What happens when a developer gets blocked from tearing down a cool old building by that pesky “landmark status” but then finds it can’t cut a profit from its alternative plan either? The Dwelling Company came up with Plan C: Turn the darned thing into an office building.

The developer who bought the Cooper House at 225 14th Ave. E. — we call it the White House because of the cool rotunda — has scrapped plans for a condo conversion and instead is moving forward with a plan to to turn the 1904 building into offices. Dwelling’s original plan had been to tear the building down and replace it with new condos but that plan was nixed when the city gave the old apartment building landmark status. Its subsequent condo conversion plan, which apparently at some point in time made good mathematical sense, now calculates out to big losses. So Dwelling’s new city-approved plan calls for offices. No mention in the project docs of a calculation for opening the old building up as apartments again but we’d guess that math would look bad, too.

So, on the downside, nobody gets to live in the White House of Capitol Hill. On the upside, somebody gets to work in a beautiful place in a great neighborhood.