Blank Space

So there are a lot of empty buildings in the U.S., see super scary empty malls, naval yards, what have you, and some are being turned into some awesome places! Rather than let these structures remain empty, some areas have seen them as opportunities for job creation. I was able to go on an economic development focused tour of the Philadelphia Naval Yards at a NEDA Conference this fall, and the multiple ways the buildings were being used and the number of jobs created was astounding. Not only is the Urban Outfitters world headquarters there in beautiful brick buildings resembling a college campus, complete with chic cafe, but there is also hard and soft manufacturing with a modern ship building facility and Tasty Baking Company (mother of TastyKake donuts!) 7,500 jobs & 400 more on the way with the entrance of a Greek solar company soon. I can vouch for the awesomeness of this building reuse but if you don't trust me check out the websites below : )

The Navy Yard

Slideshow of Beautiful Urban Outfitters HQ - formerly Navy machine shops & great article on its transformation if you are really interested


I think there's definitely benefits to using existing structures when the costs of rehab are not prohibitively high.
Agree, diagree? I guess we are losing some construction jobs, but lets be real there is still a lot of work to be done with retrofitting/hazardous materials clean up etc...

Oooo and here's how China is going to transform one of their vacant buildings. No big.