Struldbrug buildings
One day, in much good company, I was asked by a person of quality, whether I had seen any of their struldbrugs, or immortals?
Jonathan Swift, Gulliver’s Travels, Chapter 26
To the transatlantic visitor (one from a land where a Greyhound Bus Terminal carries a proud plaque naming it a Certified Historic Structure),
You have to admit, it has sleek lines.
… as did the buses themselves
This breed of struldbrugs was peculiar to their country…. I freely own myself to have been struck with inexpressible delight, upon hearing this account.
Struldbrugs are buildings that though listed, are not being saved – unimproved, they still empty, aging, decrepit, vandalized if not ringed with concertina razor wire, by their listed status protected against everything … except the struldbrug’s curse: functional senility brought about by funding drought.
The gentleman to whom I addressed my discourse said to me, with a sort of a smile which usually arises from pity to the ignorant….
In economic terms, English historic listing is no blessing but a curse that only increases costs:
· Higher hard costs occasioned by mandated historic restorations of facades, windows, and details.
· Higher soft costs arising from lengthy negotiations with historic preservation officers, neighbourhood consultations, and protracted approval/ protest/ appeals cycles.
· Higher operating costs from high ceilings and aged building envelopes.
· Decreased earning potential because choices of use are limited and interior space cannot always be optimized.
· Higher risk premiums for entering into individual negotiations with historic preservation officers.
Yes, my gentle reader cries, but in exchange for accepting these burdens, listed historic properties receive substantial economic benefits from government. “What economic benefits?” the traveler asks mildly.
There settles an embarrassed silence.
Many such buildings wait for funding, and wait, and wait – while wind and storm and arson and ennui kill not just the building’s skeleton but all hope of its revival. (One such tale of dashed expectations and promised funding withdrawn is Brighton’s famous West Pier.)
Sometimes, though very rarely, a child happened to be born in a family, with a red circular spot in the forehead, directly over the left eyebrow, which was an infallible mark that it should never die.
By the act of ‘blessing’ a regeneration candidate property with historic listing, government burdens it with additional costs while providing no additional benefits. Unwittingly, government curses it not with rejuvenation but with a struldbrug existence, for no one can develop it. Indeed, development flows around it and away from it, avoiding the incremental expense. Meanwhile, the building dies, and dies, and keeps on dying, until even its supporters can wish it put out of its misery.
The question therefore was not, whether a man would choose to be always in the prime of youth, attended with prosperity and health; but how he would pass a perpetual life under all the usual disadvantages which old age brings along with it.
Government is a factory that makes two widgets – laws and money. Laws prevent things, money enables them.
Come, agree, the law’s costly.
Attributed to Swift, source unknown
Historic listing is a potent negative law, but absent a concomitant and compensatory source of money, then listing will be, not a blessing, but the struldbrug’s curse:
As avarice is the necessary consequence of old age, those immortals would in time become proprietors of the whole nation, and engross the civil power, which, for want of abilities to manage, must end in the ruin of the public.
In the US, the historic tax credit (Internal Revenue Code §47) delivers a dollar-for-dollar reduction in Federal income taxes payable equal to 20% of the certified rehabilitation costs of a certified historic structure. Whether or not the tax credits are a perfectly calibrated counterbalance –
Let’s see, have I got enough sources of funds? (Link in .pdf)
– they do provide some meaningful equity boost, and as the National Park Service website notes:
Through this program, abandoned or under used schools, warehouses, factories, churches, retail stores, apartments, hotels, houses, and offices throughout the country have been restored to life in a manner that maintains their historic character.
Since 1976, the Historic Preservation Tax Incentives have produced these benefits for the nation:
· rehabilitated more than 32,000 historic properties
· stimulated over $33 billion in private investment
· rehabilitated more than 185,000 housing units and created over 140,000 housing units, of which over 75,000 are low and moderate-income units
Among the historic tax credit’s principal uses has been affordable housing (where it combines with another, the Low Income Housing Tax Credit). Today not a downtown exists but its turn-of-the-century grand dame hotel is now a refurbished elderly affordable apartment property, not a city but around its gleaming high-rise office block is a skirting of renovated row houses or brownstones:
I cried out, as in a rapture, “Happy nation, where every child hath at least a chance for being immortal! Happy people, who enjoy so many living examples of ancient virtue, and have masters ready to instruct them in the wisdom of all former ages!”
And now for another modest proposal
