Perhaps missed in the blur of recent news, the city announced in early November it’s working with the Real Estate Board of New York to develop a program that would provide public funds to subsidize the demolition of older buildings in our city. The premise is older office buildings that are experiencing high vacancies need public monies to aid in ensuring their demolition and having these sites redeveloped. What this fails to address, however, is that older office buildings were actually often built for other purposes, such as factories or lofts, and can be (and often are) repurposed to other uses, from housing to hotels, classrooms to cultural space, and many other possibilities.

It’s incredibly wasteful and environmentally unsound to promote demolition before adaptive reuse, to say nothing of encouraging the destruction of our city’s historic fabric. Older, less profitable buildings will no doubt be replaced  when economically advantageous uses can’t be found for them. But there’s no reason to put a thumb on the scale, subsidizing and incentivizing their destruction, rather than encouraging a more environmentally (and preservation-) friendly approach of pursuing reuse, with alterations and additions where needed.

As many such older buildings currently being used as offices are found in our neighborhoods, this is both an issue of principle and one with very real implications for our communities. Village Preservation has written to the Mayor and NYC Economic Development Corporation President urging them to reconsider any such program or subsidy — READ OUR LETTER HERE.

TO HELP: