Preservation is a Green Strategy
Many here in San Luis Obispo may not realize that a number of historic structures in our Downtown may soon have a date with the wrecking ball. Larry Hoyt, the owner of the Mancillas Frietas Adobe at 868 Chorro Street plans to surround his structure with 3 floors of housing. In order to make this happen, the wooden addition to the adobe, constructed around 1877, is slated for demolition. The better-known Chinatown mixed-use project comprised of 312,000 square feet of 4-6 story retail, office and residential uses would involve the demolition of five structures including two that are listed as significant at the local level: the Blackstone Hotel/Cornerstone Realty Building and the Sauer Building/Pier One Building. But demolition, in the name of progress – or seismic retrofit – not only runs counter to the interests of historic preservationists, it also runs counter to the interests of environmentalists. A major reason for this is the value of the “embodied energy” tied up in the built environment. Those old buildings slated for demolition took energy to construct, energy to destroy and energy lost after replacement. For example, the diesel that powers the bulldozer alone consumes more fossil fuel than would be saved over the lifetime of replacement windows. Most probably, the wooden addition to the Mancillas Frietas Adobe was constructed from old-growth lumber, as irreplaceable as an ancient tree at this point. Preservation, it turns out, is a green strategy.
Allan Cooper is Chair of Save Our Downtown and has lived in San Luis Obispo for 33 years. You can contact him at acooper@calpoly.edu
Tags: downtown, growth, historic buildings
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First of all, historic building are not allowed to be demolished. I’m in a business related to the development industry and I can tell you that it’s virtually impossible to do tear down or reconstruct an historic building. Now, perhaps you are calling changing the paint color a demolition. And perhaps you are calling things historic that are not really historic. And I’m guessing you would like to call just about any old building downtown historic. The uglier the better.
These days, the last refuge of a radical is environmentalism. “It’s for the environment!” End of story. And so goes your story. Saving “historic” buildings is green. Well, you guys like to say that drilling in Alaska won’t be enough to help deliver energy. If that’s the case, saving on some energy that would otherwise be used to modernize a building certainly will do orders of magnitude less. And, foolishly, you are also concerned about the energy used in the past to originally construct the building. No I’ve heard everything.
So, if you were to be alive in the year 2108, I suppose you would be fighting to preserve the tract homes like over in French Park and elsewhere, the types of development I would bet you now despise. After all, they would be about 130 years old then, and characteristic of the era. Right? When does it end Mr. Cooper?
Let’s get on with the future. You’re stuck in the past.
Ed on October 5th, 2008 4:13 pm