Time for Reflection

On January 31st the White House announced that the 2011 budget would eliminate all funding for the Save America’s Treasures and the Preserve America programs. The White House blog explained the decision this way:

Cutting Save America’s Treasures and Preserve America grant programs at the National Park Service. Save America’s Treasures program was started to mark the millennium and was supposed to last for two years. Both programs lack rigorous performance metrics and evaluation efforts so the benefits are unclear.

This announcement certainly riled the historic preservation movement including a series of postings on the National Trust’s Forum listserv under the subject line, “It’s Time to Declare War.”

I don’t know if it’s time to declare war or not. But I do know that it is time for preservationists to rethink the progress we thought we had made over the last three decades. And I have to say I’m at the head of the line. Naively I sincerely believed that as we have broadened the definition of the roles that historic preservation plays in society, as we have documented the wide range of positive economic impacts of historic preservation, as we have demonstrated the contribution of historic preservation to Smart Growth, sustainable development, affordable housing, downtown revitalization – that after all of this I thought our message had finally gotten through.

I was wrong.

But the most angering, in fact humiliating part of the White House announcement isn’t that those programs were cut from the budget. These are times when I think it is perfectly legitimate to review every item in the budget for savings…we’ll go bankrupt if we don’t do that. And SAT and Preserve America should have to be defended like any other program.

No, I’m angered and humiliated because historic preservation was used as the poster child for programs deemed not to work.

Remember the second biggest bully on the playground in grade school? Well I remember the day he got beat up by the biggest bully. And what did the second biggest bully do the next day? Picked out the weakest, geekiest, most defenseless kid in the school and beat him up. Why? Because he knew he could get away with it.

That’s what this White House announcement was…they got beat up and so they pick out the perceived 98 pound weakling to slap around.

This announcement had absolutely nothing whatsoever to do with the federal deficit. The rounding errors in the budgeting process are ten times greater than the annual amount spent on these two programs combined. Here’s the analogy. You have a household income of $80,000 per year, but decide “We need to cut back.” So what do you do? Eliminate $0.04 from your monthly expenditures. That’s right…four cents a month of an $80,000 a year income is the equivalent of these cuts.

But it’s not even that. They did not spend an hour pondering the benefits of this program; they picked on the weakest kid on the block to give the illusion they were doing something about the theft from future generations that this deficit represents.

This is absolutely Nixonian in its manipulative hypocrisy. Save America's Treasures supposed to last just two years? Yes, but it was extended because it worked! Too bad the same can’t be said for the stimulus package. Oh, no metrics or performance evaluations? One of the recommendations coming out of Laura Bush’s Preservation Summit was to devise a standardized set of metrics for preservation’s impact. In fact before the end of the last administration, the process of developing those metrics was begun in the Department of Commerce. What’s happened with that in the last 13 months? Absolutely nothing! I guess they’ve been too busy inventing ways to stimulate the economy that have been so measurably successful.

We had to have the stimulus, and Republicans are putting party over country to claim we didn't. But what the money was appropriated for had everything do to with reelecting Democrats and almost nothing to do with good public policy.

Most of the developed countries in the world had a major heritage conservation component in their stimulus packages. Why? jobs, job training, local impact, labor intensity, affects industry most adversely affected, impacts local economies, long term investment, etc. etc. Historic preservation element in the US stimulus plan? $0.

In December the White House announced that so far the $159 billion spent in grants and loans under the stimulus plan had created or saved 640,000 jobs. But make the next calculation -- that works out to $248,000 per job. I want one of those jobs!

The following week Australia released the results of the heritage portion of their stimulus package -- cost per job? $21,818 -- 11 times the cost effectiveness than whatever the hell we're spending the stimulus money on. In other words, for every million dollars spent through the US stimulus programs, around 4 jobs were created. For every million the Australians spent on the heritage portion of their stimulus program, 46 jobs were created.

In contrast to the success stories in a dozen other countries using heritage as part of the stimulus, we have an administration dumping Preserve America and Save America's Treasures. Or you can look at it this way....in 7 hours and 50 minutes the interest (forget paying back the principal) on the stimulus package is more than the combined annual budgets of Save America's Treasures and the Preserve America program.

But beyond that, the people in the White House are way too smart for this to be accidental. This was a very public, very classless slap in the face to Hillary Clinton and Laura Bush, the two first ladies whose programs they were. Hillary is one thing. But when Michelle Obama was getting heat from everywhere about her performance as First Lady, it was Laura Bush who stepped up and defended her. So how does the White House reciprocate? “Here’s the finger, Laura…you and your program as well.”

I blamed the Democrats on the Hill rather than Obama for the idiotic allocations in the Stimulus Bill. I happily crossed party lines to vote for him. But as for this new budget I can no longer give Obama a pass. This was the crassest of political demagoguery but also demonstrates how impotent the preservation movement is seen as being.

And if the White House action were the only bad news we could attribute it to some idiot in OMB who deserves a trip to the woodshed. But in the legislature in Arizona a Republican State senator has introduced a bill to end property tax reductions for historic houses. In Indiana a Republican state legislator is angry because CVS was denied permission to demolish a historic church in her district so she is proposing to emasculate the Indianapolis Preservation Commission. In Missouri, Iowa and elsewhere reducing the effectiveness of state historic tax credits is high on legislative agendas. In Washington the state Main Street program is proposed to be zeroed out. A new city council in Poughkeepsie, New York repealed the historic preservation ordinance just passed by the previous council.

How does the preservation movement react without just being seen as one more group crying, “Yeah, cut the other guys but not us”? I don’t know. But that’s the least of our problems. I don’t think I’m the only one who so significantly misjudged the progress we have made.

We either need to change the mission, change the message or change the messenger.

When I was in grade school I was neither the bully nor the kid that always got picked on. But at least now I know how the second one felt.

Making Preservation Relevant for the Next 50 Years

The National Trust's yearly conference concluded yesterday in Nashville. The last formal event was the annual Forum Luncheon, Forum being the subset of Trust members who are primarily practicing professionals in historic preservation. It was my privilege to give the presentation at that event.

In the past Forum Journal, the quarterly publication of Forum, has reprinted many of the presentations from the Trust conference. Because of timing, this speech won't appear until the Spring 2010 issue of Forum Journal. So I'm posting my remarks online now and they are included below. Comments, questions, and dissents are certainly welcome.

rypkema

Making Historic Preservation Relevant for the Next 50 Years
Forum Luncheon
Nashville, Tennessee
October 17, 2009

Thank you.

I am particularly pleased to have been invited to make this presentation. As you all know this will be the last National Trust conference where Peter Brink is in command. There are probably some people who care as much about historic preservation as Peter, including my long time friends Myrick Howard, David Brown, Randy Shepard and Amy MacDonell and many of you in this room. But I don't think anyone cares more about preservationists - personally and professionally - than does Peter.

Many of you have individually benefited from Peter's leadership, his guidance, and most importantly his friendship. I certainly have, and I want to thank you for that, Peter.

More than any other individual, Peter has given me numerous opportunities over the last two decades to broaden how I think about historic preservation, and has given me the forum - no pun intended - to think out loud about this movement. It was Peter's idea for me to write The Economics of Historic Preservation. It was Peter who got me engaged in the debate about preserving the recent past. It was Peter who a few years ago who gave me the platform of this luncheon to give what I've come to think of as my "historic preservation as foreign policy" speech...and my having been given the opportunity to think about those issues lead directly to the expansion of my professional practice to an international level.

And it was Peter who called me 7 or 8 months ago and asked if I would think about what the historic preservation movement is going to have to do to be relevant fifty years from now, and then deliver those thoughts here today.

The good news is that I'll certainly be dead 50 years from now so won't be around to be held accountable for whatever I might spout off about today.

But I have been thinking, and scribbling notes, and talking to others about this presentation for months now. And I would hope that at least a few pieces of it are worthy of discussion, debate and particularly dissent both here today and perhaps in the months ahead. But, candidly, I've tried to be particularly careful with the ideas I'm going to present, and the words I use to present them. And this is the reason: Forum Journal - which, as you know, is by far the best publication for the practicing professional in preservation today - typically prints the texts of the major presentations at the Trust Conference and may do that with my comments today.

Therefore I have a very important caveat for anyone who listens to or later reads these remarks - nothing whatsoever that I say should be interpreted as a criticism of today's preservation commissions, the National Park Service, Preservation Action, ICOMOS or my fellow preservationists. I want to make that clear, because the last thing I want is for my comments to be taken out of context and used by opponents of historic preservation as an argument against what we are all trying to do by saying, "See, even this guy who spoke at the National Trust conference thinks that.....whatever." I repeat - nothing I say from here on out is a critique of today's historic preservation.

And I want to make doubly clear that this is not a critique of the National Trust. When someone writes the history of the Trust under Dick Moe, a central theme will be how he spent his time making the National Trust specifically, but by extension, the preservation movement more relevant - Smart Growth, the Trust's collection of properties, the sustainable development program, the support for state and local preservation organizations - every one of those initiatives was about the relevancy.

So I certainly do not believe that in the last fifty years preservation has not been relevant - it certainly has. But I have taken seriously Peter's charge to think about what the preservation movement is going to have to do to be relevant fifty years from now, and everything I say is in that context.

I often tell clients that one of the few ways I'm useful to them is that I'm always candid...sometimes with the car running to get me out of town. And I'll be candid today. If most of you aren't mad at me for something or other I say I probably haven't done the job Peter asked me to do. And I'll move among the theoretical, the linguistic, the political and the practical.

One last caveat - if there is anything I've learned from working with Main Street communities for the last 25 years, it is the importance of incrementalism. So even if some of the perspectives I offer today have merit, should they be implemented tomorrow? No. Peter's time frame was 50 years, not 15 minutes...change should happen incrementally over time, not be instantly imposed.

But here is why the discussion of relevancy is relevant today - the passage of the $787 Billion dollar stimulus plan last February. This was a statement of Congressional priorities affecting two generations. I say two generations, because no one in this room will still be in the workforce when this bill is finally paid off. And every single thing that was included in that bill was deemed by Congress to be more relevant than historic preservation.

Don't get me wrong, this was not a failure on the part of the National Trust or Preservation Action to effectively lobby to be included. The haste, the complexity, and the secrecy with which this bill was put together meant that unless you were a Democratic member of an appropriations committee, the chance of influencing the final package was virtually non-existent.

Instead it represents how much we as a preservation movement need to do in the next 50 years to be as relevant as we ought to be. And it is not that preservation doesn't have friends in Congress. The introduction and bipartisan support for The Community Restoration and Revitalization Act is evidence of that.

But the stimulus bill was about jobs, about economic development, about sustainable development - three things that historic preservation does better than almost any other activity and should have been an obvious priority. And yet we didn't make the short list; we didn't make the long list; we didn't even make the footnotes.

I'm mistaken there. In the first draft there was $55 million for historic preservation, but that was one of the few things that got cut. Even had it been left in, it was a statistically meaningless amount. The interest accrued on the stimulus spending between when you went to bed last night and right now is more than the $55 million that was designated for preservation.

After the preservation allocation was cut, here is what I found posted on the website of a financial institution: Previously, the bill contained an item that would give a big payday to historic preservation. A $55 million payday to be exact. I can't say that I know what the money was going to fund, exactly. Much historic preservation mostly involves leaving things alone. But I can say that there isn't a correlation between historic preservation and improving the economy.

If we know something and someone else doesn't know it - that's not their fault, that's our fault. And obviously we have not made our case.

But it's not like nobody gets it. The European Heads of Heritage Forum spent their spring meeting talking about heritage stimulus during an economic recession. Norway, France, Slovakia, the Netherlands, Luxembourg, Canada, Australia, Hong Kong - every one of them had specific funding for historic preservation in their own stimulus plans.

Why? Heritage conservation creates jobs. It creates jobs in the sector most seriously impacted by this recession. It creates jobs where there is a significant shortage of skills. It has extraordinary impact on local economies. And it invests in assets that are both sustainable and long term.

Here was part of the EHHF statement: All the evidence demonstrates that investment in heritage is an inherently sustainable, long term, and measurably successful solution to economic recession.

The European Parliament even held a hearing in March about the role of heritage conservation in economic downturns. The equivalent hearing in the US Congress? Well, I guess I missed that notice in the Congressional Record.

So it is certainly relevant that we talk about relevancy.

If historic preservation is going to be relevant in fifty years, we need to revisit the basic question - what do we want to preserve and why? Now I know this debate takes place in graduate school classrooms and rather arcane academic conferences, but we need to engage the discussion to help define our roles as practicing preservationists.

Think about the beginnings of historic preservation in America. It began with saving Mount Vernon, which was not only the home of our first president, but also a mansion of a wealthy landowner. And then preservation moved to landmarks, monuments, and the gems of architecture as art. We saved buildings that were most important in our national history and we saved buildings of great beauty. And I would argue that was the appropriate starting point. Even when the National Historic Preservation Act was passed the primary focus was on architecture as art and on the associative importance of buildings to our history.

As a consequence our framework for the treatment of buildings we decided were worthy of historic designation - local design guidelines, the Secretary's Standards, preservation ordinances - responded to that thinking about what was historic. And in the minds of many, historic preservation was simply a subset of architecture.

But how is historic preservation different today? Here is my test - look at what made the list of the National Trust's "This Place Matters" program. Virtually none of the finalists met the test of either being an architectural masterpiece or of particular significance to our national history. Those places were nominated because they mattered to the local community and in many cases not on architectural grounds. I for one think that is a wonderful way for historic preservation to have evolved.

These are places that matter to the local community, therefore, by definition, they are places that are relevant to the local community. But our regulatory environment, our preservation philosophy, and our preservation education is still largely stuck in the past.

We need to reestablish the relationship between why something is deemed worthy of historic designation, and the rules we have in place to maintain its significance. If, for example, materials were in no way part of what creates the significance of the building, why are we being rabid about what materials are used in rehabilitation? English Heritage is currently revisiting their listing documents, not to make things more demanding, but to add flexibility for the treatment of building elements that weren't part of why a building was listed in the first place.

On the philosophical side, we have these endless debates about authenticity. In the case of Montpelier, for example, that was a very important debate to have - whether to go back to the Madison building or also preserve the later DuPont additions. But Montpelier is the type of monument - a mansion with architectural and associative importance - for which the philosophy of authenticity was developed. But is that still germane for the types of places identified today as places that matter? If we are honest with ourselves, the sheer act of designation and placing significant constraints on what can happen to a property in the future does far more to remove the authenticity of the building than does some minor materials substitution. Except for grand monuments, almost all buildings were built to be able to evolve over time. And in most cases we are either precluding or severely restricting the ability for the building to do that in the name of authenticity.

Does that mean I think we should remove the restrictions on what can happen to historically designated buildings? Absolutely not. What I think we should remove is our more than hypocritical concept of authenticity for the majority of properties we deem worthy of protection.

Today we are designating properties, not for their architectural grandeur or associative significance, but for their importance to the local community and, in many cases, as a tool to help a neighborhood have a say in how it changes over time. But our understanding of those issues is far more reliant on sociology, political science, psychology, urban planning, economics, and anthropology than it is on architectural history, materials conservation, or knowing the difference between Queen Anne and High Victorian.

So if the nature of what kinds of places matter is naturally evolving to become more relevant, then our regulatory structure, our philosophy and our education need to evolve as well.

Which brings up a related issue - the role of the preservation elites. Those of us with technical training and education in historic preservation believe we should have more say in what is historic and what should be preserved and how, than the guy on the street. So the Park Service doesn't have auto mechanics reviewing tax credit projects, they have architectural historians. And chances are your local preservation ordinance spells out the qualifications for serving on the commission, and that will be people with particular expertise in historic preservation.

But, again as the This Place Matters program amply demonstrates, we are rapidly democratizing what constitutes those places worthy of preservation - moving that decision beyond those with specific preservation expertise. If that's the right thing to do to make historic preservation relevant, it has important implications for the role of the expert.

In the mid 1960s, when today's framework for preservation policy was being established, there was a conscious decision that we shouldn't have a graded system of historic resources. There was the fear that if we had, for example, Class A, Class B and Class C buildings, that would be handing demolition permits to developers and local governments who would argue, 'It can't be that important. It's a Class C building." I both understand and concur with the reasoning at that time. When even the best of our built heritage was being lost through rampant urban renewal and misguided development decisions, it was necessary to yell "STOP!".

But in half a century we have matured as a country and as a movement. We lack credibility, and therefore relevance, when we claim every historically designated building is equally important. A few years ago a good friend and well regarded preservationist said to me, "To young people today, the first McDonalds is more important than Mount Vernon." I don't know if young people believe that. But if they do, they are wrong! They are not equally important. I'm not against designating the first McDonalds. But if an upcoming generation of preservationists thinks there is equivalence between Mount Vernon and McDonalds, I'm burning my National Trust membership card.

And the trouble of not identifying relative importance means we are terrible about setting priorities. Historic resources, like natural resources, need to be managed over time. It is impossible to have good management if you're unable or unwilling to establish priorities.

Priorities are also necessary when we decide which battles to fight. We will never have enough financial, human, or political resources to fight and win every preservation battle. So we need to have some process to decide which battles we are going to be fully engaged in. And we cannot do that if we are unwilling to establish priorities.

One of the lessons of relevance that the preservation movement has learned in recent years is that all preservation, like all politics, is local. And there is much positive about that - it is consistent with historic American land use policy, and it is local people who are best able to identify what is important locally. But there is a drawback. If we are going to have valuable, high quality, livable, sustainable cities fifty years from now, our vision cannot be bound by municipal boundaries. We need to think on a regional basis, often crossing state lines. This is going to be a herculean effort that is going to require advocacy and expertise from many disciplines, but historic preservation needs to be at the forefront.

Another area where preservationists need to use our creativity and to join with others is the invention of new land use tools. In American planning and zoning law there are very few tools available to allow citizens to influence the character and quality of their neighborhoods. Historic designation is one of the few that exist. And when there is only one tool, that tool is used whether or not it is appropriate. Preservationists are the ones with more experience than anyone in using local legislation to protect and enhance the quality and character of neighborhoods. We need to use that experience to help develop additional tools beyond historic designation.

If preservation is going to be relevant we cannot ignore the demographics of this country. The young preservation activists of fifty years from now aren't even born yet, and won't be born for another twenty or twenty-five years. And when they are born, less than half of them will be non-Hispanic white. So the ongoing efforts to racially and ethnically diversity the preservation movement need not only to be continued, but to be stepped up, not out of some drive for political correctness, but as an imperative if preservation is to be relevant fifty years from now.

The issue of sustainability is not one more fad that will fade in a year or two. Sustainable development is central to environmental, cultural, and economic survival. And there is no element of society that more broadly adds to all three of the components of sustainability than does historic preservation. And if we get bogged down in arguing for a couple of more points on some LEED scoring system we will have lost the battle. Green buildings are not a synonym for sustainable development. The Trust's sustainability initiative was begun as "Beyond Green Buildings". If we are to be relevant in fifty years, now is the time to move beyond green buildings.

Some of you may have been involved in the rather esoteric discussions over the last year on the phrase historic urban landscape. Sometime in the next year UNESCO is going to adopt a protocol on historic urban landscapes. What are historic urban landscapes? Historic cities. Why don"t they just say, "historic cities"? There's some obtuse reason dealing with the fact that the phrase "historic cities" is not found in the World Heritage Convention. But there is a more subtle concept here. Think about the natural landscape - it inherently changes over time. The conservation of the natural landscape means to manage its evolution over time, not its preservation at a fixed point in time.

To be relevant that's how we should approach our cities - to manage their change over time, not fix them at a point in time. I chose two definitions from my American Heritage Dictionary: preserve: to keep in perfect or unaltered condition; and conserve: to protect from loss or depletion. For our relative handful of national monuments, to preserve is probably what we should strive for. But for the vast majority of the historic buildings in America, for the Places that Matter, I think we want to conserve them.

That's why to be relevant, I think our movement should join most of the rest of the world and be about heritage conservation, rather than historic preservation.

Two final recommendations for relevancy in the coming years. First, historic preservation is too important on too many levels to be buried in the bureaucratic basement of the Department of the Interior. It should become a key element of a new cabinet level Department of Sustainable Development.

Second, I hope there is no doubt about my admiration for Dick Moe. He is by far the best president the National Trust has ever had and I hope he stays in that position for years to come. But when he does decide to retire, I think it's time that we acknowledge a reality in the American preservation movement - that it overwhelmingly owes its existence and success to the efforts of women. The next National Trust president should be a woman.

Those of us you've heard from here today - Dick and Peter, Myrick, Valecia and I - have all done our best to make historic preservation relevant, and will continue to do so for years into the future. Years into the future, but not fifty years into the future.

The opportunity exists for heritage conservation not just to become more relevant, but to increase its relevance a hundred fold. That's the challenge that will be left to others in this room. It won't happen without you. But America will be not just a more sustainable country, but a better country because of what you will do.

Thank you for that, and thank you for having me here today.

@ Donovan D. Rypkema, 2009
PlaceEconomics
1785 Massachusetts Avenue, NW
Washington, DC 20036
202-588-6258
DRypkema@PlaceEconomics.com
www.PlaceEconomics.com

Not only are the French smarter, so are the Norwegians

Earlier this week I wrote about the incorporation of $132 million a year for the next four years for the restoration of historic buildings in France. That was a specific part of President Sarkozy's economic stimulus plan for France. Like the US, France is suffering its most severe recession since the end of World War II.

This morning I get an email from my friend Terje Nypan who is in the Culture Ministry of Norway. Much of the national budget in Norway is dependent on oil. So when the oil price drops from $140 per barrel to $40, it obviously has a big impact.

So the Norwegian government has adopted what they call their "Crisis Package" in the amount of about $685 million dollars. (If that number seems low compared to the $780 Billion stimulus package here, remember that the population of Norway is around 4.6 million versus 304 million for the US. )

But unlike the United States where the only criteria to make the bill seems to be having a friend on the House Appropriations Committee, in Norway they actually had a set of principles upon which their decisions were based. And here they are:

• The measures must have a speedy effect on the labor market
• The measures must have specific target objectives
• The measures must be limited in time
• The measures shall strengthen the Government in its policies for the environment and income distribution.

I happen to think this is an excellent set of principles. But others could have a different list. The trouble in the US is that there is no set of principles upon which we are encumbering 3 generations to repay.

And how did Norway commit their stimulus money to be consistent with these principles?

• Measures for increased energy efficiency $183,529,000
• Repair and development of railway system $198,976,000
• CO2 cleaning $147,129,000
• Footpaths/sidewalks and bicycle roads $ 76,471,000
• Nature management and Cultural Heritage $ 52,000,000
• Environment research on sea wind turbines $ 11,471,000
• Charging stations for electric cars $ 7,647,000
• Bio Energy $ 7,647,000

The Cultural Heritage portion of that was around $34,000,000 and was divided as follows:

• Rehabilitation and maintenance of privately owned, protected property $11.6 Million
• Technical and industrial heritage, vessels and centers $6.9 Million
• Rock art, archeology, and universal access $3.8 Million
• Fire safety for historic wood buildings, medieval and important churches $11.8 Million

Why did they do this? Because they learned in the last recession that: a) it worked putting people back to work and training workers for the future; and b) it met the principles they established.

Virtually all the line items in the Norwegian stimulus package are long term investments. Almost none in the US stimulus package are.

One more blog about the stimulus package then I'll let it go. What the hell, I'll never live long enough to have to repay any of it.

Why the French are Smarter than us Americans

Yeah, we have to have a stimulus plan. And one will pass this week. The latest iteration is the one crafted by a moderate Republican (Susan Collins of Maine) and a moderate Democrat (Ben Nelson of Nebraska). And as a militant moderate myself, I have to commend them for at least making some adjustments to the bottomless barrel of pork written by the Democrats in the House and the equally irresponsible "just say no" or "just say more tax cuts" approach by the Republicans.

In this morning's Washington Post Senator Arlen Specter, one of the three Republicans likely to vote for this latest version, said that the $780 Billion Dollar package would create or save 4 million jobs. (As an aside "create or save" used by both Specter and President Obama is bullshit...why? It means you have already defined success for yourself. If not a single new job is created you can still say, "Yeah, but I saved 4 million jobs" and it's impossible to disprove that.)

But bullshit aside, make the calculation. $780 Billion divided by 4 million jobs equals $195,000 per job.

Now France has as big a case of economic chaos as we do. Their economy shrunk last year the most since World War II and their unemployment is expected to reach nearly 11%.

So, of course, President Sarkozy had to introduce his own economic stimulus plan. But here's a big piece of his approach - committing 100 million extra Euros per year ($130 million) for the restoration of historic monuments in France for the next 4 years. So about 1.5% of his stimulus package is going toward heritage conservation. By the way Sarkozy isn't the only one. In March there is going to be a hearing in Brussels of the European Union on using heritage conservation as a counter-cyclical economic development strategy.

So what if we took this approach as part of our stimulus plan? Of course in the US we are much more likely to use tax incentives to attract private investment rather than direct public funding. And we've done this effectively with the Historic Rehabilitation Tax Credit.

So let's double the tax credit for the next 4 years (from 20% to 40%) and let's assume that costs the US taxpayers the annual equivalent of $130 million per year. What would that mean? Nearly 20,000 jobs per year for each of the next 4 years. (Also, by the way, when economists and politicians say "job" they mean one full time job for one year. So if a stimulus package creates one job in the highway building business, for example, that lasts for the next four years, that will be counted as 4 jobs).

The cost to the US taxpayer of historic preservation as stimulus? $6875 dollars per job...for the same amount of money that is required to create 1 job in the rest of the stimulus package, 28 jobs would be created. And this would represent less than 1/10 of 1% of the stimulus spending, not France's 1.5%.

Furthermore, this is Sustainable Economic Development! A tax credit to encourage Americans to buy even more cars isn't.

France might not produce the best armies, but they are better at wine, better at cheese, and sure as hell better at figuring out a stimulus plan than we are.

World Monuments Fund, Time Honored, and John Stubbs

In 1965 a new historic preservation organization was founded - the World Monuments Fund. In the 40+ years since its founding, few organizations have had as large an impact internationally on our built cultural heritage as has the WMF.

While the WMF has numerous programs and projects, its largest and best known is the biennial World Monuments Watch. Every two years since 1996 WMF publishes and broadly publicizes its list calling "international attention to cultural heritage around the world that is threatened by neglect, vandalism, conflict or disaster."

Since this program began, nearly 550 sites in 79 different countries, on every continent (yes, including Antarctica) have made an appearance on the list...a few more than once. While the primary purpose of the list is to bring to the fore imminent risks to the built heritage of our world, the WMF does more than point out the problems. Nearly half of the listed sites have received funding which over the years has totaled more than $50 million in WMF grants which have leveraged investment by others of over $150 million.

Reflecting the incredible diversity of the world's cultural heritage, listings have ranged from such international icons as the Taj Majal and Angkor Wat to far less known sites such as Levuka Township in Fiji and the Humberstone and Santa Laura Industrial Complex in Chile. To get a sense of the range of sites one only needs to look at the 2008 World Monuments Watch list of Most Endangered Sites.

Because of the magnitude of this effort, WMF begins soliciting nominations for the next listing nearly two years in advance. Already accessible are guidelines for nomination for sites for the 2010 list, which are available in English, Arabic, French, Italian, Spanish, and Chinese. Anyone - government, NGO, private person, local organization - can nominate a site, but now is the time to act. The deadline for submission of the nomination and related materials is March 15, 2009, so get moving!

Why has the World Monuments Fund become so successful? I think there are four reasons; 1) they have a fundamentally good idea; 2) they know how to partner; 3) they bring significant resources (both human and financial) to the table; and 4) they have a superb staff.

Although it is a non-profit organization (NGO) the World Monuments Fund operates like a great entrepreneurial private sector company. And they have identified this "niche" in the market that no one else is as comprehensively filling.

The partner list of the WMF is extensive and varied and ranges from American Express, the Aga Khan Trust for Culture, the World Bank, and the Getty Conservation Institute on the international level and hundreds of national, regional and local governments and organizations around the world.

I noted earlier the direct grants WMF has made and the additional dollars those grants have catalyzed. But on other projects they also bring expert technical skills to address the specific issues of a particular site.But of the four reasons for success perhaps the most important is the people of the WMF. President Bonnie Burnham is the personification of the adjective indefatigable. Executive Vice President Lisa Ackerman came to the World Monuments Fund from the Kress Foundation, is well known in historic preservation circles and was the first recipient of the Ann Webster Smith Award for International Heritage Achievement given by US/ICOMOS. Recently joining WMF as Director of Research and Education is Erica Avrami about to finish her PhD at Rutgers University and with previous experience at the Getty Conservation Institute, as a preservation consultant, and as an adjunct faculty member at Pratt and the University of Pennsylvania.

But also at the WMF (and here's the disclaimer - he's a long time friend) is John Stubbs. I highly doubt that there is another person on the planet who has physically been to as many sites of international cultural importance as has John. I don't know if there are any of the sites that have been listed on the Monument Watch that John has not visited, but if there are any, damn few.

So John has put this incredible hands-on experience into a new book - Time Honored: A Global View of Architectural Conservation. If, anywhere in the world, you are teaching a course on international heritage conservation, this should be your core text. If you are a student in historic preservation and have an interest in international issues, buy this book. If you are a professional, a civil servant, an interested amateur, or an advocate for cultural heritage in your own country, but want to understand your efforts in an international context, this book should be your next read.

The book ranges from the academic (Nomenclature Used in International Conservation Practice) to the theoretical (Who Owns the Past?) to the history of conservation (The Forging of a Discipline: The Late Eighteenth to Early Twentieth Century) to the very practical (Options for Involvement).

There is one downside to reading the book, however. Looking at the photos of places John has visited and sites that have been assisted by the World Monuments Fund, you'll wish you had his job.

You've Come a Long Way Baby (or not)

Back in the late 60s when the Women's Movement was becoming an important and influential voice in American politics, life and culture, the ever opportunistic tobacco industry leaped into the fray. Philip Morris introduced a new brand of cigarettes - Virginia Slims - specifically targeted toward women. And the slogan? "You've come a long way baby."

There are times when I think that the historic preservation movement has come a long way...when I hear the success stories of local Main Street programs; when I attend the awards banquet of a statewide preservation organization; and particularly when I teach my Spring semester course at the University of Pennsylvania. All those really bright and (mostly) young people preparing for careers in historic preservation. Every year I learn far more from them than they ever learn from me.

But other times...well, we haven't come so far after all.

This morning up pops this news story, headlined "Mayor rejects downtown preservation efforts". But the headline itself wasn't the biggest issue. While usually preservationists try to do their best, there are circumstances where the preservation proposal of the day might merit review or dissent from an elected official...it's how democracy does and should work.

No, it wasn't that Mike Hadick, Mayor of Albion, New York (population 7700, 1400 of them guests of a State women's prison) didn't like some particulars in a proposed preservation ordinance. No, it was his reasons:

1) Young people are leaving Albion because "people don't want to live in an outdated village"

2) He didn't like the fact that the Preservation Commission denied a Certificate of Appropriateness for a sign Verizon wanted to put in their Main Street store. So, of course, Verizon went to the Mayor and he approved the sign.

To all of this Mayor Hadick said he would "prefer the collection of historic downtown structures be leveled to make way for a new commercial district." And as for the downtown "I can live with brand-new buildings."

Mayor Hadick's reasoning is, "You can't have a [preservation] commission that's not looking out for the businessman first. The way times are right now, do you really want to mess with a businessman?"

Well, as a private sector guy myself, I'm certainly for considering the needs of "businessmen". But who in the hell is going to build a new downtown in Albion, New York? Where's the debt going to come from? Where is the equity going to come from? Where are the rents to justify new construction going to come from? Where's the pent-up demand for new commercial space when there have been 5 or 6 building permits issued in the last four years in Albion? Who are going to be starting those businesses to pay those rents in that new downtown?

Here's an oversimplified formula for you. Let's say you get the land for free in downtown Albion (maybe the stimulus plan will provide the local government with all the money it needs to acquire and raze every building in downtown). Now you build a new building, even one of mediocre quality - one story, concrete block, and stick on some z-brick and Styrofoam beams. What's that going to cost? I don't know, let's say we can do it cheap for $125 per square foot. Now what will the rents have to be? Well, if the banks choose to lend and the investors choose to invest, and if this economic chaos is over...you'd need rents of around $20 per square foot per year. Is that what the rent levels are in downtown Albion, Mr. Mayor?

I honestly believed that the Urban Renewal approach of "Let's tear down this old crap and the developers will be lining up for the chance to build new" having been proved such a disaster, would no longer be the vehicle of choice for any elected official. Well, once again, I was wrong.

If there were an assembly of absurd idiocies, "young people are leaving town because of these old buildings" would certainly make the collection. You don't think that high unemployment, low wages, and limited opportunities for higher education might not have something to do with it Mr. Mayor? That is as misguided as the Virginia Slims implication that women would be independent and cool if they smoked skinny cigarettes.

I have great sympathy with small towns struggling for economic survival and have worked in probably a thousand of them in the last 25 years. But I'll leave it at this...show me the small town that came back to prosperity by tearing down their historic downtown and someone building them a brand new one.

While we still have mayors who haven't learned that yet, we as preservationists haven't done our job. We haven't come that far, baby.

What's Good for Preservation is Good for the Greens

I have ranted with regularity that the environmental movement as a whole absolutely does not get the connection between historic preservation and sustainable development. But there are notable exceptions. One of them is Knute Berger who is, among other things, an environmental journalist in Seattle. He writes for a couple of publications including the online periodical Crosscut.

A week or so ago Knute was preparing a two-part article about preservation issues that will be facing Seattle in 2009. As part of his research he emailed me some very thoughtful questions. With Knute's permission I'm including below both his questions and my answers to them. I knew at the time that my answers were far more than Knute needed or wanted. But his questions were so good that I answered them more fully than he needed, but for as much as clarifying my own thinking as for his use.

Read the below if you wish, but certainly read Knute's two-part series. Part 1 is entitled "Recession, wrecking balls, and history" and Part 2 is headlined "What's Good for Preservation is Good for the Greens" which I've stolen from Knute as the title of this blog. While the articles are specifically about Seattle, many of the issues raised will face many American cities.

By the way, Knute has a new book out entitled Pugetopolis: A Mossback Takes On Growth Addicts, Weather Wimps, and the Myth of Seattle Nice, published by Sasquatch Books. I have to think it will be a great read.

Anyway, below are Knute's great questions and, for what they are worth, my answers.


I checked your blog and saw an entry from August about the Obama campaign being preservation-friendly. Is that still your view? Is there anything tangible that would indicate how that could take form in '09?

I think there is at least a chance that this new administration will be good for historic preservation for a number of reasons. First, Obama is going to establish an office of urban issues within the White House. While there are certainly wonderful historic resources in this country in rural areas, most of them are in cities. And for anyone with a more macro view of things, historic preservation and urban quality go hand in hand. Historic preservation is certainly not the solution for every urban problem, but it is part of the solution for most of them. And Obama is nothing if not a sophisticated, nuanced thinker.

Second, potentially is Michelle Obama. In the Clinton years Hillary Clinton was a big preservation supporter through the Save America’s Treasures initiative. Laura Bush followed that tradition and established the Preserve America program. A bipartisan bill was introduced in the last Congress, co-sponsored by Senator Clinton and notably supported by the First Lady. The bill would make those two programs permanent within the federal structure. The "champion of American cultural heritage" mantle is one that Michelle Obama could take for herself and that would have significant benefits both for historic preservation and for the future First Lady.

Third, Obama has included in his list of stimulus programs retrofitting buildings for energy efficiency. If that initiative isn't hijacked by green gizmo manufacturers, historic preservation can play an important part.

Is preservation the kind of economic booster/shovel-ready work that could be part of the new administration's economic package?

Absolutely, and it should be front and center. And others in the world are beginning to get that. In March there will be a hearing at the European Parliament on Heritage Conservation as a Counter-Cyclical Economic Development Strategy.

I wrote a blog about the criteria for the stimulus package that you may or may not find useful. But my basic argument is: 1) because it is my grandchildren who aren't even conceived yet who will be paying off what will end up being $2 trillion in additional Federal deficit spending, we at least ought to make investments with that money from which they will derive some benefit; and 2) the components of the stimulus plan should advance a comprehensive sustainable development approach.

But, unfortunately, it appears that the bill has simply become a Christmas tree with every imaginable interest group saying, "We'll help the economy. Give a couple billion of that money to us." That represents the pork barrel approach that we've seen far too much of in recent years and certainly not a "change" approach that Obama promised us. There ought to be an established set of principles as to how that money should be spent. And if there were, I have no doubt that historic preservation would emerge as a priority.


Also, I wondered if you had anything to say about the state of relations between greens and preservationists. Seattle will get the National Trust Green Lab in '09. Is there anything there we should be watching for?

That's a tough question but, I have to say, I do see some positive signs. But as usual, it's from the bottom up, not the top down. Look, maybe 10% of what the environmental movement does advances the cause of historic preservation. But 100% of historic preservation activities advance the cause of the environment. But I see no movement at the leadership level of organizations such as the Nature Conservancy or the Sierra Club to understanding that at all. It looks like to me the US Green Building Council is taking the "check is in the mail" approach, promising more sensitivity to historic buildings, "in our next revision". I, frankly, haven't seen much movement there beyond lip service.

But more and more environmental journalists such as you and Lloyd Alter at Treehugger, are at least beginning to reflect the argument that "green" is more than solar panels and that existing historic buildings contribute significantly to environmental responsibility.

And then there is a handful of architects, planners and academics who are quickly moving to the sustainable development approach that recognizes there are far more components than just green buildings.

As to the National Trust's Sustainability initiative, its whole original premise was "Beyond Green Buildings". Hopefully the Seattle Green Lab will finally do that. We'll see.

Be curious if there's anything else on your radar for '09 too.

If there is anything that the economic chaos of 2008 should teach us, it is that we absolutely need to adopt a sustainable development strategy that includes not only environmental responsibility, but economic and social/cultural responsibility as well. Einstein was once quoted as saying, "Things should be made as simple as possible but not more so." Thinking that a green building approach is sufficient for sustainable development is vastly and myopically oversimplifying the complex challenges ahead of us.

New Year's Resolution and a List

I'm not really one to make New Year's resolutions...I'm too irresolute for that I suppose. But I do have one for 2009 - be more diligent about writing this blog. I am really lucky in the places I get to go, the people I get to meet, and the lessons I get to learn. And, frankly, it's a bit selfish of me not to share all three.

But here's what I've learned in writing a blog over the last 9 months: 1) it takes me much longer than I would have anticipated. Between writing, editing, posting, and then correcting the sloppy format I always seem to end up with, it takes me a couple of hours to get one of these short pieces up. 2) When I'm traveling, if I don't post within a day or two of wherever I was, I absolutely forget the nuances of whatever it was I found interesting or new or challenging. So somehow I have to find the self discipline (never one of my strong suits) to get these missives written quickly. I'll work on that.

In the meantime, as many of you have heard me say over the years, what I really am is not an economic development consultant, or preservationist, or real estate consultant or economist, but a list maker. I tend to think in lists.

So the first blog of 2009 is one of my lists -- 20 things we've learned about historic preservation.

1. Not every historic building can be adapted for every use, but the vast majority of quality historic buildings can be adapted to the vast majority of uses.

2. You can nearly always build something cheaper than you can do a complete renovation; but if quality is part of the equation, historic preservation is a cost competitive alternative.

3. The more similar the adaptive reuse of the historic building is to the original use, the more cost effective the rehabilitation will be.

4. The cost competitiveness of rehabilitation versus new construction is distorted when the costs of demolition and disposal are not included in the new construction cost estimates.

5. The remaining economic life of a quality rehabilitated historic building is not measurably different than the remaining economic life of a quality new building.

6. Rehabilitation will be more labor intensive (60/40) then new construction (50/50) which results, dollar for dollar, in a significantly greater local economic impact from rehabilitation project.

7. There has never been a major preservation success story where, before the project began, some building inspector, architect or structural engineer didn't claim, "This building has to come down - it's on the verge of collapse." Rarely, in fact, is that true.

8. Architects, contractors, trades and structural engineers who are experienced in rehabilitation projects will be much more creative in addressing problems and cost effective in construction than will those professionals who deal primarily with new construction.

9. It is nearly always a mistake, both functionally and economically, to try to force the interior design dejure into a historic building. It is neither "form follows function" nor "function follows form" but accommodating the necessary functions creatively into the existing form.

10. 90% of historic preservation projects fit seamlessly into the existing physical context. Maybe 20% of large new buildings do.

11. Items likely to cost more in total rehabilitation projects on a component-pricing basis are: interior construction, conveying, mechanical, general conditions. Items likely to cost less include: foundation, superstructure, exterior, roof structure. Items likely to be equivalent: substructure, electrical, architect.

12. Projects not requiring total renovation will be much more cost effective than even moderate quality new construction.

13. "Functional obsolescence" in historic buildings is far more often a conclusion drawn from unchallenged conventional wisdom than from reality and usually is much more indicative of designers either not experienced in rehabilitation projects or lacking in imagination.

14. Technological innovations are steadily increasing the comparability of rehabilitation to new construction in systems and environmental response. At the same time historic buildings were designed to accommodate the local environment and there are important lessons to be learned from them.

15. As the time horizon for building use and ownership lengthens the relative advantage of rehabilitated historic buildings increases. Therefore institutional ownership (which has a long-term investment horizon) of rehabilitated historic buildings often makes more relative sense than it does for those with a short-term investment perspective.

16. The cost effectiveness of historic preservation as part of an urban revitalization strategy far surpasses the "tear down and build up" urban renewal mistakes of the past.

17. Historic preservation is a core element of an environmentally conscious, stewardship minded public policy.

18. There are uncertainties with historic preservation and the unexpected will happen - things will go wrong. Experienced architects and contractors understand, however, that while some things will go wrong, everything won't go wrong.

19. Historic preservation provides connection and continuity to the local culture.

20. We know what the most expensive mistakes are.

Historic Preservation and the Election

Historic preservation is not the answer to every urban problem. But it is part of the answer to most of them.

Cities and urban issues deserve priority consideration in this presidential race, and preservationists should help frame both parties' urban agendas.

Preservationists have already become active in the Obama campaign as evidenced by the website below.

http://my.barackobama.com/page/community/group/HistoricPreservationforObama

This task force HPfO (Historic Preservation for Obama) was started by Washington attorney Andrew Potts. For those of you who don't know Andrew, he formerly worked at the National Trust where he mastered the obscure procedures to get the Trust active in the New Markets Tax Credit program.

If and when the McCain campaign has a similar preservation advocacy group within the campaign, I'll let you know that as well.

Green buildings and historic preservation

Well, today I got all excited. From one of my news searching systems I got this: "The Green Building Council chair made a presentation on the Green Building Program that focuses on the areas of sustainable site development, improving of indoor air quality, water management, energy management, solid waste management, green materials and to promote heritage conservation."

"Hooray", I thought, "Those green building people finally get it."

Alas, once again I was wrong. Well, not wrong, the green building people DO get it...but those are the green building people in the Philippines. That quotation came from a press release from the Philippine Department of Energy.

So the third world gets the connection. It would be nice if the EPA and the US Green Building Council would catch up with the developing world one of these days.

Historic Preservation and America in the World - Part 3

In Part 1 and Part 2 of Historic Preservation and America in the World, I tried to lay out twenty reasons why historic preservation ought to be a key component of US foreign policy.

In this last entry in the series are 10 ways the US government could do that. Others, of course, have more, different, and perhaps better ideas. But maybe these could be a starting point.

1. Follow-up services for visitors. Eight or ten times a year the State Department funds a multi-city tour for a visiting delegation whose primary interest is cultural heritage. Washington is nearly always on the travel itinerary and these groups are typically given briefings by US/ICOMOS, the National Park Service, the Advisory Council on Historic Preservation, the National Trust and others. Every indication is that the trips and the information received is appreciated and welcomed by the participants. In almost every instance members of the delegations will spontaneously say, "We could certainly use some on-site assistance on ..." Sometimes the need is on the policy side, sometimes education, sometimes legal framework, sometimes other issues. But there is no follow up. The State Department should fund through US/ICOMOS, the National Trust or other entities follow-up services for visitors composed of teams of expertise in the specific areas that were defined by the visitors.

Heritage training in Medan, Sumatra, Indonesia

2. Conference scholarships. American preservationists have abundant opportunities to learn. Each year the National Trust, the Association for Preservation Technology, US/ICOMOS, the National Main Street Center and other organizations hold conferences, all of which are rich with educational sessions. Each year there are perhaps a dozen other preservation related national conferences on specific subjects. Through embassies, funds should be made available to pay for travel expenses and registrations for heritage conservationists from other countries to attend these conferences.

3. Short-course training. Related to #2 is the range of short courses for preservation professionals and advocates annually in the US. Included are courses put on by the National Preservation Institute, the National Park Service, the National Trust and others. In most parts of the world this type of training and information is simply not available. Again the funding could come through US Embassies, but reaching potential international participants could be done through efforts of ICOMOS, the International National Trust Organization (INTO) and other cross-border preservation organizations.

4. Development banks. Three items are high on the agenda of nearly all of the international and regional development institutions such as the World Bank, the Inter American Development Bank, the Asian Development Bank, and others. Those items are: urban development, small and medium size enterprises (SMEs), and sustainable economic development. The United States should use its influence within those institutions to make the protection and reuse of recipient countries' historic resources as a central element in addressing those three issues.

5. Department of Interior international office. As the Federal agency most responsible for the implementation of historic preservation policy in the United States, the Department of the Interior as developed great expertise in a wide range of heritage conservation activities. The International Office within the Department of Interior should be fully funded and staffed in order to provide technical assistance internationally to countries in need of specialized expertise.

6. Federal agency expertise. Similarly other Federal agencies have in-house expertise in areas related to historic preservation. The Department of Housing and Urban Development, the Environmental Protection Agency, the Department of Commerce, the Department of Defense and others deal with issues where historic preservation is a vehicle, if not necessarily an end. This expertise could be provided to parallel departments in other countries. As an example, in 2003 then Secretary of HUD, Mel Martinez and his counterpart in the Spanish government hosted an exchange program in Spain involving experts from both countries in historic preservation. That effort was broadly deemed useful to both nations and similar activities should be undertaken regularly by other agencies.

Torzhok, Russia

7. Specific line item in foreign assistance. International aid programs at USAID and elsewhere should include historic preservation as a specifically targeted activity. What is often missed by donor agencies is that rarely is funding for historic preservation an end in itself. Rather there should be historic preservation funding where heritage buildings are the means to broader ends. These could include: job training, job creation, center city redevelopment, small business incubation, neighborhood stabilization, economic integration, affordable housing, education, and others. For example, instead of having a program that says, "We will build you a new school" have a program that says, "We will pay for the rehabilitation of a heritage building for a school." Thus more than one outcome results from a single expenditure.

8. Ambassador's Fund expansion. Although modest in total dollars, the Ambassador's Fund has been used by many US Embassies with great success and is held in high regard by local recipients. They very much view it as the type of modest support that demonstrates respect for the local culture by the US Government. This program should be expanded significantly.
9. Taking the lead on Habitat Agenda item IV C-8. There are many elements of the United National Habitat Agenda with which the US government - rightly or wrongly - has significant dissent. There is, however, a specific portion of that agenda (Section IV C-8) that deals specifically with the conservation and rehabilitation of the historical and cultural heritage. The United States should step forward and commit to be a major proponent and funder of that element of the Habitat Agenda.

10. Trade negotiations. For decades the United States has actively negotiated numerous international, multilateral, and bilateral trade agreements. In spite of the recent collapse of the Doha Round of negotiations, more trade pacts will no doubt be ratified in the future. Trade negotiations are inevitably complex and as a result often produce unintended consequences. Among those could very well be the challenge to programs encouraging historic preservation through direct financial assistance or investment incentives. These could be interpreted as a violation of free trade provisions. Every trade agreement, therefore, should spell out that no country's programs, the primary purpose of which is the preservation of heritage resources, will be interpreted as a violation of the given agreement. In some trade pacts, for example, it is spelled out that assistance to artists through the National Endowment for the Arts will not be considered a protectionist measure for a specific industry which might otherwise be considered a violation of the agreement. Language preserving the right of every country to have specialized programs for heritage conservation needs to be incorporated into every trade agreement.

Even if every one of the above were fully implemented, the total cost of the US taxpayers would be negligible relative to many of the expenditures currently being made to advance American interests internationally. Yet I firmly believe that the cost-benefit of such initiatives would be vastly superior to almost any current activity.

Finally, when was the last time that virtually every country in the world was on the same side of the same issue - India and Pakistan, Israel and the PLO, Africa and Europe, North America and South America? It was in the condemnation of the wanton destruction of the Buddhist statuary in Afghanistan by the Taliban - a historic preservation issue.

Conversely, in recent years perhaps the best example of the impact of symbolic healing was the restoration of the Old Bridge in Mostar, Bosnia and Herzegovina funded by the Aga Khan Trust for Culture and the World Monuments Fund.

If there is one adjective that describes the impact of historic preservation it is that one - healing. Healing our cities, healing our neighborhoods, healing our downtowns, healing our small towns, healing our economies - all by healing our historic resources.

If historic preservation has proven to be such a healing tool in America, it needs to be a healing tool supported by America in the rest of the world.

Historic Preservation and America in the World - Part 2

Yesterday I wrote Part 1 of Historic Preservation and America in the World. That entry listed the first 10 of 20 reasons why it is important for historic preservation to be a key component of US foreign policy. Today's blog lists reasons 11-20 and tomorrow I'll discuss 10 ways to make that happen.

11. The adaptive reuse of historic buildings is fully compatible with participation in economic globalization, which is critical for stability and prosperity in most of the world.

12. Although neither the proponents nor the opponents of globalization recognize it, there is not one globalization, but two - economic globalization and cultural globalization. The first, while not without challenges, has measurable long term benefits; the second has short term negative social and political consequences, and long term negative economic consequences. The most vociferous opposition to globalization comes from those seeing and appropriately resisting cultural globalization. The adaptive reuse of historic buildings is one of the few strategies that simultaneously allows the beneficial participation in economic globalization, while mitigating the adverse impacts of cultural globalization.

13. Our having a policy encouraging and assisting historic preservation shows our respect for the local culture of each country.

14. There are aspects of other cultures that do not deserve our respect, rather warrant our reproach - the role of women in Saudi Arabia, the rule of law in Pakistan, freedom of worship in China, tolerance of diversity in India. But those cultural changes will not take place under the point of a gun, nor will they - however meritorious change may be - take place overnight. A strategy of our valuing local heritage resources, however, shows our respect for those cultures without condoning every aspect of them.

Medan, Sumatra, Indonesia

15. A historic preservation based policy is applicable anywhere and works equally well in Asia, Africa, or Latin America. 97% of the net world population growth in the next 20 years will be on those three continents.

16. Developing historic preservation as a key component of our international policy provides a useful vehicle for our learning about other cultures on an in-depth and sustained basis. The most vociferous cheerleader for American policies today would hardly claim we're the most culturally aware nation on earth.

Muharraq, Bahrain

17. As we assist other countries in identifying, protecting, and enhancing their historic resources, we are at the same time aiding them in building sustainable and marketable local skills. The crafts and trades required for the conservation of heritage resources are not jobs that can be lost overnight to a cheaper overseas supplier. They are also labor intensive jobs without being make-work jobs.

18. In much of the world the major problem is the migration from the countryside to the already overcrowded urban areas. A combination of technological advances, and protection and enhancement of local resources could be a useful tool in helping to stem that tide. Again, Main Street successes in small towns here are an example of that strategy.

19. Most of the world has begun to recognize (although this is an area where environmentalists in the United States still have much to learn) that the protection and enhancement of heritage resources is a central component of a comprehensive sustainable development strategy. Our national policy should advance that perspective both at home and abroad.

Baku, Azerbaijan

20. Encouraging, assisting, and supporting each country's identification, protection and enhancement of its historic resources is an excellent use of American "soft power", a set of tools too rarely used in recent years. Defense Secretary Gates recognized this deficiency noting recently that more of US foreign policy needs to be on the diplomatic side and less on the military side.

Tomorrow -- 10 ways to make historic preservation an important part of US foreign policy.

Cost Effective Preservation and Fiscal Responsibility

A couple of times each year I get to attend the awards ceremony of a state Main Street program somewhere, most recently in Raton, New Mexico. Under director Rich Williams, the New Mexico Main Street Program has become one of the best in the country. The program is particularly strong at providing very high level technical assistance to Main Street communities. The office in Santa Fe is a two person (although soon to become three) operation consisting of Rich and his "handle every detail imaginable" administrative program coordinator, Julie Blanke.

The technical assistance is provided through a cadre of contract consultants. While this isn't unique to New Mexico, Rich has managed to assemble very competent people with incredible experience in Main Street on a national level. Included among these are Stephanie Redman, former assistant director of the National Main Street Center in Washington, Keith Kjelstrom, who at one time headed the California Main Street Program, Elmo Baca who himself earlier ran the New Mexico program and was a preservation fellow at the American Academy in Rome, and Lani Lott former Main Street Manager in California who now operates her consulting practice out of Arizona. I've known, worked with, and learned from all four of these professionals for years. In addition to this talent a half dozen other experts in a variety of fields are part of the assistance available to New Mexico Main Street communities. I don't know of another state where this much experienced talent is so readily available to local programs.

But this entry isn't really about the New Mexico Main Street Program. Instead it is about an erroneous argument that I hear from someone almost every week -- "That historic preservation stuff might be fine if you have a lot of money, but it's all so expensive, who could afford it." Two of the award winners in Raton demonstrate what nonsense that claim really is.

Example 1: The Colfax County Society for Art, History, and Archaeology. This sixty year old organization is better known locally as the Raton Museum. When in 2004 the museum's board recognized they were out of space, they made the decision to acquire a large vacant building in downtown Raton. So they held fund raising events, did excellent planning, worked hard, and hired the right professionals to assist them. The result? A wonderful facility for the museum where it can both benefit from the activity in downtown Raton, but also importantly directly contribute to revitalization efforts there. The cost? Around $60 a square foot! What can you build today for $60 a square foot? Maybe a quonset hut on a concrete slab decorated with z-brick and Styrofoam beams. Instead they have a wonderful facility to house their collections as well as traveling exhibits. (while I was there, by the way, the exhibit was the New Deal Treasures, photographs of WPA and CCC projects - buildings, structures, and art - created in New Mexico during the depression).


How did they rehabilitate these historic buildings so cost effectively? Three things helped: 1) they bought the building at the right price; 2) they put in thousands of man/woman hours of hard labor scraping, painting, sanding, and hauling; and 3) they hired an architect and general contractor who knew what they were doing. The result? A great museum building at a price per square foot you probably would have to pay to build a new garage for your car.

Example 2: The Main Street Award for Excellence in Historic Preservation. This annual award went to the City of Santa Rosa (population 2500) and Guadalupe County (population less than 5000 including the 2500 in Santa Rosa). The school board decided they needed a new middle school so made the decision to abandon the 20,000 square foot facility which was originally built as the high school. Faced with seeing a large, vacant white-elephant in the middle of the downtown, Mayor Joseph Campos and city manager Timothy Dodge decided that was not an acceptable alternative. They met with the school district and the county commission and devised a plan to turn the school into the city/county administration building. This is such an obvious solution you'd think lots of places would be doing it - after all there are lots of vacated historic schools. Alas, it isn't that common. Far more frequent is when city government and county government don't even talk to each other, let alone cooperate on capital investment projects. And involving the third level of local government - the school district - is rarer still.


When I congratulated Mayor Campos on the success of the partnership he said, "Well, we are small. When you're as small as we are you have to cooperate like that." But Mayor Campos is wrong - in spite of being small and with scarce resources, the vast majority of places don't do what Santa Rosa and Guadalupe County did.

The project maintained the most important historic features of the building while adapting it to meet the 21st century needs of city and county government. The total cost of the project? Less than $420,000 - or just over $20/square foot. YES YOU READ THAT RIGHT - JUST OVER $20/SQUARE FOOT.

Now, certainly, the building had to be in pretty good shape when the city and county took it over, and not every vacated school could be put back into use that inexpensively. But here's the point - Virtually every horror story about the costs of historic preservation are of the vignette version. "Well I know of a project that cost a trillion dollars." And it's not that there aren't sometimes hideously expensive historic preservation projects. But it is nearly always the ridiculously expensive vignettes we hear about, not the extraordinarily cost effective projects like the Santa Rosa school. (By the way, the expensive horror stories in historic preservation are nearly always attributable some combination of three variables: 1) a building that had already suffered from years of deferred maintenance; 2) a general contractor who didn't know what the hell he was doing; and/or 3) an architect inexperienced in historic preservation who insisted on putting his/her stamp on the building instead of letting the building tell what it wanted to be).

Now Mayor Campos is also a state legislator, and I don't know if he's a Republican or Democrat and don't care. But politicians of all stripes ought to be concerned with fiscal responsibility, with prudent use of scarce taxpayers' dollars, with stretching public resources. Mayor Campos and his allies in Santa Rosa did exactly that -- through the adaptive reuse of an important historic building. THAT is what fiscal responsibility is all about.

And Santa Rosa hasn't stopped there. The former County Court House is undergoing restoration.


And the city has recently acquired a wonderful warehouse structure that it saw was too important to be left to deteriorate.


So don't leave unchallenged the spurious claim that historic preservation is too expensive. For every example of the out-of-control restoration budget, there are dozens of stories like Raton and Santa Rosa where smart people are being "conservative" in the best sense of the word -- conserving heritage assets and conserving scarce financial resources.

Historic Preservation and Sustainability - Local Journalist getting it right

Yeah, this is a bit self-serving, and I apologize in advance for that. But a couple of weeks ago I was in Ann Arbor, Michigan. I wrote about it in this blog on June 13th.

Well, on that trip I met a journalist by the name of Jon Zemke and subsequently traded emails with him. Jon writes for and is news editor of the online magazine Concentrate which covers the Ann Arbor area.

So Jon, who himself lives in a historic property, wrote a great story that you might want to check out entitled The Economic Upside of Preservation. He generously quotes me in the article, hence the self-serving part. But he did something else that good journalists do -- he made the local connection. Yeah, he cited some of the factoids that I often talk about in relation to the economic impact of historic preservation. But more importantly he put those abstract numbers into a local context using local historic preservation projects and local property owners. His photography colleague Dave Lewinski added great photos, including the one I've stolen and inserted above.

Furthermore, he got it right -- at least in relation to what I had to say. And that is often not the case with local journalists -- even when what they write is largely sympathetic.

Historic preservation has a great story to tell -- about its positive economic impact and its being at the heart of real sustainable development. But someone has to tell that story -- and tell it well. And Jon Zemke has done exactly that.

Want to Be Part of Sustainable Develoment? Go to Biddeford, Maine

Biddeford, Maine. Never heard of it? Well, I guess that's not surprising, it's a town of only 22,000, 15 miles south of Portland, Maine. But it is one of the oldest towns in New England, with the first sawmill having been built there over 350 years ago.

Biddeford was a textile town, at its peak having over 12,000 workers in the textile mills there. But during the 20th Century most of the textile plants relocated to the Carolinas and Georgia. (As an aside, I often like to point out that self-serving politicians like John Edwards whine about the loss of textile jobs to the Caribbean, Africa and East Asia as if those jobs were some god-given right for North Carolinians. But they disingenuously ignore, in fact, that those jobs were stolen by North and South Carolina from New England less than a century ago.)

Anyway today there are only around 200 textile jobs still in Biddeford. But what still exist are 2.5 million square feet of well built mill buildings, a century or more old. Buildings, yes, but a public sector and some progressive, enlightened developers seeing the 19th century built heritage of Biddeford accommodating the residential, commercial and industrial needs of the 21st century.
There are simultaneous activities taking place among several developers, including a $100,000,000 adaptive reuse, mixed use project in mill buildings right across the river in the adjacent town of Saco. But two projects at different stages of development will serve as examples.

The Riverdam Mill project is being advanced by SpencerMonksDevelopment of Portland. SpencerMonks has acquired a 2 year option on the 160,000 square foot property for redevelopment into a variety of uses. They've done a great job of identifying the multiple sources of financing that will be required to make this deal fly. It will be neither quick nor easy, but they seem to recognize that and they have a realistic sense of the particular challenges and obsticles to this type of development.

But here's what most impressed me about their information packet. Instead of citing such imaginary competitive advantages as "low taxes" or "cheap labor" or "the latest high tech gizmos available", they have a different set of arguments why the redevelopment of Riverdam makes sense: job creation, affordable housing, smart growth, historic preservation, downtown revitalization, green development, brownfield redevelopment. In short, while they are certainly in the deal to make money (as well they should be) they have positioned their project to have significant benefits beyond their own pocketbooks. And they have recognized that Riverdam isn't a stand-alone project but one more incremental component of a broader effort.


The second project is a little more downstream, so to speak. The North Dam Mill development is currently wrapping up their first phase and moving on to Phase II. The North Dam Mill, is actually a complex of three former textile mill buildings totaling nearly 400,000 square feet. Already completed in Phase I are 60,000 square feet of retail, commercial, studio and industrial space. The first phase started in late 2005 and currently houses some 40 small businesses including several retail shops, a coffeehouse, studios for photographers and artists, a print shop, a dance studio and others.

This project has solidly positioned itself as the venue of choice for the creative economy activities of the 21st Century. They are also in ongoing negotiations with fast growing University of New England, both for student and faculty housing but also for direct University activities. There are several great models for college facilities being located in former mill and industrial buildings, by the way. Two of my favorites are the University of New Hampshire - Manchester and the University of Washington - Tacoma. In both cases university leadership was sufficiently enlightened to understand that those underutilized buildings and college activities were a natural fit. And students always add vibrancy and excitement to an area.

The development team at the North Dam Mill has wisely left unspecified exactly when Phase III of their project will begin. That allows the market to adjust, for lessons to be learned from earlier phases, and for risk mitigation as the project moves forward. The three big mistakes that preservationists often make with these kind of buildings is "We have to do it all; we have to do it now; we have to do it on this preconceived use." Doing it in phases is the prudent way to approach these projects and that's what the North Dam Mill people are doing.



So these are both enlightened private sector development groups. But as I'm sure both would tell you, they would not have a chance to be successful were it not for strong support from and assistance of the City. Currently underway is a Mill District Master Plan and consideration for both a tax increment financing district (TIF) and a National Register Historic District.

This is a great example of Smart Growth. The existing vacant space in mill buildings in Biddeford can probably accommodate all of the economic and residential growth for the next two decades...all without consuming a single acre of additional land at the periphery. And reusing buildings - the ultimate in recycling - is far more environmentally responsible than just adding some solar panels to a new crappy building in Sprawlsville.

In the sometimes arcane world of international, academic historic preservation conferences, there are often sessions on the "spirit of place" and not infrequently papers delivered arguing that adaptive reuse like is taking place in Biddeford represents the destruction of the "spirit of place". What absolute nonsense! I heard the Mayor of Biddeford, Joanne Twomey, talk about what is happening in her community. She said that her grandmother, a French-Canadian, migrated to work in the mills in Biddeford, and so she certainly was aware of the character and quality of the "spirit of place" of those mills in the textile days. But Mayor Twomey's pride and excitement over what today is happening absolutely reflects a new "sense of place" perfectly appropriate for that town and those buildings.

So go to Biddeford for a visit or to invest or maybe as a great place to relocate (at VERY affordable rents) your "creative economy" business. And I'm sure that Rachael Weyand, executive director of Heart of Biddeford, the local Main Street program, will be happy to help you. Oh, your firm is in Boston you say? No problem. A new Amtrak station is being completed in the midst of the mill building redevelopment...so walk to the train and ride the 90 miles to Beantown.

The textile industry has largely abandoned Biddeford and towns like it for cheaper labor elsewhere. But the built legacy of those industries still stands and is calling for adaptive reuse in the 21st century. Smart cities and investors are answering that call.

College Towns

I love college towns.

I've often said that if I were a local economic development director and could recruit absolutely any economic activity, it would be a college. Why? 1) Colleges are a basic industry -- outside dollars flowing in to purchase services (education) that is produced locally. 2) The economic activity is relatively stable, without the extreme volatility that many other industries sometimes face. 3) There is little chance that the industry will pick up and leave because labor costs are lower in east Asia or because taxes are 15 mills cheaper down the road.

But even more than those reasons are the intellectual strength and world view of the faculty and the energy and creativity of the student body. Great college towns, I notice, share at least one characteristic -- students want to stay there after they graduate.


This week I was in Ann Arbor, Michigan, home to the University of Michigan, and just such a great college town. I was there at the invitation of Norm Tyler who lives in Ann Arbor but is professor of planning at Eastern Michigan at Ypsilanti 10 miles or so away. I had written earlier (May 17) about the great marketing job Norm and Melissa Milton-Pung of the Washtenaw County Preservation Commission had done in preparation for this visit. Well, it certainly paid off. There was a full house for the evening presentation on the Michigan campus and excellent press coverage.

In addition to the public presentation in the evening there were two other sessions - a meeting over an extended lunch with preservation activists, advocates, and supporters and a mid afternoon session with local officials - city council members, city and county staff, preservation commissioners and others. In all three sessions there were just superb questions that have no easy answers, but represented "ahead of the curve" issues in Michigan and elsewhere. But the depth and sophistication of the questions also reflected the wonderful intellectual venue that college towns represent.

The luncheon, by the way, was at the home of Norm and his wife Eileen, preservation architect with Quinn-Evans Architects. The house was built in 1830 and has to be one of the best privately owned Greek Revival houses in America. Norm and Eileen are only the fourth owners of the house, with one family having owned it for virtually the entire 20th century.

So a day in Ann Arbor was great, but it's not a town without the need to make some adjustments. They are in the process of adopting a new design ordinance -- and it is definitely needed. Two examples will suffice.

First is the lunacy of the facadomy. Saving 4" of brick or 8" of a stone facade is in no way historic preservation. Not a dictionary written by Salvador Dali on drugs would define this idiocy as historic preservation. Of course my home of Washington, DC has many of the country's most ludicrous examples of the facadomy, but the foolishness has migrated to Ann Arbor.

Now I said that I love college towns. But the colleges themselves frequently have the "we're the big guys in town so we can do whatever we damn well please" attitude. And that was the case below. Preservationists argued that the Carnegie Library could have been adaptively reused and incorporated into the super block development that the University is undertaking. But the imagination-challenged university and its architects insisted they couldn't do that (meaning, of course, that they lacked the creativity and design skills to figure out how to do it) so tore down the entire building except the front facade.


So, I guess I need to make it clearer. THIS IS NOT HISTORIC PRESERVATION YOU DAMNED IDIOTS! In fact it is a mockery of historic preservation. If saving the building really isn't possible, then for god's sake, build a good new building that respects its context. And I probably should have mentioned, THIS IS NOT HISTORIC PRESERVATION YOU DAMNED IDIOTS!

I hope that was not too subtle to be understood. Where is that intellectual strength I mentioned in the beginning of this blog? On semester break, I guess.

One other example of the need for a good design ordinance -- and this one the fault of the city, not the University. A new building, perfectly fine design (the currently popular quasi-industrial look for residential units) on a major street in downtown Ann Arbor. But the city required that the entrance to the garage be in the front of the building requiring a mid-block curb cut.

The garage entrance should have been behind the building where there is currently a surface parking lot. The city wants to eventually develop that site as a parking garage. But even so, with the least imagination a way could have been figured out to access a rear garage entrance for this building even after a public garage was built. Lack of imagination that leads to a pedestrian barrier - a mid block curb cut. Sidewalks are for pedestrians, not automobiles. This is very simply bad design dictated by misguided decisions at city hall.

So, thanks, Ann Arbor for a day of great intellectual stimulation for me. But it's too good a town to be diminished by facadomies and unimaginative, anti-pedestrian design decisions. Hopefully the new design ordinance will address these issues.

Changing the Terms of the Debate

This one is short.

Ideas are wonderful things. Open minds and creative thinkers are where meaningful, positive change comes from. And what an incredible tool the internet is to exchange ideas. But it's also a powerful tool to change the terms of the debate.

And that is exactly what Knute "Skip" Berger in Seattle is doing on the whole green building or sustainable development discussion. Skip is a native of the northwest, a committed environmentalist, and a superb journalist in print, in blog and on the radio.

Here's Skip's latest called Unsustainable Seattle. This battle on the myopia of the "green building" and "density trumps all" approach is just in its infancy. But informed, reasoned arguments such as those Skip is making will constitute the opening volleys. I'm pleased and flattered, of course, that I've been quoted. But far more important than that is the intellectual quality and commitment to the environment that writers like Skip and Lloyd Atler columnist for Treehugger.com are bringing to the debate. (You might want to take a look at Lloyd's column on this issue and an interview I did with him. And if you're still not sated with this issue my blog on the website of Heritage Strategies International.)

Berger is both so well respected and cogent in his writing that within hours of his posting on Crosscut, the environmental columnist for the Seattle Post Intelligencer, Robert McClure wrote a very thoughtful blog about Berger's blog.

Ideas are powerful things. And how lucky we are that there are electronic journalists such as Berger, Atler, and McClure to widely disperse them

Historic Preservation as Economic Development

Hurray for the Economic Development Administration (EDA) of the US Department of Commerce! They have taken a GIANT leap forward in refuting the long-held belief in some quarters that communities have to choose between historic preservation and economic development.

That was always a false choice, of course, but a commonly held one.

But there is nowhere better from which enlightenment should flow than the EDA.

What has happened? Well this year for the first time the EDA has added to their annual awards a category called Excellence in Historic Preservation-led Strategies to Enhance Economic Development. This award takes its place along side existing categories such as Excellence in Rural Economic Development, Excellence in Technology-led Economic Development and Excellence in Enhancing Regional Competitiveness.

Why has this happened? Well, I don't know for sure, but here's my speculation. In 2006 First Lady Laura Bush and the Advisory Council on Historic Preservation (ACHP) held the Preserve America Summit.

An underlying purpose of the summit was to celebrate the 40th anniversary of the National Historic Preservation Act (passed in 1966) and to look forward to what the future role of the Federal Government in historic preservation should be. And to do this the ACHP organized 11 groups of experts on a variety of topics to address the issues and make recommendations. Each of the working groups was co-chaired by someone from the Federal Government (nearly always a senior official) and someone from the private or non-profit sector. One of the groups was called Using Historic Properties as Economic Assets.

The Federal co-chair for the group was Jim Yeager, Chief of Staff of the Economic Development Administration and the group was facilitated by Sandy Baruah, Assistant Secretary of Commerce for Economic Development.

I frankly don't know what interest, if any, either Mr. Yeager or Assistant Secretary Buruah had in historic preservation prior to the Summit. But what they both did do was listen diligently and intently. And I believe they clearly saw the role historic preservation could play in local economies. The working group provided the Advisory Council with a number of important recommendations.

I particularly like the title they've given the award -- Preservation-led Strategies. That suggests that preservation isn't the end, but the means, and in this case the means of effective economic development. The nominations were evaluated on how effectively they used regional historic assets to advance innovative economic development strategies. This award by EDA is one of the first specific actions that a Federal agency has undertaken as a result of the Summit, and they should be heartily congratulated for it.

And by the way, the first winner of the Award is the Main Street Project of Silver City, New Mexico. Main Street is the most cost effective form of economic development of any kind in the country. And Silver City's program represents the kind of bottom up, self-help economic development that has made Main Street a success for nearly 30 years.

So congratulations Silver City and heartfelt thanks to the Economic Development Administration and Assistant Secretary Buruah.

Beyond waterless toilets and LEED Gold

Don't get me wrong. I'm happy that LEED exists. It is an excellent first shot at trying to make buildings and neighborhoods more environmentally responsible.

But to say that LEED is necessary but not sufficient for sustainable development is no different than saying dentistry is necessary but not sufficient for health care. But my other two dissents from LEED-mania are: 1) LEED only deals with the environmental component of sustainable development, not at all with the other two components -- economic responsibility and social/cultural responsibility; and 2) even within the environmental responsibility component of sustainable development the contributions of existing buildings is irresponsibly inadequate on multiple levels.

So that's it. That's my beef with LEED.

Having said that, recently I've been a bit surprised, but more than that extraordinarily pleased to find that there are some within what might be considered the hard core environmental movement who understand that as well.

One is Lloyd Alter a Canadian architect and developer, and now active web journalist for Tree Hugger.com. Here is someone deeply committed to sustainable development, but also sees the irreplaceable role that heritage buildings play in sustainable development. He frequent writes an entry on Tree Hugger entitled "Another One Bites the Dust" that is well worth reading.

Another "green" blog that understands the historic preservation/sustainable development link is GreenRedux.com.

When the discussion of sustainable development moves beyond the techno talk from "green architects" and gizmo salesmen and broadens so that all of the components of sustainable development are part of the discussion, we'll be making progress. Those who remain stuck on the inane "can I get two extra points toward Leed Gold if we put in a bike rack?" are only demonstrating their absolute ignorance about what sustainable development is.

For those with time to kill you might want to look at the podcast interview I did with Lloyd Atler in Collingwood, Ontario recently.

LEED and Lunacy in Lexington

You all know about LEED, the acronym for Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design, the checklist process where so-called "green architects" and their allies in the building materials, construction and real estate fields can go about getting certified. It's the equivalent of getting those gold and silver stars in the 4th grade for perfect attendance or sitting quietly at your desk during rest time, or maybe for a perfect spelling text.

Well, LEED certification does have its merits, and when it seems we all need some plaque to hang on the wall, maybe this makes some sense.

But too often I'm reaching the conclusion that the acronym for LEED really means, "Lunatic Environmentalists Enthusiastically Demolishing." I had written earlier (May 2, 2008) about the outrageous mendacity of the Nature Conservancy saying it wasn't feasible to renovate a hundred year old warehouse in Indianapolis as an excuse to raze it and build a suburbanesque green-gizmo building instead.

This pattern of using LEED certification as the club to demolish historic buildings is becoming more and more common.

At this writing, in Lexington, Kentucky, a proposal is rapidly moving forward to build a 40-story hotel in the middle of downtown.

And to do this the developers say it will be necessary to tear down 14 historic structures built between 1826 and 1930.

Preservationists have responded that they certainly don't object to a new hotel downtown, but that there is no reason the historic structures couldn't be incorporated into the development. "Not possible," says the developer. But look at the site!

The idea that this development couldn't be a mix of old and new suffers from a paucity of the imagination.

And their stick to justify the demolition? "Yeah, but we're going to be LEED certified."

Oh, and by the way, as a reward for destroying the history of Lexington, the developers are to be rewarded with $80 million of Tax Increment Financing.

The Blue Grass Trust and Preservation Lexington are leading the effort against this idiocy. The National Trust has also noted this project in the online edition of Preservation Magazine.

But it's a tough battle. Why? Because of an increasingly common formula:

LEED + GREED = Loss of our built cultural heritage.

Tip of the Day - Look at the drawing of the proposed hotel above. Here's a sure sign that the architect and the developer are either egocentrically oblivious of the context of their proposed development or (more likely) indifferent to it. The elevations show only the building itself, none of its surroundings. ALWAYS be worried when there is no context shown - 99 times out of a hundred it means the building is vastly out of scale and alien to its context.

Penn and a Big Deal for me

I've written before that I have the best job in America (April 30, 2008). But the best 14 days of the best job in America are the Tuesdays in the spring when I catch a 6:30 train from Washington to Philadelpia to teach my class in the Economics of Historic Preservation to graduate students in the Preservation Program at the University of Pennsylvania.

I absolutely learn more from my students every semester than they learn from me. They keep me on top of the issues that concern young preservationists, the trends that I ought to be keeping track of, and they make me rethink things I already thought I knew.

So it was a big deal to me, a very big deal, to yesterday receive the G. Holmes Perkins Award from the School of Design at Penn. The award is named in honor of G. Holmes Perkins, Dean of the Graduate School of Fine Arts from 1951 to 1971. It is given "in recognition of distinguished teaching and innovation in the methods of instruction in the classroom, seminar, or studio by a member of the practitioner faculty."

Now had the recipient of this award been selected by the faculty I would have been pleased, of course. I have the highest personal and professional regard for my colleagues at Penn. But this is a big deal for me because it is the students who first nominate and then select the recipient. So it really is a big deal for me. And in the end (it's sometimes easy to forget) the central purpose of a university is (or at least should be) students.

I have to say I'm a bit uncomfortable in the self-promotion business, and don't do it much. But I'm posting this here because I am so simultaneously humbled and proud to have received this.

So thank you students, past and present (and future) and thanks to Penn, the Historic Presrvation program, and its chair Frank Matero for giving me a classroom and students to learn from.