Best Practice Actions    [See action tools, guidance, city reports]

• Allows new investment to use existing infrastructure.
• Provides an opportunity to use rehabilitation funds to rebuild or upgrade existing infrastructure.
• A key strategy for implementing mixed use, pedestrian-oriented community revitalization programs.
• Reuses the energy and materials embedded in existing buildings, avoiding the energy and resource use associated with new buildings.
• Helps retain the historic and cultural character of the community, both in the building itself and in the setting around existing buildings.
• Buildings are vast repositories of energy, reports Richard Moe, past-president of the National Trust for Historic Preservation. For a 50,000 square foot building, he notes, the combined costs of teardown and replacement -- hauling away tons of waste, re-excavating, manufacturing new construction materials, operating tools, installing lighting and heating and cooling systems -- "embodies" the equivalent of 640,000 gallons of gasoline. Moe asserts that even if a project includes 40% recycled materials, it takes approximately 65 years for a green, energy-efficient office building to recover the energy lost in demolishing and replacing an existing building. See more detail in The Greenest Building: Quantifying the Environmental Value of Building Reuse (National Trust for Historic Preservation: 2012).

All Category A, B and C cities that choose to implement this best practice must complete at least one action.

Old is the new green! Or put another way: the greenest building is the building already built. Reuse or adaptive redevelopment of existing buildings meets sustainability goals in several ways. First, adaptive redevelopment or reuse allows new investment that uses existing infrastructure, or even provides an opportunity to rebuild or upgrade infrastructure. Streets, water and wastewater systems, and systems for energy distribution and telecommunication usually already exist. Reusing buildings is an effective strategy for implementing mixed use, pedestrian-oriented community revitalization programs. Second, reusing the energy and materials embodied in existing buildings avoids the energy and resource use associated with a new building, while still allowing new investment within the community. Finally and not least, existing buildings (especially older ones) are frequently beautiful and imbued with the historic character of the community, both in the building itself and in the setting around existing buildings. Advances in building technology, strategies for flexible space use and the resources of the historic preservation movement make reuse today more economically affordable and socially beneficial than in past years.

The 2009 Minnesota Legislature passed, and the Governor signed a bill removing school siting acreage constraints, thus removing a barrier to renovation of existing school buildings. Previously mandated large school sites biased school renovation/expansion toward building new schools, typically on green field sites outside of cities, which prevents more children from walking and biking to school.

The 2010 Minnesota Legislature passed, and the Governor signed, the Minnesota Historic Structures Rehabilitation Tax Credit through the Jobs Stimulus Bill. Combined with the federal historic tax credit, this offers a credit of up to 40% of qualifying rehab expenditures. The Minnesota tax credit, scheduled to sunset in 2015:

• Allows credit on state income taxes equal to 20% of the qualified cost of a historic rehabilitation or a grant-in-lieu-of-credit of 90% of the allowable credit; the applicant chooses the incentive.
• Parallels the federal historic rehabilitation 20% tax credit, leveraging additional financial sources. Unlike the federal credit, Minnesotas is refundable (no carry-back or cary-forward).
• Is useful for income-producing property including commercial, residential, and industrial developments.