Downtowns Are Full of Empty Buildings. Universities Are Moving In.

On a conspicuous corner of Pennsylvania Avenue, in a once gaudy building that used to house the Newseum, the 10-story, $650 million Johns Hopkins University Bloomberg Center has just opened in Washington. I’ll say straight off: It’s not architecture for the ages, but it’s an interesting, high-end model of an urban quad and a good example of how struggling downtowns are finding a glimmer of hope as satellite campuses. In design jargon, the term is “adaptive reuse,” which is the same story as turning empty office towers into apartment buildings.