How's THIS for adaptive reuse

The most beautiful, um, Pizza Hut?

I came across this article via the National Trust for Historic Preservation's press room (a fantastic place to get daily preservation news, btw...) and had to share.

So without further ado, I offer you...The Most Beautiful Pizza Hut in the World

I offer no pithy prose, just a "wow, ain't this cool" moment to share. Just goes to show that innovative adaptive reuse can be found in the strangest of places. Consider the unique dining experience this Pizza Hut offers over its other cookie-cutter locales. And, most importantly, what could you do in your town?

Smart. Sustainable and smart. And gorgeous. Enjoy the read.


(photo by Annie Scott from gadling.com)

posted by Laura Keeney Zavala, Director of Marketing

Celebrating a save

Yesterday, I attended the ribbon cutting at the Parazin Building, a building that appeared frighteningly close to being lost just a few years ago.

Developer Ben Kendig (who also rehabilitated the Landmark Society's offices in Corn Hill back in the 1990s) acquired the building in 2006 and, along with Bob Lindsay and Paul Sullivan, has just finished converting it into office and residential space, in keeping with the new direction High Falls is taking away from the "entertainment district" idea and toward a mixed-use neighborhood of offices and apartments. So far, this new direction seems to be a fruitful one, with the Parry Building enjoying great success as a similar mixed-use rehab and other projects coming to completion soon.

I had been particularly curious to see how this stone building could be successfully converted into apartments, given its narrow footprint. Rather than run a hallway down the center of the building, which would have left little space on either side, there is (at least on the second floor, which was open for tours) a short hallway along one side, with a big unit at each end and two smaller ones along the side for a total of four units per floor. The resulting spaces - especially those facing the gorge - have great views and wonderful light, along with the requisite granite countertops, open floor plans, and high ceilings.

It's exciting to see new projects like this coming online even in the midst of such challenging economic times. What a great example of adaptive reuse - a sensible approach at any time, but particularly important when both economic and environmental conditions point to a need to conserve, rather than squander, our resources. As Mayor Duffy noted in his remarks, this project will create jobs and provide more momentum to the ongoing turnaround in the historically significant High Falls district.

If you'd like to learn more about High Falls, check out our online self-guided tour, which you can take with you to the district (it's a few years old, and doesn't fully reflect the most recent developments in the district's transformation, but of course the historical information remains accurate) - and stay tuned for this year's Inside Downtown Tour, which will take you inside some of the most exciting new projects in and around High Falls in late September.

Posted by Katie Eggers Comeau, Director of Preservation Services

Post-conference recap, Medina 2009

Our 23rd Annual Regional Preservation Conference in Medina this past Saturday was a hit! About 150 preservationists, community activists, preservation board members, planners, architects, craftspeople, and more gathered in the Erie Canal village of Medina, in western Orleans County. The keynote address by Roberta Lane of the National Trust for Historic Preservation, letting us know how preservation might weather the current economic storms, set the perfect tone for a day jam-packed with helpful information about how everyone who owns, works in, lives in, or cares for a historic building can save money, save the environment, and save their community’s character.

I was the moderator for Track A: “Where’s the Money?” Our first speaker was Jayme Breschard, who is coordinating the fledgling Western Erie Canal Main Street program. She took what seems like a scary topic and put it into very understandable terms, even for former humanities majors like myself. Her enthusiasm for the topic was infectious! I learned that there is a very doable process for evaluating what a downtown has, what it could support, and how citizens can go about closing the gap between what is and what could be.

Our second session focused on grants and other funding sources for historic preservation. Chris Leo from the New York Main Street grant program explained how his agency’s grants work and how communities can take advantage of them. I was glad to learn more about a funding source that I had heard of but haven’t had direct exposure to yet. Roberta Lane returned to the microphone to tell us about National Trust grants; I thought I knew all there was to know about these funding sources, having successfully applied for Trust funding before, but I discovered there are a couple of grants I hadn’t heard of before. Then it was my turn to give a whirlwind tour of “everything else” – and I learned that while it often feels like there is no funding out there for preservation, there really is enough to fill up an hourlong session! I hope that my brief introduction to the variety of sources out there, coupled with our very informative funding handout, got people thinking about funding they might not have considered before.

Lunch in the 1950s-style (although 1990s-built) Medina High School cafeteria was a treat, catered by Medina’s own Zambistro Restaurant. It would be worth a trip to Medina just to eat at this fine establishment, one of the newer anchors of Main Street Medina. (With the one-of-a-kind Medina Railroad Museum just up the road, this would make a great family day trip!)

The afternoon session of Track A was the highlight of the day for me. Participants met in the partially rehabilitated Newell Building, just off Main Street. The young attorney, Medina native, and entrepreneur Andrew Meier purchased this handsome, three-story brick building for $20,000 a few years ago and has been working diligently on a million-dollar rehabilitation, taking advantage of Medina’s Historic Tax Exemption, the federal tax credits for historic rehabilitation, the National Trust Loan Fund, the New York Main Street program, and the National Grid Main Street Program. He has already opened an elegant, trendy coffee shop on the first floor, and expects to complete rehab work for offices on the second floor and loft apartments on the third.

Andrew is an enthusiastic, committed spokesperson for the creative reuse of great historic buildings, and he and architect Clinton Brown shared their perspectives on what it takes to do a project such as this. After their very informative presentations, Andrew and Clint took us on a tour of the building so we could see for ourselves the amazing spaces in their raw form.

The day finished off with a fascinating tour of upper-floor spaces in downtown Medina: from a fully utilized second-floor space that houses professional offices and a beautiful meeting space, to a collection of vacant second and third floors with tremendous potential for reuse, we saw an incredible cross-section of the challenges and opportunities that exist above the mostly occupied storefronts.

I hope my fellow conference-goers and staff bloggers will chime in with their own highlights of the day – and I hope that if you missed the conference this year, you’ll join us next year, or join us at one of our other upcoming events!

We are so grateful to our sponsors, who helped make this year's conference a success: Preservation Buffalo Niagara, the National Trust for Historic Preservation, the Village of Medina, and the Medina Central School District.

Posted by Katie Eggers Comeau, Director of Preservation Services

[Photos, from top to bottom: Main Street Medina; The Shirt Factory Cafe in the Newell Building; Andrew Meier shows conference attendees his work-in-progress.]

Two Big Projects Taking Shape

At the end of today’s Preservation Issues Committee meeting, one participant commented, “that was a meaty meeting!”

It was indeed. We discussed two very large projects that have the potential to significantly reshape key areas in our region.

One of the two is a project called CityGate, where a developer proposes to demolish a complex of nine National Register-eligible buildings and redevelop the site as a mixed-use complex. This property is at the southeast corner of Westfall and East Henrietta roads, and was formerly the Iola campus, a tuberculosis sanitarium developed between 1911-1931. The complex has been determined eligible for the National Register due to its architecture (representing early-20th century institutional architecture; the work of German-trained architect Siegmund Firestone plus three notable Rochester architects) and for its social history, as a public health facility.

The site has very few neighbors, and thus far, there has been very little public interest in the project and few public comments. The Landmark Society is one of the few parties to have commented in the past, and we are currently working on our comments on the current iteration of the design. I would like to very strongly encourage anyone with an interest in urban design, historic preservation, planning, sustainability, adaptive reuse, etc., to take a look at what is proposed for the site and submit your comments. To do so, go to this site and click the link for the CityGate Draft Generic Environmental Impact Statement. It’s a big file and may take a long time to download; hang in there!

The majority of today’s meeting was devoted to a detailed presentation by Mark Tayrien of LaBella Associates and Dorraine Laudisi of the City of Rochester regarding the Midtown project, focusing on the City’s vision for the site, the process of making decisions regarding the historic buildings (the State Historic Preservation Office has determined that the entire Midtown site is eligible for the National Register of Historic Places), and the procedure for public input.

We were pleased that our committee was the first audience for the city’s brand-new outreach presentation that will be presented to a series of audiences as the city seeks broad public input on this very significant downtown project. We have a small team reviewing the planning documents in detail and preparing official Landmark Society comments. I also encourage everyone interested in the future of downtown Rochester to review and comment; the relevant documents are located here. There are quite a few documents posted; go first to the Draft Generic Environmental Impact Statement, dated November 10. You might also want to look at specific appendices, notably Appendix G, which deals with historic issues. It was clear from the presentation, and from the DGEIS, that some big decisions regarding the future of the site are not yet set in stone and the time is ripe for public input.

Comments on both projects should be submitted to Dorraine Laudisi at the city of Rochester (Dorraine.Laudisi AT CityofRochester.gov); please send us a copy! Dorraine told us today that the City is very eager to receive and incorporate comments from the public, particularly from people with expertise in planning, design, and historic preservation. She and her colleagues really rely on these comments to help guide the City’s decision-making, and to help them steer the developers toward the best possible outcomes.

Posted by Katie Eggers Comeau, Advocacy Coordinator