Back Talk Far North Dallas: A few thoughts about historic preservation

By Norm Alston

With the loss of the McKinney
Avenue Baptist Church, better known as the Hard Rock on McKinney, I have heard
it said that we can't seem to save anything in Dallas. That's pretty much the
same complaint that was heard early last year when the East Dallas YMCA was lost
unexpectedly. I don't entirely agree with the premise that we will not save anything for
any reason. I think we are actually becoming quite successful with saving and adapting old buildings in Dallas
in particular, especially when it comes to historic buildings. Even buildings
not considered historic however, have seen a surge in their appreciation. The
industrial warehouse district along Industrial Boulevard, west of the Market Center,
is enjoying a very active resurgence with many office occupancies, design firms
especially, now moving into those buildings and creating a new, urban community,
mostly with existing building stock. That's one of the reasons the AIA opposed
the Trinity Parkway relocation to this
area.

Just the same, there are lots of disappointments like the Hard Rock. When these things happen, there are a number of reasons. Start with the understanding that it all basically stems from money. Even with the buildings we keep, few if any, are saved primarily because of their cultural, historic or aesthetic value. They must also make financial "sense" to the owners. How the financial considerations come into play and what constitutes "sense" is where it gets complicated.

I think the most important factor is comfort level. Our economy has been heavily weighted on new construction for a very long time. Still is, I guess. Those who are used to working with a vacant piece of land usually recognize that dealing with an existing building requires an entirely different set of questions to answer. If the owner/developer isn't comfortable or experienced with this, he may choose to avoid the learning curve, especially since a mistake in real estate can be a very expensive mistake indeed.

Even if he is willing, he still typically needs a team of architects, engineers and construction trades that are likewise comfortable with the different process and construction techniques. If he doesn't have those, then the recommendations he receives will almost certainly be skewed to make working with the existing building more difficult than perhaps it need be. I can tell you a story of an historic building I consulted on to an architect friend of mine who was not familiar with historic buildings. He focused on his regular new-construction bidders the first time around only to see the bids come in at double the budget. We rebid, this time with some contractors I knew to be familiar with the techniques involved, and the second set of bids came in only a little over the budget. The project moved forward and was done. Same drawings, same basic scope. It just got into the hands of those who were comfortable with the requirements and didn't build in an excessive financial safety factor. Often, building owners have tried the renovation route and have been burned. They tripped up on code requirements or found hazardous materials they hadn't planned for. They can be understandably hesitant the next time.

Another problem comes from perception of what building tenants want. For instance, a retail developer may be targeting his product to national retailers. Typically, these potential tenants have invested a great deal in "branding" themselves and are adapted to go into typical new retail construction. They have a formula that works and can be very hesitant to depart from it: ceiling heights, exposure and visibility, parking access, etc. Personally, I think this is what doomed the Dr Pepper plant on Mockingbird. The building would not readily accommodate the demands of retail tenants of the time and the investment was such that the owners didn't feel they could afford to be wrong. Remember, this was all done by a development team that did not have a track record with this kind of development.

Pretty much every business is built
on a balance of risk versus reward. This is especially true of real estate
because the stakes don't get any higher, a fact that can make owners and
developers slow to be the first to depart from a proven process or to be the
first to try something new. For years I worked with committees that promoted
Downtown Dallas and was among those lamenting the lack of downtown housing. All
we really had was the Manor House. The usual response was that this was Dallas.
Everyone wanted a new house with a yard and a two car garage and a quality
elementary school in the next block. Nobody wanted to live downtown. Then
someone tried to convert an historic building into lofts and found that the
demand that wasn't supposed to be there was great enough to spill over into Deep
Ellum, the Cedars and Uptown.

Also contributing to the tear down problem is building product
manufacturing. It too is geared mostly toward new construction and materials
replacement. There are exceptions, of course, but renovation and remodeling is
labor intensive and relies most heavily on local resources, like the small local
carpenter who can fix the old wood windows, one of my favorite examples. There
are no international window renovation companies that I know of. That means local tradesmen who can cost effectively repair and adapt existing
buildings are competing against multinational corporations who sell new
windows and have the marketing budgets to back it up. They pay to have research done that supports their
claims of superior performance, they sponsor golf tournaments and NASCAR teams
and have an army of sales professionals fanning out across the country. They provide incentives and training in the advantages
of their products to the helpful folks at the local building supply store.
Often, it's no contest. David versus
Goliath, only this is the Revenge of the Philistines.

Also in the mix have been building codes, energy codes and
accessibility concerns. All of these things have been geared toward new
construction and can make it difficult for an existing building to be readily
adapted. I will say, however, that this looks to be changing. The building code
folks, the International Code Council, have also issued an International
Existing Building Code which can be very effective in finding ways to make older
properties work. First, however, a City has to choose to adopt and implement the
code. Then the plans examiners and the code inspectors have to understand it
and buy into the differences. Ditto for the architects and
engineers. Dallas has adopted the Existing
Building Code but I have found implementation and understanding to be spotty.

Likewise, energy codes were initially slanted toward new
construction. However, the rapidly growing acceptance of "Green" building and
the parameters of Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) includes
recognition of the value of existing structures and is helping to relieve some
of this pressure on existing buildings.

Another important consideration that comes up with historic
buildings is the notion that Dallas is too new for anything to be considered
truly historic. This happens when people compare Dallas (or almost anything west
of the Mississippi) to places like Boston and Philadelphia. We like to say,
however, that your history is your history, no matter how old. If your town is 100 years old, then those 100-year-old
buildings that remain are the most historic structures you're ever going to
have. People from London and Paris can say that Boston and Philadelphia are too new to be really
historic. Folks in Rome and Athens can say the same thing about London
and Paris. The bottom line is that the Parthenon in Greece, like any structure,
had to survive its first 100 years in order to one day be 1,000 years old.

Here in North Texas, we
still live in a culture that very much values the quality of "new." I continue
to be surprised at how much I have to deal with people with a burning desire to make everything look brand
new. The reason that historic restoration is generally (and incorrectly)
considered prohibitively expensive is because of so many instances of people
doing too much and "fixing" things that ain't broke in an effort to make them
look "new."

Wishing their towns to look "new" during the 1950's and 60's was the motivation behind every turn-of-the-20th
century downtown in the country having its old downtown buildings covered with
then-modern looking plain facades. Across
the nation, communities today are spending
millions of dollars each year undoing this modernization mania.

I've noted that we
actually deal pretty well with these issues here in Dallas, but new challenges
are on the horizon and will start to crop up in areas where we haven't had these
old building/new building conflicts before. I have read recently how most of
Dallas ISD's existing buildings are now more than 50 years old. 50 years is the
age at which buildings can officially be considered historic. I'm sure that
would come as a shock to the district, as well as to most others.

What is
happening is that the "old" building label is now being applied to things done
after World War II. The war was a crack in time, both architecturally and
technologically. We did everything differently in the years following the war.
These buildings are too new-looking to fit the idea of what an historic building
should look like. These are buildings of our time. But they aren't, really.
Don't look now, but World War II was kind of a long time ago by modern cultural
standards. They used materials and techniques that may no longer be in
common use. They were built to different codes. Energy conservation and
accessibility concerns were unknown to them. The really big difference, however,
is that there are millions of them. We built a lot of stuff just after the war,
including most of our school districts.

So the celebrated loss
of a building like the Hard Rock is only the tip of the iceberg. For those of us
in the Advocate reading areas, this conflict is likely coming soon to a building
near you.

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