SPEECH: Making Room for the Past in Cedar Rapids' Future
Posted August 5, 2009 | Contact pr@nthp.org or 202-588-6141
By Richard Moe | December 4, 2006
An address by Richard Moe, President, National Trust for Historic Preservation, presented on December 4, 2006 at the Rotary Club Luncheon in Cedar Rapids, Iowa.
I'd like to begin by telling you a bit about the National Trust for Historic Preservation. We were created in 1949 to be the leader of America's preservation movement. We are a privately-funded nonprofit organization. We have about 270,000 members, and a staff of about 300 at our headquarters in Washington, our 6 regional offices, and our collection of 28 historic sites from Massachusetts to California. One of those National Trust Historic Sites is right here in Cedar Rapids: It's Brucemore, which not only functions as a house museum but also plays an active role in the civic and cultural life of this community.
Brucemore embodies the National Trust for Historic Preservation's overall mission – to help people appreciate the importance of the historic buildings, neighborhoods and landscapes that tell America's story, and to give them the tools they need to keep our heritage intact and playing a meaningful role in our lives.
As leaders of Cedar Rapids' business and civic communities – whether or not you choose to call yourselves preservationists – you are squarely in the mainstream of what preservation is all about today. If that surprises you, it may be that preservation isn't what you think it is.
Preservation today is rooted in an appreciation of the value of history, but it's not concerned just with the past. Preservation today is a tool for creating great cities.
What makes a city great? It takes a strong economic base, good government, a civic-minded business community, a vibrant cultural life, a population that is diverse in makeup but unified in spirit, and so on. But the most important factor, I believe, is something more fundamental: What makes a city great is livability.
The next question is obvious: What makes a city livable? It has to be safe, of course, and attractive. It must provide the services we need, and it should be planned and built so that it's easy to use and move around in. But there's something else – something very important: A truly livable city is one that makes us feel personally connected to it in a meaningful way. It's hard to feel that sort of connection to a place that has no distinctive character.
You must have noticed that much of America's built environment is becoming as fully homogenized as a quart of milk. I've heard it described as "Generica" – a place where you can't even tell what city you're in. The subdivisions and strip malls on the edge of Cedar Rapids are practically identical to those on the outskirts of Baltimore or Phoenix. Everyplace looks more and more like Anyplace, and eventually they all wind up looking like Noplace.
It's hard to feel connected to Noplace, and that's one reason why preservation is so important: Preservation is a means of saving and celebrating the history and traditions – the character, in other words – that makes every community unique, appealing and livable. That's preservation at its simplest and most effective – and it has to do with much more than pretty old buildings. You see, it's becoming increasingly apparent that livability is a key factor in determining which communities thrive and which ones wither. Robert Solow, Nobel Prize-winning economist at MIT, puts it this way: "Livability is not some middle-class luxury. It's an economic imperative."
With this in mind, I can summarize my message to you in a single sentence: As you're creating a vision of Cedar Rapids' future, be sure to leave room for the preservation of Cedar Rapids' past. Why? Because preservation, as a tool for economic revitalization and a vital component of smart growth, can make a real difference in a city's quality of life.
Let me tell you how.
One of most successful economic development programs in America uses preservation as one of its key elements. The National Trust's Main Street program aims to breathe new life into commercial districts that have been hit hard by sprawl and disinvestment. The program leads communities through a comprehensive revitalization strategy that emphasizes the preservation and reuse of the historic buildings that make Main Street different from a suburban strip mall.
Iowa's Main Street program celebrates its 20th anniversary this year, and it has built a reputation as one of the most vigorous and successful statewide programs in the country. Since 1986, 49 communities across the state – from tiny Bonaparte to urban Waterloo – have participated in the program. These communities have seen more than 8,500 building rehab projects completed, 2,700 new businesses and almost 7,600 new jobs created, and more than $557 million in new investment downtown. Studies show that every tax dollar used to support the Iowa Main Street program leverages more than $66 in investment from the private sector.
The Main Street program was originally developed for small towns, but now it's working in big cities as well. Dubuque started one of the nation's first Urban Main Street pilot programs in 1985, and it's still going strong. Now, places like Boston, Baltimore and Washington, D.C., have launched citywide Main Street programs, and they're enjoying great success in bringing new vitality to their neighborhood business districts.
Drive through just about any commercial area that has a well-run Main Street program in place, and you'll see that as a tool for economic development, preservation works.
The rehabilitation of older buildings works, too, in ways that make it one of the most effective revitalization tools available.
Data from a study by the U.S. Department of Commerce show that $1 million spent on rehabbing an older building creates almost 12 more jobs than the same $1 million spent on new construction. Many of these jobs require skilled craftsmanship – which means that historic rehab, combined with job training programs, can help build a corps of workers with bankable skills that will serve them well for a lifetime.
Restored buildings and neighborhoods attract tourists, too. Heritage travel is the fastest-growing segment of the huge tourism industry, and studies show that heritage travelers tend to stay longer and spend more money in the community than other travelers. What these visitors look for is the sense of being someplace, not just anyplace. As travel writer Arthur Frommer has said, "Tourism doesn't go to a community that has lost its soul" – and that soul is embodied in the older buildings and neighborhoods that make every community unique.
Facts like these make it clear that preservation isn't just good for the soul; it's good for the pocketbook as well.
Now let's look at preservation's role in managing sprawl.
Talk on this subject often focuses on things like land-use planning and open-space conservation. These are critically important elements, but they ignore an important fact: We can't manage sprawl without giving people an alternative to sprawl. Instead of targeting more and more of our resources to the construction of more and more highways and strip malls and subdivisions, we ought to be reinvesting in the communities we already have so that they are viable, livable places.
We hear lots of talk about "smart growth" these days. I'm convinced that you can't have smart growth without preservation. Let me say that another way: Preservation is smart growth. Here's why:
- Smart growth emphasizes density of development, mixed uses, and a pedestrian orientation. These are three major characteristics of older neighborhoods. Saving them is smart growth.
- Cities need affordable housing too, and most of America's affordable housing stock is in older neighborhoods. Saving and making good use of this housing stock is smart growth.
- Cities have a major investment in the infrastructure of older neighborhoods – the streets, schools, water and sewer lines, and so on. Making good use of this investment, instead of leaving it underused and duplicating it in new areas elsewhere, is smart growth.
- Reuse of older buildings allows for growth without consumption of land. Revitalizing Main Street means less demand for a new strip mall. Converting a warehouse into 40 dwelling units reduces the demand for new houses on 10 acres of farmland. That's smart growth at its best.
More and more cities are using preservation as an effective tool for creating viable alternatives to sprawl, for allowing older buildings to shelter people instead of pigeons, for turning urban no-man's-lands into lively, attractive places to live and work. In Denver, preservation is the driving force that has pulled an area called Lower Downtown back from the brink of destruction and transformed it into a vibrant and highly desirable place to live and work. In Atlanta, in a low-income African-American neighborhood that had known decades of disinvestment and despair, preservation is the spark that is bringing in new investment, new life and new hope.
The story is repeated in city after city: The preservation and reuse of historic buildings and neighborhoods is an engine that drives solid, sustainable economic revitalization. What can we learn from the experience of these cities?
- First, there is no magic bullet that will guarantee revitalization. A single high-profile project – a glitzy new museum or sports arena – can play an important role, certainly, but sustainable revitalization happens incrementally.
- Second, partnerships are the key to success. Rebirth doesn't happen because of city government or developers or preservationists or property-owners. It happens when all of them realize they have a stake in the success of the revitalization effort, and all of them work together to make it happen.
- Third, new development is important – but not all new development is appropriate. What's essential is a strong commitment to maintain the character and quality of the existing community. We want reinvestment, but we don't want formulaic, cookie-cutter development that turns downtown into an urban version of a suburban strip.
- Fourth, we can't create livable neighborhoods in our urban centers until we get rid of some formidable regulatory barriers. For instance, it makes no sense to offer tax incentives to encourage rehab – and then make the rehab process harder than it has to be. Local building and zoning codes often make it difficult, or even impossible, for owners and developers to convert older buildings to new uses. To replace these misguided regulations, we need "smart codes" that encourage reinvestment.
- Finally, not everyone wants to live in the city center, and we shouldn't expect them to. But when people do want to, we ought to make it possible for them to do so without giving up convenience and dependable public services and safe, attractive living environments. Just opening up some apartments in a few older buildings isn't enough. Creating a genuine in-town neighborhood means offering people a wide range of appealing, affordable housing options, and offering the services they need and want. Downtown living isn't so cool when you have to drive a dozen miles just to buy milk or bread, or to find a green space to walk or jog in.
Forging effective public/private partnerships. Emphasizing the preservation and reuse of existing buildings. Eliminating barriers and creating incentives for reinvestment. These are tools that work, and it doesn't take a genius to know that when you have a tool that does the job effectively and efficiently, you use it.
I believe that preservation-based revitalization is the key to this city's future. I believe that tomorrow's Cedar Rapids should be – and can be – a balanced, dynamic blend of old and new, a place that retains plentiful and meaningful reminders of the rich history that sets it apart from everyplace else. But it won't happen by itself, and planners and architects can't make it happen. The challenging task of saving our heritage isn't somebody else's job. Everyone with a stake in this city's future has a role to play in capitalizing on its past.
Perhaps more than any other group, you here in this room – interested, activist members of the business and civic communities – are positioned to encourage the good public policy – including a stronger commitment to preservation – that is essential to livability. You are the people who have the power to say, "It's time to stop merely making our city bigger and busier, and start making it better and more livable."
We Americans have badly mistreated our cities in the post-World War II era, with the result that too many of our urban centers look like illustrations for a textbook on neglect and abandonment and failed initiatives. But the fact that we made mistakes in the past doesn't mean we have to keep making them forever. We need to learn from those mistakes. We need to recognize that there are powerful forces – including market forces – that we can harness to realize the hopes and aspirations we all share for our hometown.
We need the best problem-solvers of our generation to repair the urban fabric that we've ripped so many holes in over the years.
We need the most creative designers to help us figure out how to create places that are lively and safe and supportive, how to transform Noplace into someplace special.
We need visionary thinkers who recognize that by saving and enhancing historic buildings and neighborhoods, we're creating opportunities for meaningful contact with our shared heritage – and thereby strengthening the glue that holds us together as a society.
I believe some of those problem-solvers and visionaries are right here in this room. Others are just outside, in offices and homes and classrooms all over the city. What's needed now is the leadership to harness their creative energy, and the will to put that energy to work.
Working together to save the best of the past, we can build a future in which Cedar Rapids will be known as one of America's greatest cities – because it's one of America's most livable cities.
Richard Moe is president of the National Trust for Historic Preservation.
The National Trust for Historic Preservation is a non-profit membership organization bringing people together to protect, enhance and enjoy the places that matter to them. By saving the places where great moments from history – and the important moments of everyday life – took place, the National Trust for Historic Preservation helps revitalize neighborhoods and communities, spark economic development and promote environmental sustainability. With headquarters in Washington, DC, nine regional and field offices, 29 historic sites, and partner organizations in all 50 states, the National Trust for Historic Preservation provides leadership, education, advocacy and resources to a national network of people, organizations and local communities committed to saving places, connecting us to our history and collectively shaping the future of America’s stories. For more information visit www.PreservationNation.org.
