Downtown Winston-Salem, NC, has a total of about 800 new or planned condo units, including the area's first ever mixed-use residential-office project, 248 South Main, an $18 million development with 1,140 to 3,240 square foot condos priced from $227,000 to $854,000.
Denver, CO, with it's burgeoning LoDo District, has been one of the nation's kings of downtown redevelopment for years. Later this year it will add The Spire, a $110 million, 42-story condominium tower with more than 500 units ranging from affordable $165,000 units to upper-floor condos costing more than $500,000. A year ahead of schedule, due to demand, the luxury transit oriented development (TOD), One Lincoln Park, is 32-story housing development near two light-rail stations.
In San Francisco, where there's little room to build anew, developers are converting small hotels and office buildings for time-shares and fractionals, a time-share cousin that gives buyers a percentage of the deed. A Ritz-Carlton Market Street project, for example, offers $200,000 to $350,000 fractionals that come with 21 days residence each year and a one-twelfth stake in the deed.
Not everybody wants to live above Starbucks, but there was a time when living above the corner store was cool. The face of downtown housing continues to evolve, going back to the future as cities look to appeal to a new breed of home buyer.
Young singles, couples and new professionals like the edgy atmosphere of urban cores undergoing redevelopment, old meshing with the new, the night springing back to life, the mix of restaurants, ethnic diversity, and the steadfast entertainment and cultural attractions.
An older, empty-nest, baby-boomer contingent of buyers who have tossed aside old conceptions about winding down and retirement are looking for more vibrant semi-retirement locales offering opportunities for new careers and a piece of the action.
Still other buyers are simply looking for something different in a vacation or retirement home and speculators always see opportunity for investments.
"We ran into some interesting people we didn't expect to see. A doctor and his wife in their early sixties. When we asked them where they were from they said they lived in the Palisades, sold their house and moved downtown. When I asked why he said, 'I'm a Chicago native. We don't have homes in the city with white picket fences.' I was surprised when my dad went to downtown San Diego and looked at the high rise buildings and said he really liked it. He was a hard core hippie in 1960s. That really drove it home for me. People of all generations like the energy in the city," said Scott Choppin, who along with Mark Tolley are managing partners of Long Beach-based Urban Pacific Builders, LLC.
With a title that doesn't pose the question, but seeks to answer it, the Brookings Institution's "Who Lives Downtown" likewise recently found that "downtown housing provides visible and tangible evidence of urban vitality that has important psychological and economic impacts."
Among its recently released analysis of downtown populations, households, and income trends in 44 selected cities, it found:
- Downtowns have higher percentages of young adults and college-educated residents than the nation's cities and suburbs. In 2000, 25- to 34-year olds represented nearly a quarter of the downtown population -- up from 13 percent in 1970. Forty-four percent of downtowners had a bachelors degree or higher.
- Downtowns yield some of the most and least affluent households of their cities and regions. Twenty of the sample downtowns -- such as Midtown Manhattan, Dallas, and Miami -- have at least one tract where the median income is higher than that of their metropolitan statistical area as a whole. Thirty-eight have at least one tract 50 percent or lower than their MSA median.
- Downtown home ownership rates more than doubled during the thirty-year period, reaching 22 percent by 2000.
- Downtowns are more racially and ethnically diverse than 20 years ago. From 1980 to 2000, the combined share of white and black residents living in the sample downtowns fell from 81 percent to 73 percent, while the share of Hispanic and Asian residents increased.
- During the 1990s, downtown population grew by 10 percent, a marked resurgence following 20 years of overall decline. Forty percent of the sample cities began to see growth before the 1990s. While only New York’s two downtown areas and Seattle, Los Angeles, and San Diego saw steady increases from 1970 to 2000, another 13 downtowns have experienced sustained growth since the 1980s.
- From 1970 to 2000, the number of downtown households increased 8 percent -- 13 percent in the 1990s alone -- and their composition shifted. Households grew faster than population in downtowns, reflecting the proliferation of smaller households of singles, unrelated individuals living together, and childless married couples.
"While this analysis demonstrates good news for downtown residential development overall, demographic, market, and social trends differ substantially from place to place. Urban leaders need to understand these patterns so they can make investment decisions that best capitalize on their unique assets," the report recommends.
