Eco-nomics

Y’all should be members of Preservation Forum, because then you get Preservation Forum magazine (go to www.preservationnation.org) which has the latest and greatest articles on preservation as a movement and a science.

We are used to thinking of preservation as a movement, an advocacy position, and indeed historically preservation was an odd position to take in the postwar world of “new is better.” Preservation was not only an advocacy position, it was a David-and-Goliath (or Don Quixote-and-Windmill) proposition in the era of urban renewal and even today preservationists can seem pretty powerless – witness the thoughtless and willful destruction of the Michael Reese Hospital campus in Chicago right now.

But preservation is increasingly a science. Since the 1980s we have touted the economic virtues of preservation as it creates heritage tourist destinations. For the same period of time we have touted the benefits of preservation tax incentives for developers. As early as the late 1970s, the preservation movement was thinking of preservation as an energy-saving device, and for a couple of years preservationists have touted the fact that buildings that exist are greener than those not built yet.

But in 2009 you need even more, because we are now in the wiki-world of cloud computing and data-driven nobody-in-silos-anymore webwise decisionmaking. Last summer I blogged about how the world now offers data for everything – and it would not only be reasonable but RESPONSIBLE for those about to demolish Michael Reese Hospital to count and quantfy their pollution, their contributions to landfill, and to tell us exactly WHEN the replacement buildings would be paying off their debt to the ozone layer. (See A Sustainable Proposal July 23, 2009 and Test The Proposal a day later)

But Preservation Forum is already on it. The current issue “Broadening Perspectives” features several excellent articles on the latest in the MOVEMENT, and it turns out the latest in the movement is all about economics and ecologics and their interplay. Check out this pull quote: “Density Data would tend to indicate that tax credit projects are reducing VMTs at a rate of between 30 and 40 percent.”

Cool. That isn’t simply the 1990s data we got on how preservation contributes twice as much per dollar invested to a local economy as highways and new construction, or how many billions in investment and jobs tax incentives have contributed. Nor is it the 2000s data on how historic buildings are more energy efficient ALREADY. It is both combined into a supercool algorithm. Investing tax incentives in preservation projects not only contributes to the economy, it helps the environment by reducing Vehicle Miles Traveled, since historic buildings are in already built-up, reasonably dense locations that are walkable or served by public transit.

In the state of Maryland, $1 billion was spent on tax credit preservation projects from 1996 to 2008. This obviously did a lot for jobs and taxes, etc. It also, according to the article by Evans Paull, meant a reduction in CO2 emissions of between 16,000 and 21,000 metric tons a year. $1 million in tax credits equals 100 metric tons of CO2 saved. Awesome.

Capitalism and Socialism

There is a lot of loose talk about socialism lately from the American minority, who started throwing the word around last year during the election. As in much political debate, it is an epithet not a definable thing, a signifier of something BAD. And since a full 20 years have passed since the demise of the Communist Party in Eastern Europe, there are many fewer checks and balances on the use of such terminology.

Ironically, the most socialist thing that ever happened in U.S. history was going on at the same time – virtual nationalization of the banking system, and it was undertaken by President George W. Bush, the epitome of the 25-year-long conservative free-market ascendancy in American politics. The same Bush administration added bananas, chocolate sauce and sprinkles to the ice cream sundae of Medicare. Medicare itself was described as socialism during its creation 45 years ago, and indeed all of the opposition arguments today match those leveled in 1964 and indeed a dozen years before when Truman first proposed national health care.
Eliding this history, the word is still being bandied about as an unexamined epithet by opponents of President Obama and health care.

One hundred years ago progressive Republicans led a reform of American politics and society we now know as the Progressive Era. The enemy included socialists, who actually were a viable political force at that time. It also included trusts, which were ostensible capitalists who had turned their back on the free market by combining into virtual and actual monopolies. They operated much as socialized industries later did in communist countries – they set prices and wages, and they resisted change and innovation. The Progressives believed in capitalism, so they busted the trusts up and made them compete.

This is actually the same argument made by public option Democrats today in the health care debate – that insurance companies and drug companies are latter day trusts who set prices and resist competition. You can debate whether a “public option” will actually stimulate competition, but the fact remains some trusts need busting and the ONLY cost-cutting method they have right now is denial of coverage. Change is needed.

The irony here is that a century later Democrats are staking claim to “competition” and “capitalism” and “reform” that the Progressive Republicans owned a century ago. And today Republicans decry the public option as “socialism.” This confuses me, and here is why: I have never encountered a more socialistic industry than health care. No other business I deal with sends bills six months later. No other business I deal with has such bureaucracy, requires so much paperwork, takes so long to get a needed service. I want what test? I need a referral. And clearance from the insurer. Now there is a question. Wait another month.

Health care reform is socialism? How can this freakin’ industry possibly get any more socialistic than it already is? Sorry, but it is already turned up to 11 on the socialism meter.

(P.S. Tort reform! How can you compete when one knuckle-dragging lawyer can make anybody worth more dead than alive?)

The virtue of the free market is its ability to move quickly, to adapt to new conditions. The problem with lumbering socialistic beasts like GM and health care is they move too slow. Which brings us to the other great scourge of the no-longer-progressive-Republican agenda: climate change. They don’t want to endanger our already fragile economy (made fragile by Wall Street tricksters dancing beyond the margins) by trying to regulate or hinder industry. Give me a break. An industry that can’t handle massive change is a socialist industry. Soviet industries polluted tons more than their Western counterparts. Capitalism is for innovators, not mouth-breathers who “need” to pollute to create jobs.

Kelo Redux

Check this out: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/13/nyregion/13pfizer.html?_r=1&sudsredirect=true
The big 2005 Supreme Court case – Kelo v. City of New London – that underscored a city’s right to use eminent domain to take private property and give it to another private owner has reached a perhaps inevitable denouement: the City of New London, CT, took Susette Kelo’s house, and a bunch of others, for a private “urban village” to be built next to a new Pfizer development. Now Pfizer is leaving, and taking 1400 jobs with it. Yowch.

The real lesson here has less to do with eminent domain and more to do with economic development. Conservative justices voted against the city, but in a sense the use of eminent domain for private redevelopment has been with us since Berman v. Parker in 1954, which paved the way for urban renewal and preservation. Memory refresher: urban renewal was a public program, but it basically worked like this: the government declared an area “slum and blighted,” bought up all the land and gave it to another private developer to achieve the renewal. Yes, there were housing projects that were completely public, but the biggest part of urban renewal involved the same sort of eminent domain and transfer of property to another private owner we saw in New London.

After Kelo in 2005, 43 states passed laws limiting how eminent domain could be used, which makes sense from a strict constructionist viewpoint – the Constitution provided for eminent domain and just compensation for “public use.” As a preservationist who sees the preservation impulse as an attempt by communities to assert control over their destiny, I see the utility of Berman v. Parker. I think safeguards after Kelo are fine, but the REAL lesson this week is Don’t Give Away The Store to Anybody for economic development. New London not only condemned land, they gave Pfizer a ginormous property tax break. And now all of the jobs are gone. In less than eight years.

You can cut deals to get jobs and investment, but you have to make those GOOD deals and you have to remember that businesses are loyal to only one location, and that location is Wall Street and the street is thin-skinned, short-tempered, monstrously myopic and given to more emotional breakdowns than a 13-year old girl. You tear everything down and build it new for Mr. Sugar Daddy and then he ditches you. But of course he ditches you: you had no self respect, no desire to stand up for yourself and your character.

Now, REAL economic development is all about a community defining itself and attracting the right kind of business to fit into its character, including its built character. You develop a town by using its existing building stock and you have a long-term development plan that KEEPS ON WORKING. Mr. Sugar Daddy leaves but you still have your town and its character. You have to find another user for your buildings, but if you look for one that fits – rather than one who asks YOU to change everything about you for him – well, then you get a marriage that lasts, and keeps on giving.

New London has lost over a thousand jobs, and they have a big useless new building and a lot of vacant land. This is not a failure of property rights, it is a failure of short-sighted, dim-witted development. Develop with what you got and it lasts. Pave paradise for Mr. Sugar Daddy and you deserve what you get when he leaves.

Kenilworth: The Poorest Suburb?

On December 8, Christie’s is auctioning off 5 leaded glass Prairie School windows by George Washington Maher from the Kenilworth Club, Maher’s lovely 1906 building in the heart of what appears to be Chicago’s poorest suburb, Kenilworth. A year ago, Kenilworth defeated an attempt to list the historic community on the National Register of Historic Places, even though that designation has NO REGULATION over private owners. Last November, Kenilworth demonstrated a poverty of knowledge. This year, it is just plain poverty. The club decided – without comment – to sell off five windows for an estimated $20,000-$30,000 dollars. In the old days, that wouldn’t even buy you a bathroom upgrade in Kenilworth.

Apparently, the windows are extras stored in the basement, so none will be removed from the main building – although this information was NOT offered up by the club. Even so, this limits their options should a baseball game break out nearby. And that amount of money can’t buy the club very much time – you won’t keep the building going for very long at all by selling off its assets.

Wait! I’ve got it! It all makes sense now – they didn’t want National Register designation because they need a federal bailout for the Kenilworth Club and they don’t want to limit the federal government’s options for what it can do with the property! (Nice try, Vince, but if the feds were going to buy the club they would probably end up going through Section 106 anyway (Ed.))

Read more at
http://www.prairiemod.com/prairiemod/2009/11/dismantling-maher-in-kenilworth.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed:+typepad/EFdF+(PrairieMod+Daily)

November 17 update: According to a 2001 art glass conservation plan, some of the windows in storage were once installed in the building and moved during renovations. Moreover, it seems that restoration of the windows c.1980 involved extensive replacement of glass, which means that any of the windows in the building may contain replacement glass.

What I learned in Independence

I had the opportunity to be the keynote speaker for the Missouri state preservation conference yesterday, in the Truman Memorial Building in Independence, Missouri. Last night we saw the Truman museum which included a fabulous replica of the Oval Office and of course Truman’s “The Buck stops here” desk sign.

I attended two sessions yesterday, one that taught me about the three major western trails that went through Independence (Santa Fe, California and Oregon) and another that dealt with BIMs, which are used for energy audits for historic buildings. Fascinating stuff. They model some of these historic buildings and find amazing things – like there is no sense insulating 3-foot thick walls or even double-glazing clerestories in lightly used space (You save more energy zoning the heating and cooling). It is nice that the metrics are finally here to demonstrate the energy efficiency of historic buildings.

I also learned that Independence was where Joseph Smith and the Mormons came before they went to Nauvoo, and there is a cool church built 17 years ago by the RLDS, one of several Mormon groups now separate from the Salt Lake Church.

I also learned about the Truman historic district, an NHL designated in the 1970s and then followed by a locally-supported local district in the 1970s. President Harry S. Truman lived 64 of his 84 years in Independence, and walked around town every day he was there. This has become a symbol of the city’s heritage and historic district.

Sadly, the district got eviscerated by local churches throwing elbows in the 1980s and is now a slender not quite sensical protected area within the larger NHL. I chatted with Jon Taylor, who has written a book about the three heritages (Truman, Mormons, Trails) of Independence. This is a nice place, and we also heard from Ken McLain, who has singlehandedly saved much of the courthouse square, despite the fact that it is outside the NHL and thus not eligible for tax credits. He even saved the Clinton drugstore where Truman worked as a teen.

Had a good time here- lots of challenges and history, and a lot of nice compliments about my talk. Now, a final image of the McCoy-Owens House.

Thanks to Karen Bode Baxter, Trudy Faulkner, Kristen McSparren Otteson and all my other friends new and old in the KC – Independence area.

Green Preservation

Preservation is green. It retains the carbon footprint of structures that are already there, requires less materials, less expense of energy to construct – because it is already constructed. It is true that some older buildings (more likely those built 1940-2000) USE more energy than new “green” buildings, but the greenest new building will still take 30-40 years to pay off its carbon debt.

Two years ago, National Trust President Dick Moe made a speech at the National Building Museum about preservation and sustainability. It was epochal. He had the statistics that proved that “the greenest building is the one already built” but he wasn’t just preaching to the choir. He was making it known that there was a vibrant, multifaceted preservation movement, and that this movement was staking its claim to sustainability and moving even further in that direction.

The results are out there. Two sites you HAVE TO SEE are blogs linked at right: Barbara Campagna’s green preservation blog (Barbara is the Graham Gund architect of the National Trust) and Carla Bruni’s greenpreservationist.org blog. Carla is a graduate of our Master’s program in Historic Preservation and she has already made a mark. We had her speaking on her work in New Orleans and now she is teaching a preservation class at the Center for Green Technology.

You can’t consume your way to sustainability, folks.

Back to Dick Moe. He announced his retirement this week, and it reminded me of that epochal speech two years ago and how excited I was that he was leading the National Trust and the preservation movement into the future. And it wasn’t the first time he had done it. During his 17 years at the helm, the National Trust reinvented itself from top to bottom. The Trust, founded 60 years ago to save historic houses, nearly doubled its collection of historic properties, but much more significantly, it broadened that collection to more nearly represent the American experience and American architecture. From the commercial Gaylord Building to Philip Johnson’s modernist Glass House to the Acoma Sky City Pueblo, the National Trust’s collection of historic sites has been revolutionized. Not only do we own the two most famous modern glass houses, we also have a new Modern and Recent Past Initiative, a new Preservation Green Lab in Seattle, a more vigorous series of regional offices and a robust collection of statewide and local partners. There are three times as many statewide preservation organizations today than there were in 1992. Dick Moe didn’t simply grow the Trust, he expanded its relevance and helped make it the leader of an expanding nationwide movement. His leadership will be missed but his impact is visible everywhere you look.

Window replacement numbers

Pharmaceutical use in the United States has increased threefold in the last ten years, not because there has been a threefold increase in disease or diagnoses but simply because in 1999 pharmaceutical advertising was deregulated.

I don’t know the exact numbers, but window replacement has gone up dramatically in the same period, and for the same reason. Advertising.

When my wife and I bought a single-family home in 1996 I received AT LEAST three mailers and one phone call each week urging me to buy replacement windows and siding. I always responded “I don’t believe in that” which threw the telemarketers right off their script. But just as countless television ads for drugs have convinced people that they need them, today every American gets out of bed in the morning convinced that they must replace their windows.

The recent economic stimulus that gave tax breaks for replacement windows along with other, more sustainable things didn’t help. It followed the marketing bandwagon, which promotes waste.

The irony here is MASSIVE. I am concerned about global warming so I throw out all of my windows and put in plastic ones that will be in a landfill in 15 years. Do you know how PVC is manufactured? Do you know how it burns in case of fire? Do you know how it degrades in landfills? The landfills you already stuffed with your historic windows?

Let’s look at some numbers. First, a radical thermodynamic principle as it applies to the planet Earth:
HEAT RISES. Sure, it is obvious, but you would think heat goes sideways with all the concern for replacement windows. Once you have insulated your attic, you have saved 80% of all the energy bills you are going to save. Thoroughly caulk your window and door frames and you save the next 10%. Replace your windows with brick walls and you still only have a 10% savings possibility. Besides, many new windows – tight as they are – are not installed properly, so the heating or cooling just squirts around the window FRAME. The homebuilders themselves admit that over 20% of windows and doors in NEW houses are installed in such a way that air infiltration still happens through the FRAME.

Now, let’s look at cost, which is another reason people choose plastic replacement windows. Some joker in Geneva sued the city for his right to put in vinyl-clad replacement windows in the historic district. He spent $70,000 on the lawsuit, but more importantly he spent $18,000 on replacement windows. I can guarantee you those windows will not last long enough to save $18,000 on heating and cooling.

The cost differential between a cheap plastic window and a rehabbed window (with insulated glass installed) can be a factor of 3. So, if you are DITCHING your house soon to another buyer or whatever, it is cheaper. If a retrofitted window costs $1500 and a replacement costs $500, well, replacements SEEM cheaper. But in the long run, it isn’t. Those replacements will be funky in 10 years and likely need to be replaced (why do you think they call them REPLACEMENT windows?) in 15, which is when the warranty for the glass unit (forget the sash) runs out. So they cost $33.34 per year. My retrofitted windows will be good for 50-75 years, which means that they cost $20-$30 per year. Plus no hassle of replacement every 15 years.

Now, the guy in Geneva with the lawsuit hobby is 79, so he will be about 94 when he has to worry about re-replacement. He won his suit, simply because Geneva’s Building Department – like a lot of Building Departments across the country inundated with requests for replacement windows – wasn’t requiring building permits for replacement windows.

It is like the doctors being lobbied by their patients for drugs – it is hard to say NO when a trickle becomes a flood. Geneva – like the doctor who learned to JUST SAY NO – has fixed its problem, but Mr. Nothing-Else-To-Do is trying to get the whole landmarks ordinance thrown out, just like that lawsuit enthusiast in Chicago. Given that landmarks laws like zoning laws have been upheld by conservatives who recognized their importance in maintaining property values, I am confident the enthusiasts will lose and have to find a new hobby, but these things take their time getting through the court system.

Heck, it could drag out for years – years measured by the warping, yellowing and offgassing of plastic windows.

kiddieland

Crain’s announced today that instead of the 80-year old one-of-a-kind Kiddieland amusement park at First and North Avenues in the near western suburbs, we will have the region’s 13th Costco. This is a good deal for the people who own the site, and no one else. Costco could have replaced the truck driving school across North Avenue or been part of a county land swap across First Avenue if clever people had been involved.

This is one of the antique carousels that will be auctioned off in late November. I grew up going to this place and so did my kids, although their experience there is now over. The place was quaint, small rides in many cases, many of them still working decades after they were built. The roller coaster was beautifully old and rickety and wooden and I still loved it and it still made my stomach drop.

But the comments section in the Crain’s article included those of several Costco enthusiasts who are presumably happy they won’t have drive 20 miles to the supersaving superstore that offers a super selection of Chinese products and other items all planed trained and trucked in from 7,000 to 10,000 miles away. So, to give the enthusiasts their due, I am trying to see how we can replicate the Kiddieland experience at Costco in the future.

First, there is of course the initial Costco experience, the parking lot:

Then there will be the joy of turnstile and checkout lines

And the endless train of soul-satisfying consumer products:

and most of all, the opportunity to do it over and over again, because what goes around….

Heritage Conservation, not Historic Preservation

The final event at the National Preservation Conference in Nashville was a lunch featuring speaker Donovan Rypkema, a longtime preservation contributor whose specialty is the economics of historic preservation. Don always has numerous inspiring insights, and this presentation was no exception. His focus was preservation in 50 years, and it was a call to action that called for significant change. I agree with 99 percent of it, and here is why.

First, Don talked about the recent and virally successful “This Place Matters” photo contest which the National Trust held on its website (link on the right). The event was standard 21st century user interface: people print out “This Place Matters” signs from the Trust, and photograph them in front of places that mattered to them. Then people voted on their favorites. It was an exercise in the democracy of the built environment, and it was a revelation.

It was a revelation because, as Don pointed out, almost all of the finalists were NOT monumental buildings in the traditional sense of historic preservation. They weren’t outstanding architectural landmarks or the homes of famous people. The winner was a Humble Oil station in San Antonio, second place was a boathouse in Door County, Wisconsin and third place was a graveyard with a sailor holding the sign near a gravestone. But the effort was a huge success, because PEOPLE were deciding what PLACES mattered to them.

Don took this as a call for preservationists to reestablish the relationship between why something is important and how we preserve it. This is so true and so important. For too long, we have used curatorial procedures designed for fine art museums to determine how we treat elements of the built environment. Treating the Humble Oil station or the Door County boathouse like a Van Gogh or a Rembrandt is not necessary or even useful. There are physical elements of those properties that need to be maintained, but so does their relationship to their environment. In fact, their connection to PLACE is what is MOST IMPORTANT. It is similar to the philosophy of the historic district, where individual significance or individual artistry, elegance or craftsmanship are subservient to the whole thing. The whole thing is a PLACE, and it is what is most important.

I think we can do this, even without revising the Secretary of the Interior’s Standards for the Treatment of Historic Properties, although that needs to be done too. We must remember that preservation is a PROCESS, not a set of rules but a set of procedures. When we IDENTIFY something as significant, that identification should indicate WHAT about it needs to be saved. In our Chicago Landmarks Ordinance, for example, each designation report indicates WHAT the significant architectural and historic features are that need to be preserved in order to preserve the significance of the property. That list is different for every building, site or structure. As I have often said, preservation treats everything as an individual, not a category.

This is something that English Heritage in the UK already does, and indeed the English have always listed their buildings in categories based on significance. I did this 20 years ago when we surveyed historic churches in Chicago, so I understand the possibility, and I also understand the reticence preservationists had 40 years ago in doing such a ranking: because it would consign some buildings to demolition based on their low ranking.

But the point of going beyond the Rembrandt rule (treating every bit of historic fabric as if it were a Rembrandt) is to get beyond RULES and focus on PROCESS. Preserving a great design done in a short-lived material might mean re-creation, because the design is what is important, whereas for the Star-Spangled banner, the material artifact is primary. House museums need to go beyond the Rembrandt rule for any number of reasons, not the least of which is that some artifacts may be Rembrandts but others are not.

Rypkema talked about the need for more land-use tools beyond the historic district, which is true, and conservation districts and buffer districts and heritage areas (which involve no necessary regulation) are examples we can build on. We need these because preservation IS NOT ABOUT FIXING SOMETHING IN A CERTAIN PERIOD OF TIME. It is, instead, ABOUT MANAGING CHANGE OVER TIME.

The rest of the English-speaking world does not have historic preservation. They have building conservation, or more broadly and appropriately, HERITAGE CONSERVATION. Most of the National Preservation Honor Awards we gave out Thursday night were about heritage conservation, not historic preservation of buildings as museums. This is not a new direction, it is what we are already doing. But we may need to rename it.

To preserve means to fix at a point in time – in effect, to remove something from history. I began my preservation career nearly 27 years ago by helping create the first heritage area, and our goal then, and now, was managing change, not stopping change. Heritage conservation is about managing change – planning – based on the inherited culture and cultural artifacts of a place. It is about the individuality and uniqueness of place. What we do is follow a process that insures that change happens in concert with a place’s values and valuables. I am extremely privileged to be able to be a part of this.

images from nashville:

Chicago October 2009

1. Save Gropius Buildings at Michael Reese

Blair Kamin in today’s Tribune makes the case for saving the Gropius buildings at the former Michael Reese Hospital. He also takes to task the city’s spokesperson for an indefensible “we are proceeding” position. This is no longer an overnight development for the Olympics and it is no longer a job for the knuckle-dragging mouth-breathing sector of the development community. It is not that hard to reuse some or all of these buildings, and now that we needn’t follow the dictates of the Olympic village, we can use variety in height and scale (as Gropius did) to make the south lakefront more urbanistically interesting than it would have been under the previous plan.

2. 839 Park Avenue, River Forest. I blogged about this one recently. Hometown architect. Significant student of Frank Lloyd Wright. A design that sits in the landscape in a way that CANNOT be achieved in less than a generation. What new building will look half as good as this?

This has been covered in the local press, but NO ONE mentions the Illinois Property Tax Freeze as an option, which it clearly is – as noted by Landmarks Illinois and the Illinois Historic Preservation Agency.

My conclusion? The new owners are head over heels in love with property taxes!

They have chosen to put this million-dollar home in a landfill and GIVE us twice as much in property taxes than they would have if they simply built a rear addition to double the size of the house and improve its floorplan. I guess they are saving everyone else in River Forest a lot of money.

Maybe not – depending on how the new building looks, it could depress local values. Could that be the strategy? Build an ugly house and thereby reduce values and thus property taxes? Hmm. We will have to see.

3. Aqua – Sitting (or standing) in the new modern wing at AIC you are surrounded by Piano and confronted by Gehry. But you are also astounded by the female winner of this “contest” – Jeanne Gang and her Aqua, quite easily the most interesting, urbane and aesthetically pleasing highrise in twenty years. Everyone is noticing its insistent elegance between its more brusque and brash neighbors.

4. The Society of Architectural Historians conference is here in Chicago in April. I am Local Chair and you should all come – great tours and the latest and greatest thoughts from those who think about buildings across all places and all times.

FRIDAY UPDATE:

NOBEL PEACE PRIZE TO PRESIDENT BARACK OBAMA – Only the second Chicagoan to win this award – the first being Jane Addams in 1931. The New York Times headline calls it a political liability at home. Huh? John Bolton, the cantankerous anti-furriner that was made ambassador to the UN (that’s IRONY with ALL of the letters capitalized) said: “It’s high-minded Europeans talking down to hayseed Americans, saying this is the way you ought to be.” That’s probably true, but Mr. Bolton shouldn’t worry. If history is a guide, low-mindedness will certainly make a comeback before too long. Or did they blow it all on town hall drive-by shoutings?