by Colleen Edwards

December 10, 2009

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What makes people love loft living? It seemed like an appropriate question to ask Rick Holliday, since his name and loft developments are so closely linked in the San Francisco Bay Area. Rick is a great proponent of creating spaces that allow people to fill in the blanks based on their lifestyles and their needs. The flexible and dynamic nature of loft spaces has appealed to urban buyers for the last twenty years. Rick says that lofts have been so glamorized by movies and television that people project a cooler lifestyle when they consider moving to a loft. According to Rick, the real appeal came with the older, well-located buildings in New York— and SOMA, Chelsea and TriBeCa became neighborhoods of choice instead of compromise.

Rick also talks today about how people meet and where they congregate when they are neighbors in condos or lofts, and how something as simple as the placement of the mailboxes or recycling bins can turn an area into a place where people meet and catch up, no longer stratified and kept distant by the floors on which they live. Today’s interview and the whole week of talks with Rick Holliday are downloadable on ITunes.

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