By Bruce Coons / SOHO Newsletter / July-August 2024
As San Diego grapples with actual housing affordability—not the luxury rental units being built today—we/SOHO cannot overstate the importance of adaptive reuse for historic buildings. While new construction is routinely being prioritized, we should consider the steep cost of demolishing existing structures and discarding affordable housing stock into landfills.
Quality construction and materials, authentic character, and meaningful history make old buildings prime candidates for adaptive reuse. There is a lucrative and growing market for these inspired living quarters, creative workspaces, and attractive retail and dining places, which people enthusiastically embrace.
Yet, inexplicably, our city leaders seem to undervalue or ignore the powerful potential of adaptive reuse for housing that has succeeded here and throughout the country. Their stance contradicts the clear benefits. Reuse stabilizes communities, protects naturally affordable units, and boosts the local economy.
For decades, SOHO has promoted the importance and logic of adaptive reuse. Many historic buildings transformed into modern housing are in high demand and, if containing multiple units, have become vibrant communities, with minimal turnover or vacancies. Unaccountably, city leaders continue to overlook this key tool for providing workforce and low-income homes.
San Diego has many fine examples of this, projects that are commercially viable and enrich city life. To name just three downtown historic resources: Church Lofts, Pioneer Warehouse Lofts, and the ballpark’s Western Metal Supply Company building are still thriving decades after their conversions.
Adaptively reused historic buildings not only define community identity and character, they embody a crucial strategy for our environmental sustainability and resilience. Unlike new construction, historic buildings and neighborhoods are often inherently green, contributing to larger, ongoing resiliency strategies because old buildings retain the embodied carbon from the original construction energy and resources. This fact significantly reduces greenhouse gas emissions.
Another significant benefit is that adaptive reuse maintains and protects naturally occurring affordable housing (NOAH) units. Rather than being demolished and dumped in landfills, NOAH homes, like bungalow courts and apartment buildings, can be retrofitted, updated, and reused in many creative and novel ways. Interesting and authentic spaces infused with history and offering modern amenities have proven to be highly attractive to individuals, families and businesses large and small.
Adding new living quarters through historic preservation contributes to San Diego’s growth, vitality, and equitable development. And converting old buildings also helps stabilize neighborhoods, and broadens ownership opportunities. Reuse projects generate more jobs than new builds.
As the affordable housing crisis rages on, San Diego needs to meet the problem today and plan for the future. Adaptive reuse allows us to build an inclusive future while preserving our cultural legacy, aligning housing justice and heritage conservation. It is a win-win, enabling residents and visitors to enjoy our city’s cultural heritage while we build a sustainable future. This way, adaptive reuse aligns preservation and progress.
Sounds great, but is there anything obstructing ‘adaptive reuse’ now? What would you like the city to do to encourage more of it?
I just read this morning of a minor league ballpark in Indianapolis that was converted into apartments. Everyone said the project’s proponents were nuts, but it appeared to turn out pretty nice – and at prices that would be astonishingly cheap in San Diego.
Yeah, re purposing that Ash St. building turned out wonderful.
Adaptive re-use for housing works fine if a building has large enough volume in the first place to be re-used to make more housing.
Office buildings like 625 Broadway downtown. But bungalows? Not bloody likely.
I’d rather see a large old house turned into a boarding house, as opposed to tearing the house down to build a half dozen studio apartments. You maintain the look of the neighborhood, and you don’t disrupt the landscaping and the critters that depend on that landscaping.
Classic boomer NIMBY organization throwing out a few housing buzz words to sound concerned about housing affordability. “Aligning housing justice and heritage conservation”, lmao. The “history” you are trying to preserve is simply how things happened to be when you grew up, which required monumental and significant change from the state it was in before you! This change will simply continue as no generation or group of people has the right to freeze the world in the specific state matching their nostalgia. Someday this will click for you Bruce.
About Bruce,
He began this role in 2000 after serving as a two-term president and volunteer at large since 1985. An architectural historian, restoration and historic design professional with a background in archaeology as well, he has been deeply involved in historic preservation for over 40 years and has actively worked with historic resources since his youth.
Kinda weird to have a beef with recycling historic buildings to affordable units?
No one has “beef” with that concept. You need to see the larger picture: they tout this as an alternative to actually building more housing units because they don’t want the city to grow or change. They could care less if any of these ever get done, what they actually care about is stopping new construction, but they are a little more politically saavy than those who just loudly say so directly. Doing these historic conversions could at most yield only a tiny fraction of the housing needed in order to keep pace with demand in SD and they are well aware of that.
You sound like all you want is build, build, build – and that’s been the mantra from folks with your mindset for decades — and look what it got us: miles of market rate housing that no one lives in. Thanks a lot.
San Diego DOES NOT have a housing crisis — we have an affordable housing crisis.
Alright so you are trying to softly (“miles…”) make some hard claims. Let’s talk seriously then and see if you know anything. What is San Diego’s residential vacancy rate? How does it compare to the national average for similar metro areas? How about vs CA state? What percentage of total people live in market rate vs subsidized housing, here vs elsewhere?
And most relevantly to this article, what is the maximum effect on either of those figures that this oh-so-overlooked “adaptive reuse” could have, given the number of candidate buildings there are?
The new proposed homeless shelter is a good example of San Diego “adaptive reuse.” It’s all in the implementation.
Adaptive Reuse requires ingenuity and creativity, supported by the local permitting authority. Without that, the beauty it provides to a community is removed from the equation. Chattanooga Tenn. is an example where it worked, at least at one time.