks, and create opportunity.

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Careers are not linear.
The lessons are in the story.

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What if the biggest misconception about senior living is that it’s where life winds down?

Walter Ramos has spent his career moving between government, law, hospitals and senior living. Today he is President & CEO of Rogerson Communities, a nonprofit that has been providing housing and care for older adults since 1860.

On paper, the path looks scattered. It isn’t.

It started with a college internship in a U.S. Senator’s office, working on housing, health care and urban living. Walter says every role since has followed that same thread: housing for people, health care for people, and a good quality of life. Even the law degree came from the thread. Lawyers kept telling him he couldn’t write legislation because he wasn’t one, so he became one.

That thread shapes how he sees senior living. In his words, “Senior living isn’t a place that is the end of the line.” It’s the next stage of a productive, enjoyable life, with a higher level of care there when it’s needed.

Rogerson builds around that idea. Every community, affordable or market rate, keeps the same core: a private room, shared spaces, and a life that continues the way the resident has always lived it. Walter says about half of Rogerson’s stock is affordable, built with philanthropic, local, state and federal support.

Now Rogerson is planning to grow. Its five-year plan calls for adding 1,000 new places for older adults to live. Walter explains that doubling the places means doubling the infrastructure behind them, and he talks about what makes that hard, starting with land.

In this episode, Walter and Rens dig into:

· Why senior living is the next stage of life, not the end of it, and how a career across government, law and hospitals led Walter there.

· How affordable and market-rate communities share the same core, and how continuing care retirement communities let residents stay in one place as their care needs change.

· Why Rogerson builds in neighborhoods like Chinatown, so people can age in their community instead of moving to the suburbs.

· Rogerson’s five-year plan to add 1,000 new places, and why the infrastructure has to double with it.

· Why finding affordable land is one of the biggest constraints in Boston, and why Rogerson does not buy a property and flip it.

· Why leading starts with listening, why a CEO’s first year is the most vulnerable, and the book Walter recommends, Being Mortal by Atul Gawande.

The lesson underneath the episode is bigger than senior living:

Anchor to the mission and let everything else move.

Walter’s roles changed from government to law to hospitals to senior living. The thread never did. Rogerson has held to the same purpose since 1860, and Walter says what it builds is meant to stay for older adults in perpetuity.

Sometimes what looks like the end of the line is just the next stage of the same road.

Thanks for being part of the Design Development community.

New episodes drop every Wednesday, featuring leaders across real estate, design, and construction.

The goal is simple: learn from how great people think, lead, make decisions, navigate setbacks, and create opportunity.

There is no single path to success.
Careers are not linear.
The lessons are in the story.

Subscribe so you don’t miss the next conversation.

Follow us on LinkedIn, Instagram & YouTube

Find out more at https://h-o.engineering/podcasts/

Let’s go.

What if the incentive package isn't what decides where a company goes?

Kyle Touchstone grew up in South Mississippi, the kid of a hardware store owner who watched one large manufacturer change what a small business and its employees could afford. Today he is Director of Raleigh Economic Development, a program of the Greater Raleigh Chamber that provides business recruitment, retention and expansion services on behalf of the City of Raleigh.

Kyle says the Raleigh area is growing by about 100 people a day, up from about 33 ten years ago. That kind of growth gets attention from companies. Kyle says it is not why they come.

He puts it plainly: companies come for the talent and a competitive cost of doing business. Incentives are part of the game, but they are the dessert.

So what does a city need beyond the pitch? Kyle says developers who took a chance on the market created the opportunities for companies to locate there, like the redevelopment of an old steel mill that became home to Audemars Piguet's North American service center. He also points to a city process that brings developers and the AEC community to the table on day one, with a plan, a date and a reconvening meeting.

In this episode, Kyle and Rens dig into:

● How a hardware store in South Mississippi shaped Kyle's view of what one large employer can do for a community.

● How Raleigh Economic Development works with the Greater Raleigh Chamber, the City of Raleigh and regional partners.

● Why Kyle says the Raleigh area is growing by about 100 people a day, up from about 33 ten years ago.

● Why Kyle calls incentives the dessert, and what he says companies actually come to Raleigh for.

● How Raleigh structures incentives as a grant tied to the property taxes a company pays, with approval through a public process.

● Why Kyle says developers who took a chance on the market created the opportunities for companies to locate in Raleigh.

● Why Kyle says Raleigh has never been an office spec market, and what that means for new deliveries.

● How the city brings developers and the AEC community together from day one, so a project knows what it takes and when.

● Why predictability may matter more to developers than speed.

● The cost of growth analysis the city is working on as it plans for the next 30 years, and why Kyle thinks it could build support for density.

● What Kyle calls radical collaboration, including pitching companies alongside partners in Durham.

● Why the Greater Raleigh Chamber takes about 180 civic and business leaders to another community each year to ask what they would do differently.

● Where Kyle sees the next wave of opportunity, including billions of dollars of investment in downtown Raleigh.

The business lesson underneath the episode is bigger than Raleigh:

Pay attention to what actually brings people to the table.

Sometimes the winning move isn't a bigger incentive.

It's a predictable path from the city to the developer.

Thanks for being part of the Design Development community.

New episodes drop every Wednesday, featuring leaders across real estate, design, and construction.

The goal is simple: learn from how great people think, lead, make decisions, navigate setbacks, and create opportunity.

There is no single path to success.
Careers are not linear.
The lessons are in the story.

Subscribe so you don’t miss the next conversation.

Follow us on LinkedIn, Instagram & YouTube

Find out more at https://h-o.engineering/podcasts/

Let’s go.