In a Wall Street Journal feature titled, "Developers Turn Former Office Buildings into High-End Apartments," writer Eliot Brown covers Cleveland's downtown rental boom and efforts to ease that demand by converting former commercial space into residential space.

"Historically, office space has commanded substantially higher rent than residential space," Brown writes. "But that is starting to change, especially for older buildings that have lots of architectural charm -- often located in urban downtowns -- but are no longer desirable as top-notch office space."

"The Residences (in the East Ohio Gas building) are in the vanguard of a major realignment taking place in cities across the U.S. as landlords repurpose their buildings from spaces where people work to spaces where they sleep."

With demand for downtown rental apartments so strong, developers are racing to repurpose buildings.  

By 2015, Downtown Cleveland Alliance "projects that the area will have 7,071 residential units, up from 2,881 in 2000. That includes nearly 600 units in seven office-to-apartment conversions that are under way -- the most ever at one time for the city."

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