by Erin Hanafin Berg, Field Representative
March 15, 2010
Over the weekend, I set up a booth for the Preservation Alliance at the Twin Cities Sustainable Communities Conference. Hosted by a non-profit organization called the Alliance for Sustainability, the two-day conference was held at Central Lutheran Church in downtown Minneapolis (whose volunteers wore aprons that read “Reduce, Reuse, Recycle . . . Rejoice”—cute!). Day 1 featured speakers and sessions geared towards local government officials. Day 2 was intended for private citizens and neighborhood groups. There was a great crowd both days, and a whole new audience to reach out to with the message that “the greenest building is the one that’s already built.”
This is the second or third time I’ve rolled out my “Historic Preservation: The Ultimate Recycling” banner. Slick, it ain’t—but we think it resonates with the grass-roots message of preservation (and was made out of a discarded banner from our 2008 home tour). And while this is not a new message for the Preservation Alliance, or for the preservation movement in general, I find that we still need to willfully assert our position in the sustainability conversation. Preservation would seem to be a no-brainer at an event advertised as a “sustainable communities conference” (and many thousand thanks to Sean Gosiewski, the program director who invited our participation). But I was a little taken aback at having to explain, again and again, why the Preservation Alliance was present.

Surely, nobody wondered why the organic farm people where there, or the solar products folks, or the bike advocates. All of those efforts will certainly make some kind of impact on the sustainability of our communities, to varying degrees. But look around you (when you’re outside, that is)—what do you see? Trees, and (soon enough) grass, and rivers and lakes, and roads and sidewalks—but also, buildings. Lots and lots of existing buildings. Ensuring that those buildings are continually used and made to be as efficient as possible can be a key strategy to combating the environmental changes of the coming decades. Provided that they are relatively energy efficient, reusing those buildings will conserve precious natural, manufactured, and economic resources, as well as decades of investment in infrastructure, transportation systems, and—oh yeah, almost forgot—our collective history.
Prioritizing reuse over new construction should be one of the primary goals of every local governmental agency, but most of the local government attendees at the Friday sessions talked about LEED-certified new construction, alternative energy sources, and reductions in air and water pollution. Certainly the local goverments that are tackling these issues, including Burnsville and its mayor, Elizabeth Kautz, who presented Friday’s keynote address, deserve praise. Many of the communities who are taking the initiative on issues like these have very little “historic” fabric to work with. Burnsville, which was one of the first communities to develop in Dakota County, according to the mayor, has only one building listed in the National Register of Historic Places—but still, reusing and maintaining existing buildings is a key component of its sustainability plan.
Until it is our society’s default position for businesses, governments, and individuals to look first for an old or historic building that will fit their needs (or that can be adapted to do so), I think the Preservation Alliance will need to claim a spot at the sustainability table. And I’ll be bringing my banner.