Historic Buildings ARE Productive Buildings

A note from our Co-Founder

Recently I received a message to my personal Facebook account that at first troubled me. It was from someone I’d never met before, who felt the need to connect to me directly in regard to the development of Moore County. The particulars aren’t important, except that the general context of the message was a narrative I’ve heard too often - historic buildings stand in the way of progress. This individual wished historic buildings would be bought by developers and turned into “something more productive” and preservationists need to “understand the natural progress of a community." 

My first knee jerk reaction was of both anger and exhaustion. Making the argument for preservation is like a broken record for those in the field. We can pull out the economic facts, figures, and case studies ad nauseam proving that preservation is the best course for communities on all fronts and still we’re seen as hindering progress, being anti-economic development, or promoting gentrification. I initially was going to let this comment slide, ignoring it and moving on. But as I marinated on the comment from this individual, I realized they weren’t wrong. 

Buildings need to be productive, or contribute, to our communities. Otherwise they sit as relics of the past that don’t serve anyone. Buildings are meant to be used. Now productivity can be interpreted differently. What serves one individual may not serve another, but generally adding to the landscape of a community and solving problems is what buildings are created for. And that is where it got me. This person was probably not actually trying to be malicious at the root of their comment. In our county we have a genuine issue with lack of affordable housing and food insecurity, and this concern was possibly at the root of this comment. They may see people upset over a historic building and don’t understand why that uproar isn’t there over these very real social issues. But the truth is, preservation at the root wants to help solve these problems and knows that using existing buildings is part of the solution. What’s occurring right now in Moore County is the opposite of solving these problems. Mass amounts of overly priced, cheaply constructed modern infill structures or “flipped” existing buildings that only one demographic can afford has priced out those who have been here for generations as a result. This is known as gentrification. But that’s not what preservation supports. Preservation supports taking the existing downtown Southern Pines school and instead of tearing it down to build 50-60 cookie cutter single family homes that cost $3-400,000 each to purchase, it would be keeping the building and having it serve as affordable housing and community center. The school could easily be retrofitted for a fraction of the cost of new construction to house low to middle income families. And the neighborhood context and scale would be maintained. Or a taking a historic West Southern Pines theatre building and with the input from the community, possibly turning it into a year-round local market hub to provide food to those currently living in a food desert. The answer to every preservation project isn’t “how can we turn this into another HGTV project” but rather “how will this structure continue to provide for the community for generations to come.” Preservationists champion things that naturally offset gentrification: subsidies for affordable housing, reforming property taxes, guaranteed mortgage program for small business owners, and grants for preservation-related trades so they are accessible to lower income community members. We as a community just need to see the possibilities as opposed to the obstacles. 

To be fair, preservationists do have to shoulder a little of the blame. We tend to demonize all developers, mainly due to the all too common occurrence of them being responsible for bulldozing decades-old properties to build concrete strip malls and cookie cutter housing developments that won’t last half a century. But the truth is, not all developers want to tear down anything historic to build generic structures. When I was in architecture school my goal was to graduate and work for a developer. Shocking, I know (and thanks military life for derailing that dream). But the desire behind that wish was to be part of the engine that held the money and could do really innovative things with historic buildings. Not tear them down but honor their past and help them solve their community’s modern day problems. If you are a local developer who does this, reach out to us. We’d love to talk.    

And so after much thought, demonizing this person probably wasn’t the wisest decision. Figuring out why they were making the comment in the first place was what I should have done first. We need to do better as a community and as preservationists. How are we helping to explain to our communities that these buildings ARE productive and their existence CAN solve very real issues?

So in summary, anonymous messenger, I agree with you. I do wish developers would buy these sites and KEEP them productive buildings, through innovation, respect, and understanding context. Developers like these do exist, we just have to encourage them to make an appearance in our county and we as a community need to demand and expect better than the norm. New buildings deserve better building methods, and old building deserve new ideas. And communities deserve to retain their historic, already productive, buildings.