WHEN ALTERNATIVE USE BECOMES A STUDY IN TWISTED LOGIC

Samuel Y. Harris

with Jennifer Holman

Alternative use has long been a popular strategy of building preservation. When we travel down this road as preservationists, our broadest objective is generally to retain as much fabric and as much interpretive quality as possible. An equally important requirement is that the alternative use generate enough revenue, combined with any other income sources we’ve secured—to keep the ship afloat and to maintain the objectives we set forth. But it’s at this crossroads where preservationists—with their sometimes iconic reverence for a particular building—and real estate developers—focusing the brunt of their attention on the bottom line—tend to divide camps. We all know of examples where commercial developers have been invited to propose viable alternative use scenarios for a particular building which the preservation community has adopted. And we all know of instances where such developers have been kicked out on their ears for suggestions that threaten to demolish what we perceive as too much of our precious buildings or to muddy their significance and interpretive capabilities.

This is not to say that developers are right and we are wrong, or vice versa. In fact, we are often on the same page, both intent on keeping a viable building in the inventory. But there are times when preservationists dig in their heels and begin to spin arguments for their actions that eventually begin to twist and turn into loops of illogic. Considering that the preservation community is too often dismissed by the commercial developers and real estate agents as whiny, obstructive, and idealistic, turning a self-critical eye to ourselves and our models and metaphors may be worthwhile.

THE CARPENTER'S HALL QUANDARY

This small two-story brick-and-mortar guild meeting house—a short walk from Independence Hall in Old City Philadelphia—was the site of the first meeting of the Continental Congress in the 1774. The first Library of Congress was established within its walls, and it housed the First Bank of the United States and other institutions over the years. There is no doubt about Carpenter’s Hall’s historic significance or its worth as a preservation project. Today, the building, situated on land leased from the National Park Service, remains privately owned by 160 members, comprising contractors, architects, and engineers who pay annual membership dues of $500. The group’s one and only mandate is to maintain this historic gem. The cost to do so, not surprisingly, is quite significant. So in recent years, the guild has succumbed to the allure of meeting and event planners willing to pay healthy fees for renting the little building for their group activities. Netting about $60,000 per year from these activities has added a healthy chunk of change to the guild’s once anemic coffers without having to increase dues for the guild members or to secure other sources of financing (although it is worth mentioning that these avenues had not been fully explored.)  

This move, in the name of preservation, however has opened a Pandora’s box of sorts. The density and intensity of use has skyrocketed beyond what the building was ever originally designed to accommodate. It has warranted the sacrificing of space for modern, expanded lavatory facilities. Mobile music and PA systems are installed, food and drink are served and carried about the building, increasing the risk of fire and contamination. Transforming Carpenter’s Hall into a rental facility—even though it is used as such only occasionally—has effectively created an alternate use for the original building. As a result, this has also triggered new questions related to complying with the Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990. Some exterior and interior wall and floor demolition may now be warranted to create a new entrance for handicapped event-goers and to accommodate an elevator that allows accessibility to the basement and second floor. This slippery slope is not uncommon, but illogical from a preservation standpoint. By creating this alternative use for the building, we are creating significant wear and tear on it to somehow bolster our journey to that goal of preserving it.

FABRIC DEMOLITION = INTERPRETATION OF SIGNIFICANCE = PROPER PRESERVATION?

Demolition and alterations are tricky things when we choose the path of alternative use as a preservation strategy. How to properly undertake them also comes into question when we attempt to establish a building’s period of significance and then properly interpret it. How do we do that correctly while still meeting our preservation goals?

In a fast-changing world such as ours, it is inevitable that we must periodically re- examine the significance of our historic resources to responsibly manage them. What we might consider significant today may very well be overshadowed by some new experience or occurrence in our ongoing history that makes a different aspect of the site’s layered past subjectively more significant. What if that piece of the fabric has already been destroyed by our attempts to make the building conform to a now outdated definition of its significance? How do we philosophically support demolishing part of a site’s fabric to make it conform to our understanding of its significance? We all know of cases in preservation history where an important site has been restored to its “authentic appearance” only to be reconsidered  20 or 30 years later through an evolved lens of information and concepts of significance that has lead us to “restore” the site all over again. Is it then authentic to refabricate discarded evidence? Is Colonial Williamsburg somehow better than Walt Disney World’s recreation of historic St. Mark’s Square in its Italy exhibit at Epcot Center? Is it dramatically different? Again, we can easily find ourselves laying down defense arguments based on twisted logic. Unfortunately, repeatedly manipulating the fabric of a historic site to satisfy new interpretations eventually destroys irreplaceable historic evidence. It’s important to remember that statements of significance are not carved in stone, as we sometimes treat them.  

GETTING A PLAN, SKIPPING THE MAGIC

Part of the equation in the delicate balancing act we attempt to pull off as preservationists working on a given project is the financial aspect: the down-and-dirty number crunching it requires to bolster a project’s chance for success when the alternative-use strategy is being seriously considered as a means of preservation. Balancing that need for a revenue stream with our preservation objectives can be extremely challenging. Sometimes it is a challenge we would prefer to meet with our good intentions and our historic and esthetic sensibilities rather than with the practical business and market sense required to economically redevelop a building.   

As preservationists, we often look at an abandoned building in a state of impending demolition or collapse and conclude that we can no doubt save that building if we just find an appropriate use for it. I like to call this the magic-lock-and-key approach. The premise is that if we simply persevere and think cleverly enough, a perfect use and occupant for the particularly building will surely materialize.  

We tend to forget or perhaps ignore, however, that once a building has reached the point of demolition or abandonment, the market has already conducted such a search. An abandoned building is the market’s way of telling us that it has tried to find a fit or alternative use at virtually any rent and failed. Many buildings pass through the market and into abandonment every month, but only a few are adopted as objects of preservation concern. Whether a building is historic or not, the real estate rules are the same for every property. Once abandoned, the market has spoken: Buyers currently do not value this building for whatever reasons be they building type or condition, location, efficiency, zoning, or scale. In fact, much of a given property’s market value depends little on its architectural style or historic value.

Another important point is that changing the market requires changing the perception of value held by a large collective group of individual buyers. That’s a tall order for the real estate development community which lives by a basic formula: Will the property return more money than it costs to develop for an alternative use? Predicting the outcome of a potential reinvestment project is fraught with uncertainties, and the risks can be tremendous. When the gamble turns out to be a winner, it can result in a significant profit, and considerable publicity often surrounds such success stories. Many projects, however, do not realize any profit and some turn into outright financial disasters with contractors going bankrupt, developers left to absorb large debts, no building, breached rental agreements, and panicked and irate lenders. So it is no wonder that developers typically approach such inherently risky projects with an eye toward turning the maximum profit possible, sometimes at the expense of sacrificing what preservationists often deem an unacceptable amount of the building’s fabric.    

Instead of naively following that magic lock-and-key approach, the real estate industry begins from a much different premise. They look at a building given its location, size, and other important attributes in the marketplace and at what rent must be generated to amortize the expense of redeveloping the property. Once they’ve generated and analyzed these numbers, then they begin to look at the question of who would be willing and able to pay that required rent.

Perhaps the broader message to the preservation community is that the financial plan for an adaptive use project should be one of the initials steps in the preservation process for a given site. A common assumption is that the best first step is a historic structure report. Given that such a report is an expensive undertaking and may not even be necessary if the financial feasibility does not exist, it may be wiser to begin with a clear statement of preservation goals and objects PLUS a well thought out financial plan that supports them. In this way, we can help to guard against that twisting of logic that too often ensues whereby we tune out the developers’ proposals altogether because they involve sacrificing what we perceive to be too much fabric, integrity, interpretative ability and so forth, we find ourselves groping about for that magic key, and then in the interim we begin to resort to methods of bringing in desperately needed financial support by engaging in demolition and consumption of a given building on our own, defending these as steps taken to preserve the building.

 THE EASTERN STATE PENITENTIARY CASE

Opened in 1829, Eastern State Penitentiary was the first penitentiary ever built. Its system was based on the Quaker principles of isolation and labor, spiritual reflection, and penitence to rehabilitate criminals rather than the age-old tenets of physical punishment and abuse. This architectural wonder, designed by British-born architect John Haviland, attracted flocks of tourists and dignitaries in the 1830s and 40s, and the prison’s philosophy and building design served as the model for hundreds of other prison systems constructed worldwide during the 19^th century. In 1971, the prison was closed due to overcrowding and the need for extensive repairs, and the City of Philadelphia purchased the complex in 1980 intending to reuse or develop it.

The preservation objectives established for Eastern State in 1989 were (1) to preserve and conserve as much of the fabric as possible and (2) to interpret it as a penitentiary for the indefinite future. When Eastern State was then presented to the commercial development community for alternative use proposals, each plan involved demolishing at least half of the site. The motives and requirements of conventional commercial development—based on the industry’s standard formulaic calculations and analyses—simply could not be realized due to the vast amount of renovations that would have been required. This extreme inefficiency of the complex made development feasible only by destroying what the preservation community deemed to be an unacceptable amount of its fabric and interpretive quality. The general conclusion was that alternative use was a less effective strategy in achieving the goals established for Eastern State than was investing the money required for conversion in an interest-bearing account.

In the years since then, funds contributed by the City of Philadelphia have been directed toward restoring parts of the huge complex of dilapidated galleries and prison cells. Limited guided public tours of the site have been initiated, and discussions of that elusive “magic key” to solve our cash-flow problems have been bandied about.  More recently, the preservation group designated as managers of the site have turned the penitentiary into a destination for large crowds of Halloween thrill-seekers. Each year, the site is transformed into a haunted house of sorts. Because the expense to install and remove the accoutrements of this chills show is cost prohibitive, the lights, sound systems, decorations, and props are now a permanent and quite visible fixture at Eastern State.

Whether this unquestionably profitable move is right or wrong is debatable. One could make an argument either way, and any differences of opinion would have no bearing on whether the building deserves the best possible attention to making it safe for the individuals who visit it. It does, however, beg some interesting questions about (1) whether such steps toward alternative use jive with the interpretation objectives the site is managed around and (2) whether the considerable wear and tear the crowds and the installations generate are logically defensible steps toward meeting the fabric preservation goal set forth.

 LOOKING INWARD

This article is not intended to make any conclusions either for or against alternative use as a preservation strategy. There are dozens of success stories that show it can indeed work, whether due to good study and planning, good execution, good luck, or some combination of these. What I hope the reader takes away, however, is the ability to recognize that going down the alternative use road can sometimes send us into a jug-handle of illogic of our own creation. Demolition and consumption in the name of interpretation and preservation, for instance, is plain bad logic.  

Turning a critical eye to our own actions and the way we vehemently defend them can be difficult, frustrating, and even painful. We’re more likely to achieve our noble goals, however, if we attend to our foibles. Considering how we rationalize alternative use as a preservation strategy might be a good start.

Samuel Y. Harris

--S. Harris & Co. Comprehensive Project List--