Tenants move into first apartment in Wu’s office-residential conversion program

New tenants are now moving into some of the first apartments to be reworked from downtown Boston office spaces as part of Mayor Michelle Wu’s residential conversion program.

Wu was among a crowd of City Hall staffers who visited Ernestine Tiongson and George Giunta’s new apartment at 281 Franklin St., the first completed project in the program, according to The Boston Globe. The program, which formally launched in October 2023, was later extended in June 2024 to take on an additional $15 million in funding from the state.

Five floors of offices were turned into 15 apartments at 281 Franklin St., a project led by building developer Adam Burns’ Boston Pinnacle Properties, the Globe reported. Though progress has been slow, it’s a first step towards the city’s overall goal of turning nearly 700,000 square feet of office space into over 800 new units.

Burns told the Globe that the tax break program was essential to affording the renovations needed to fully convert the space.

“Having that tax incentive is what made this project possible,” he said.

Wu’s program aims to ease housing concerns in the center of Boston, but some proponents of the project, such as Greg Maynard of the Boston Policy Institute, warn against losing sight of the true scope of the issue at hand.

“You’re talking about historically high office vacancy rates — more than one out of every five square feet of office space in Boston is empty,” Maynard told NBC10 Boston. “It’s going to require just an awful lot more resources and thinking and kind of coming together to overcome that.”

Josh Kraft, Wu’s main challenger in the 2025 Boston mayoral race, shared a similar sentiment.

“I support retail conversion, but we need a bolder, broader strategy rooted in the creativity of public-private partnerships,” Kraft said in a statement shared with NBC10 Boston. “We also need to expand the scale and urgency.”

Wu acknowledged that there’s a long way to go for the program, but though this first project is a small step, she said every step counts.

“Every new home matters,” Wu told the Globe. “The only way we’re going to have everything come back fully downtown is to convert it into more of a residential neighborhood.”