This week I sat on a panel about the topic of the State of Sustainability in the metropolitan Phoenix area. One of the subjects that was discussed was adaptive reuse. Adaptive reuse is when you use an existing building for a new purpose. A great example of adaptive reuse is Filmbar, a combination theater and bar, which is in a building that used to once be a stamp-making facility.

Reusing an existing building seems like it would make perfect sense for business owners and developers, so why do we have so many cases where existing buildings are torn down and replaced by new ones? One reason is that older buildings come with a lot of problems, things like asbestos, aging structure, galvanized iron plumbing, and defunct electrical systems. The costs of abatement, replacement and upgrading systems can become overwhelming to business owners and developers, and sometimes the math indicates that it's cheaper to tear down and build new.

But as with most things in life, reusing existing buildings comes down to more than just math for a lot of people. Examples of such people are Niels Kriepke who redeveloped the Gold Spot in Downtown, Lorenzo Perez and John Kitchell who rehabilitated the building that now houses Windsor/Churn, and the architecture firm Construction Zone that revamped The Tuck Shop in the Coronado neighborhood.

The costs of adaptive reuse were high but worth it to these developers. Why? Because you can't reproduce the character of old buildings no matter how hard you try. And for uses such as restaurants, coffee shops, and other people-spaces, old buildings offer an emotional connection to our own past and therefore our own humanity that is missing in brand new buildings, no matter how well designed. And owners who are smart celebrate the historic quality of old buildings instead of new-ifying them to look like every other building we have in Phoenix, case in point, the recent redevelopment of the southeast corner of McDowell and 7th Avenue.

On a more tangible note, old buildings often have some great components that would cost an arm and a leg to build today. For example, much of our post-war building stock is made with concrete block, which is one of the most long-lasting building materials out there. Concrete block used to be inexpensive, but now is pricey, explaining the glut of cheap frame and stucco buildings we see today. So while on one hand, retrofitting an existing building costs money in some regards, it adds value in others, making the math seem more palpable at the end of the day.

On a last note, we know that reusing old buildings adds character to individual buildings, but above that, it adds character and contributes to the identity of whole cities. The reason that Phoenix lacks character is because more often than not, building owners over the past 200 years have chosen to tear down old buildings and build new ones, as shown in Robert Melikian's book, Vanishing Phoenix. Preserving old buildings, not just as museums, but actually putting them to use, produces such fantastic cities as London, Istanbul, Rome and a countless other places that are vibrant and desirable to live in not because of their new buildings, but because of their old ones.

Saving a building and reusing it doesn't always make simple mathematical sense. But it is a good example that the true success of individual buildings, businesses, neighborhoods, and entire cities is anything but the result of simple math.

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Photo Credit: The recent expansion of Pane Bianco, another great example of adaptive reuse. Photo by the author.