Business roundup: some developers consider converting office space to housing

With Montgomery County’s office vacancy rate hovering above 16% —a 5-percentage point increase since the start of the pandemic—local planners say the time may be right for developers to consider converting or redeveloping offices into living spaces. County planner Bilal Ali points to one such completed project in a recent post on The Third Place, the county planning department’s blog: In downtown Silver Spring, a former office building on Fenwick Lane was converted into 102 condos in 2015, providing affordable housing for first-time homebuyers.