On a late afternoon last spring, I was touring a building under construction. The last time I had been inside of an infant building was years ago when my family’s current home was being hastily constructed in a new north Phoenix suburban development. I dodged large ants crawling amid the wooden boards and stucco and tried to imagine a new kitchen, a new bedroom, a new home in the bare empty spaces.
But this was different. I was inside of the former Art Annex on College Avenue just off of ASU’s Tempe campus. It had been stripped to its bones: brick and cement dating back to 1946, still strong and stable. The architect, Mike Rumpeltin of the firm Brick & West, guided me through and pointed out where and how the old building would be turned into a home for new Postino and Snooze restaurants. I was entranced by deep indents in one section of the brick where an old door had once been. The building had scars and stories.
“We have this collective human history that, when we’re in these old spaces, we can tap into,” Rumpeltin said.
A year later, the project has been completed. Trendy Edison lights hang in the thoroughly landscapes patios, wide open doorways keep the foot traffic from hungry Phoenicians steady, and the original structure still stands.
Back in downtown Phoenix, GreenHAUS’s impending demolition, the disappearance of the colorful SoRo block and the shadow cast on historic Evans-Churchill homes by the expanding Biomedical Campus are upsetting stories to a community that wants alternatives to the wrecking ball. One of those solutions? Adaptive reuse.
You can hardly avoid the term adaptive reuse in conversation these days. If you don’t know what it means, that’s OK. It’s a jargony term and its understanding is often taken for granted. But it’s important to know, especially in a time of change in the downtown streetscape. The best definition for adaptive reuse lies in the anecdote about the Annex: an old building with an old use (graduate art classes) given a new purpose (dining and drinking) through a minimal renovation process that maintains the original form and history of the site.
Rumpeltin’s worked on several projects up the Seventh Street corridor from downtown, most prominently the plaza on the northwest corner of Osborn Road and Seventh Street featuring Taco Guild, along with The Yard. All are defined by adaptive reuse — taking a church and making it into a taco restaurant, a motorcycle yard into an adult culinary playground.
But as Rumpeltin breaks into the new ground-up building business, like he is now for a new spot also on Seventh Street for the people behind Pomo Pizzeria Napoletana, his focus is creating a building that is sturdy enough to be a future site of adaptive reuse in 50 to 60 years. Many buildings constructed in recent years simply won’t be sites of adaptive reuse, probably including my cookie cutter Toll Brothers family home.
“Adaptive reuse is selecting those buildings to be reused because they were built well enough in the first place,” Rumpeltin said. “And, more importantly, preserving the history and the continuity to our collective past.”
Besides historic preservation and cultural capital, adaptive reuse offers up other benefits. Rumpeltin sees the reuse of old buildings as a way to more quickly and affordably get residential and commercial projects to market as more people move into the city center. Even low-rise buildings in high-rise zones (like the Annex and GreenHAUS) can and should be incorporated. Rumpeltin made sure there was a thoroughfare through the Annex restaurants into the aquatic center behind, similar to a design sketch for GreenHAUS from This Could Be PHX.
“I think everyone should be looking into saving those buildings that can be saved,” Rumpeltin said.
Phoenix has its hands in adaptive reuse too. Since 2008, the city’s official
Adaptive Reuse Program has helped more than 100 old buildings find a new purpose by offering up to $7,000 in incentives and guidance through the pre-development and permitting processes. Chris Kowalsky, the program manager, said popularity for adaptive reuse has only grown.
“There’s definitely a sense, at least I see, of optimism for people on the move forward and wanting to get projects off the ground,” he said.
Kowalsky sees no negatives to adaptive reuse: the existing infrastructure moves projects along quicker and at smaller costs, it’s more sustainable and it preserves history and culture. Part of downtown Phoenix is being able to walk a block from skyscrapers in the city center to see a mid-century building.
“There are alternatives to removing a building,” Kowalsky said.
Amid the demolition and developments, there is adaptive reuse happening. The nerdier (and more alcoholic) Downtown Devil staff members have all been excited for the barcade coming to the old Chamber of Commerce building south of FilmBar. The Kubrick buffs and bar hoppers alike in the newsroom have been buzzing about the opening of Milk Bar, just down the street from GreenHAUS.
Even parts of GreenHAUS will live on after its late March demolition. Songbird Coffee and Tea House’s soon-to-be new home is also the new home for the iron tree that once welcomed customers into GreenHAUS. While her original Three Birds mural will be lost in the demolition, Baron Properties has given Lauren Lee permission to create a new mural on the apartment complex that will take over the northwest corner of 3rd and Roosevelt streets. It’ll be the same three birds, five stories tall and illuminated from below; this time in flight.
Right now it may seem like a sorry time for building preservation in Phoenix. However, while the alternatives to the wrecking ball and bulldozer may not have been considered for GreenHAUS, they have been for others. Adaptive reuse has already been at work to preserve culture in a sustainable and affordable way downtown. This jargony little term is here to stay in the conversations around downtown Phoenix — hopefully, along with some buildings.
Contact the author at Ascovill@asu.edu
