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“The greenest building is one that is already built.”
This phrase coined by noted architect Carl Elefante makes the connection between historic preservation and green building practices, underscoring the importance of existing buildings, adaptive reuse, and sustainable stewardship. The meaning behind these words has been top of mind lately with the recent trips to Sweden and the Netherlands made by City of Annapolis leaders, to learn best practices about environmental sustainability, resilient infrastructure, and green building techniques.
There is a direct link between historic preservation and sustainable stewardship, especially as it relates to adaptive reuse of existing buildings. Historic Annapolis is encouraged by the city administration’s commitment to environmentalism, and we encourage them to look more closely at the proposed City Dock redevelopment to identify how we can put some of the lessons learned overseas into practice.
The current plan for City Dock includes the removal of the existing 50-year-old harbormaster building, replacing it with a new larger building on the waterfront. While some may question the harbormaster building’s architectural merit, the reuse of an old building is an inherently sustainable practice. Adaptive reuse capitalizes on embodied energy in a structure and reduces carbon footprints and building materials in landfills. This structure can be adaptively reused, repurposed, and/or recycled to provide spaces to house some of the uses the City has attributed to the new building, thus reducing the size of over scaled, new construction on the water’s edge. What is proposed is simply two times too big, expensive, and a less sustainable option than adaptive reuse. And, we still don’t know the true operational and maintenance cost of this new building. Investigating adaptive reuse of underutilized properties in the immediate vicinity is without question a greener and more environmental solution.
We hosted a listening session this summer and many community members asked about reuse and repurposing of adjacent structures. There is precedent for this, as the City has a long-term lease arrangement currently for the Planning and Public Works offices on Gorman Street. We have yet to receive answers from city leaders as to why adaptive reuse is not being considered.
Reevaluation of this element of the plan will not slow down the more pressing and imminent resiliency needs, which we wholeheartedly support. Maryland’s capital city, a National Historic Landmark and one of the best historic small towns in America, deserves the best possible sustainable solution.
We will continue to keep you posted on advancements at City Dock. Community planning is greatly enhanced with public input, and after all, this is the greatest infrastructure project in the city’s history. We welcome you to share your thoughts, concerns, and comments with us about the project at any time by contacting Rachel Robinson, our Vice President of Preservation, at rachel.robinson@annapolis.org.
