Simulpocalypse #7- Grassroots Adaptive Reuse of vacant buildings
How can we, as average people, make use of more of all of these empty buildings?
These odd looking outbuildings are 1920’s jail cells, left over from the early, oil boomtown years in Huntington Beach, California. There are four of them in an alley, and they are now used for storage for a local bar and restaurant. Their history is known to a select few, since they’re tucked away in an alley downtown. I learned about these when I wrote a zine about the history of H.B. back in 2006. #steveemigphotos
Simulpocalypse- (SIGH-mole-pock-uh-lips): A word I coined to describe how we have a growing number of vacant and abandoned buildings, and post-apocalyptic looking locations in the U.S., while “normal,” everyday life goes on simultaneously.
There are at least 18,000 to 20,000 vacant or abandoned commercial buildings in the United States. No one seems to have an exact number. They range from recently vacated buildings to those rotting in long term urban decay, like many of the factories that closed decades ago. There are also thousands of vacant offices, empty stores in dead malls and shopping centers, and partially occupied office buildings all over the United States. I can see two vacant commercial buildings outside the window from where I’m sitting right now, in fact. There are empty buildings all over this country. There are also somewhere between 5 million and 12 million vacant houses and condos, at any given time. Again, no one seems to know the exact numbers.
This brings us to the whole point of this Simulpocalypse series of posts. What can we do with all these empty buildings?
In the world of real estate development, there’s a concept called “adaptive reuse.” Just like it sounds, adaptive reuse is when somebody takes an old building or structure, that is no longer useful for its original purpose, and they rebuild it into something new. A couple of good examples are New York City’s Highline Park and the Google offices built in the giant Hughes Spruce Goose hangers in Playa Vista, California. The Highline Park transformed aging, raised railroad tracks into a long, elevated park, which is now visited by 8 million people a year. Meanwhile here in SoCal, Google built an office complex inside the gigantic, World War II era aircraft hangers, where Howard Hughes company built the gigantic Hercules flying boat, known to most as the Spruce Goose. These are just two very successful examples of big, vacant structures being re-imagined and rebuilt, and finding new lives in today’s world. Both projects cost many millions of dollars, and took years to complete.
There lies the major problem when you look into adaptive reuse ideas for the other 20,000 or so empty buildings that exist today. Adaptive reuse, as a concept, seems to be mostly reserved for large, multi-million dollar, multi-year projects. When you google “adaptive reuse,” that’s what you find. BIG projects. I have nothing against those projects, in and of themselves. But there aren’t that many of them, compared to the extensive number of vacant buildings, and they are mostly reserved for uses catering to the top financial echelon of society. You don’t see many adaptive reuse projects in everyday, working class American places that often.
Here’s a pandemic era selfie of me in front of a house that the older generations may recognize. This is the Brady Bunch house, used in those short, outside shots of the house, in the classic TV show of the late 1960’s and early 1970’s. It’s a real house, located in Studio City, California. In 2018, HGTV bought the house, and the Property Brothers led a massive remodel of the property, and built all the rooms on the TV sets in this location. There is now a 2,000 square foot addition behind the original house. The house was eventually bought by a wealthy couple who now use it for special events. #steveemigphotos
The reality is, only a tiny fraction of today’s tens of thousands of vacant and abandoned buildings wind up getting rebuilt by adaptive reuse projects. That means we still have thousands of empty buildings, and millions of houses, condos, vacation homes sitting empty. Obviously, most of those empty homes and condos are used at times, and some are short term or seasonal rentals.
At the same time, we have nearly 700,000 known homeless people in this country. We also have tens of millions of people struggling with high rent and mortgage payments in traditional single family homes and apartments. Homeless and poverty-stricken people are not the only people who need “affordable housing.” Ask anyone you know if they would like to pay less for their rent or mortgage. I bet at least 80% to 90% would say, “Of course we would,” or something along those lines. Most of the U.S. population needs affordable housing, just at many different price levels. The ultra low income people need certain price points, college students, young couples, artsy types, and beginning entrepreneurs need housing at another price point, young families need different types of housing in yet, another, price range. You get the idea. “Affordable housing” is not just about the homeless.
We also have all kinds of small businesses, new businesses, non-profit organizations, and other projects, that could use inexpensive commercial buildings to start out, grow, and evolve to whatever their potential is. Now, in 2025, for all the reasons I’ve written about in this Simulpocalypse series, we have more empty and underused buildings than ever. Again, what are we going to do with them all? There are all kinds of other types of uses besides turning a big old building into new tech offices, building a park like the Highline, or turning an old factory building into upscale condos or a high end retail shopping center.
I’ve spent about 15 years looking at old buildings, wherever I was, and dreaming up cool things to do with them. When I drove a taxi in North Carolina in 2011-2012, I sat outside an abandoned warehouse building day after day, under a shade tree, dreaming of the skateboard and bike park I could have built in that building. As an old, Has Been, BMX freestyler and marginal skateboarder years ago, my personal favorite adaptive reuse project is Ray’s MTB, in Cleveland, Ohio. A guy named Ray, working on kicking his bad habits, got into mountain biking. He found a woman who owned an old factory building. With her help, he built the world’s first indoor mountain bike (and BMX) park in it. The park continues to be a great success today.
With the idea of small adaptive reuse projects in mind, I recently searched online for videos about people dreaming up new uses for commercial buildings. There are several videos on YouTube, but it’s still a relatively small number, compared to just how many buildings there are sitting partially or totally empty around the country. A YouTuber in Montreal and her boyfriend bought an old bank building, and rebuilt it into her dream house and live/work space. A few guys in California rented an industrial warehouse unit to save money while living near the beach, and have fun. A man in Louisiana bought an abandoned and dilapidated gas station, and built it into a cool house.
I wrote this blog post, with links to these and several other small scale adaptive use projects, by everyday people. In the blog post, there are projects ranging from a lighthouse, to an abandoned missile silo, to a remodeled lighthouse,a long with more traditional buildings. I know these projects are definitely not the answer for everyone seeking a small business location or cheaper living options. But, I think the huge number of vacant commercial buildings today have the potential for lots of small scale adaptive reuse projects, particularly in the next few sketchy years, as commercial real estate prices drop.
With so many options of viable small businesses in the internet era, I think turning old and vacant offices, small stores, and industrial units into live/work spaces, either on the down low, or by actually doing some remodeling and rebuilding, might be a decent sized trend in the coming years.
In this Simulpocalypse series here on my Substack, I’m diving into many different angles of this whole issue of having thousands of empty commercial buildings, and far more houses and condos, sitting vacant. From my point of view, this post is the real key part of the issue. How can real people, people who are not major real estate developers, or sitting on millions of dollars, take some of these old buildings and other structures, and build them into something new, something really cool, and something viable in today’s rapidly changing world?
Here’s my challenge to you, now that you’ve read this post. Look around your town or city. What buildings are there, sitting vacant or underused? Do you have any ideas on how they could be made into something new? Don’t worry about all the details for now. Just look around, see what buildings are in your area that you never used to pay attention to. Just daydream a little, and think about what places exist in your area, and what types of new places that you think your city needs. You can use Loopnet, or a similar commercial real estate site, to see what commercial properties are for lease or for sale in your area, all around the United States. Once you look around and start noticing the buildings in your area, ideas for actual practical projects may come to you. Then you can think about the actual work of possibly doing a small scale adaptive reuse projects of your own. Even if you can’t make the idea happen, maybe you know some people who can.
Simulpocalypse series- Post #1
There are no paid links in this post.