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Historic Sites

Heritage Restoration & Adaptive Reuse of Abandoned Buildings

Your community's sustainable revitalization program can start with a primary focus on any of the 12 sectors of restorable assets.  But one of the best starting places in older communities is your inventory of historic sites and structures, as well as your older (but non-historic) reusable structures. Heritage is one of those assets that virtually everyone--regardless of political, economic, or cultural beliefs--can agree should be restored.

What's more, these buildings are already connected to your infrastructure, are often on brownfields, and are usually centrally located.  These factors alone make them sensible choices for accommodating your growth.  The alternative is sprawl, which might provide a short-term economic boost, but it will usually undercut your quality of life.  Renewing and reusing your urban buildings, on the other hand, helps you grow economically while enhancing your quality of life.  Which makes more sense to you?

If you've already got a strong heritage preservation or historic downtown revitalization organization, it could be an ideal sponsor for your community's Real Revitalization Program.  Is this organization trusted and effective?  Does it wish to take an even larger, longer-term role in the community's future? If so, sponsoring the Real Revitalization Program is also the best way to help it create (or become) a revitalization forum

A revitalization forum is a permanent public-private organization that supports an ongoing revitalization program.  [Note: Readers of reWealth (McGraw-Hill, 2008) will recognize this type of organization as what that book technically referred to as a "renewal engine". It was revealed as the key factor behind the most dramatic urban regeneration success stories documented in reWealth.]

Definition & overview: There's no formal definition of heritage restoration, as it can focus on a number of restorable functions and assets, such as public & private buildings, industries, battlefields, institutions (such as a college), neighborhoods, infrastructure (such as historic bridges, roads, & dams), etc.   


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