City centers are hyper focused on the possibility of bringing new life to nearly abandoned spaces, whose daily influence fueled downtown businesses (from restaurants to dry cleaners). Part of the efforts to make this conversion happen are tedious, including the changing of building codes, eliminating fees, and possibly even creating tax relief programs for office conversions. 

However, recent reporting has uncovered just how complex it is to bring these ideas to fruition. NPR followed the journey of a transformation in Washington, D.C. of a 1980s-style office building into an apartment complex to chronicle the change–spoiler alert, it was really difficult.