Raymond is an environmental attorney and risk management professional at Stroock & Stroock & Lavan, LLP. His practice focuses on helping clients identify and manage environmental risk in commercial transactions (e.g., commercial real estate acquisitions, sales and leases; mergers and acquisitions; loans and loan foreclosures; and commodities contracts), the remediation and develop of contaminated sites; environmental insurance review and placement; energy and climate change issues, project and facility permitting and land use issues; and environmental litigation.
If you’re doing an office-to-residential conversion, you’re basically looking at a gut renovation. You’re generally looking at older Class B or C building stock, and you’re probably going to be facing some significant asbestos abatement issues. But it’s pretty well established how to deal with that. The climate issues will be more significant.
Given the tenuous state of the office market plus the nationwide housing shortage, it’s no surprise that office-to-residential conversions have become a hot topic of late.