Across the country, the conversation around office-to-residential conversion has become louder and more urgent. With millions of square feet of office space sitting vacant and a persistent shortage of quality housing options, converting downtown towers seems like a straightforward solution.

But as the now-famous New York conversion project highlighted, it rarely is.

Behind every successful conversion lies a maze of zoning challenges, structural limitations, floor-plate redesigns, and cost prohibitive engineering fixes that can make even the most logical project financially unworkable. Many buildings simply weren’t designed for people to live in them - only to work.

Project Scarlet is different because the building itself is different.

And that difference is the reason this project works.

Office Buildings Weren’t Built for Housing

What the WSJ video gets right is this:
The majority of U.S. office towers, particularly post-WWII structures, have deep floor plates and layouts optimized for cubicles, not bedrooms.

That means:

• Units end up too far from natural light
• Structural columns interrupt every logical residential layout
• Windows often don’t open
• Plumbing stacks don’t align across floors
• Cutting new shafts or light wells removes rentable area and drives costs up
• Zoning restrictions in many cities push housing away from central business districts to “preserve jobs”

This is why so many office-to-housing concepts stall before they ever move forward.
The bones of the building fight against the intended use.

The Rose Building’s Geometry Solves Problems Before They Begin

When we acquired the historic Rose Building, the largest office building in Cleveland at the time of its construction, we weren’t just buying square footage.

We were buying a shape, a structure, and a floor plate that already supported what cities across the country are trying to retrofit into uncooperative buildings.

1. The Arrowhead Floor Plate

Unlike the deep, wide office towers built after WWII, the Rose Building’s arrowhead-shaped geometry creates naturally narrow, light-friendly floor plates.

This means:

• Most units fall within 30 feet of natural light; a rule of thumb many conversions can’t meet without carving massive light wells.
• The triangular edges create natural unit breakpoints, lending themselves to efficient, desirable layouts.
• Circulation (hallways, elevators, stairs) nests cleanly against structural cores.

Other cities are spending millions cutting voids into buildings to solve for daylight.
The Rose Building simply already has it.

2. Punched Windows That Open

Older office buildings, especially pre-war structures like the Rose Building, were built with operable punched windows to regulate airflow.

For residential use, this is a dream scenario.

No costly façade replacement.
No need for engineered ventilation to simulate fresh air.
No struggle to make apartments livable under modern codes.

This single characteristic eliminates a major financial barrier that stops many conversions outright.

3. Manageable Column Spacing

Newer office buildings have thick structural columns spaced 30 feet apart; an impossible layout for stacking kitchens, bathrooms, and utilities.

The Rose Building, by contrast, has:

• More slender structural members
• Spacing that allows plumbing stacks to align vertically
• Clear spans that support repeatable, multi-floor residential layouts

This is the difference between a building that requires reinforcing every column with steel plates (as seen in the NYC example) and one that allows the architecture to work with you, not against you.

4. Historic Buildings Were Designed for People

Modern offices were optimized for open floor plans.
Pre-war buildings were optimized for human scale.

Narrower widths, proportionate window spacing, and defined “bays” make the Rose Building fundamentally compatible with apartment design without major interventions.

This reduces:

• Structural modification
• Mechanical reconstruction
• Reallocation of unusable square footage
• Engineering surprises that derail project budgets

It’s not just that Project Scarlet works financially, it works physically.

Programming Project Scarlet for Real Life, Not Just Real Estate

Because the Rose Building’s form already supports conversion, we were able to channel our capital, design effort, and engineering into what actually matters to residents.

Amenities designed around the building’s unique shape

The arrowhead geometry creates natural anchor points for amenity zones (lounges, workspaces, fitness, rooftop experiences) that aren’t carved out of valuable unit space.

Efficient units, not compromised ones

Where many conversions produce narrow “bowling-alley” apartments or windowless interior units, Project Scarlet’s layouts are proportioned, livable, and aligned with modern expectations.

A mixed-use ecosystem, not a silo

Because the building sits at the center of Cleveland’s most transformative urban renewal corridor, Project Scarlet becomes more than housing, it becomes a node in a larger community network tied to retail, hospitality, public realm improvements, and waterfront redevelopment.

This is the future of downtown living: adaptive reuse that supports citywide economic momentum.

A Blueprint for Cleveland’s Next Chapter

If the national narrative is that office conversions are too expensive, too complicated, and too structurally constrained to solve housing challenges, Project Scarlet is a counterexample.

Not because we found a workaround.

But because we found the right building.

A building whose shape invites light.
A building whose floor plates support living.
A building that doesn’t need to be reimagined, only rewoven into the city’s future.

That’s why Project Scarlet isn’t just another office-to-residential project.
It’s a case study in picking the right asset to solve the right problem at the right time.

Cleveland doesn’t just need more housing.
It needs conversions that are feasible, scalable, and true to the architecture that built this city.

Project Scarlet is all of that and more.