Synopsis:

Kienle discusses a great opportunity for our cities and towns during this recession – historic preservation and adaptive reuse. The housing and construction bust has shown us that we can not endlessly develop new buildings. Couple this with the exorbitant amount of virgin materials that new construction requires and you have a recipe to reevaluate “development.” This perfect storm has opened up the developer, architectural, and construction fields to reconsider old, vacant buildings. Kienle suggests that there is great economic potential by focusing on adaptive reuse. “Studies show that dollar for dollar, historic preservation is one of the highest job-generating economic development options as illustrated in the 2005 presentation “The Economics of Historic Preservation” by Don Rypkema.”