Worth Saving

To most people, the imposing brick complex on Fern Street in Bangor looks like a good candidate for the wrecking ball. It once housed a steam laundry facility that was so grim it inspired one time employee Stephen King to write a short story of a malicious laundry press. The brick building has been vacant since 1999, and it hasn’t improved with age.

“It is a creepy place right now,” admits Bob Kelly, owner of House Revivers in Bangor.

Kelly sees the 98-year-old building both as an historic landmark worth preserving and as a business opportunity. He plans to convert the structure into 14 cozy condominiums in the next year using green building innovations like geothermal heating/cooling pumps, a “living” roof, and space for a community garden.

It would be easy to scoff at his plans as just another renovator’s pipe dream, except that Kelly has done it before. Over the past 25 years, Kelly and his wife, Suzanne, have breathed new life into 15 buildings in downtown Bangor, including major landmarks like the Bangor Opera House.

Saving old buildings is somewhat of a compulsion for Kelly. Usually, at the end of one historic renovation project, he’s ready to swear off any more. But something always calls him back.

“I like the challenge of it, I guess,” Kelly says. “Every problem is different than the last one.”

Sometimes it’s not easy to see the building’s potential amidst the rubble. In one project, the entire upstairs was buried under a foot and a half of pigeon excrement. In another, Kelly had to evict raccoons. One downtown barn was in such poor shape that Kelly and his crew had to tie beams to trees to buy time to save the structure. Even with buildings that are not in danger of collapse, finding the right moldings and flooring to match historic building contours and styles can be challenging. Kelly keeps a storage area stocked full with used flooring to match most any project.

Though the Kellys are two of the most well-known preservationists, they aren’t the only professionals in Maine or Bangor with an eye and mind for restoring historic buildings. Organizations like Maine Preservation honors daring souls every year who snatch both buildings and land back from the forces of entropy.

Last year a group of partners, including Shaw House Development, City of Bangor, Bangor Savings Bank, Maine State Housing Authority, WBRC, and Nickerson & O’Day, received Maine Preservation’s 2008 award for Excellence in Residential Rehabilitation and Adaptive Use of the Bangor Waterworks. The 1875 building, which once housed Bangor’s water filtration system, was empty for 40 years. Today it’s the home of 35 at-risk teens.

In deciding on what projects deserve awards, Maine Preservation looks closely at whether the project matches the Secretary of the Interior’s set of standards for historic preservation. These standards make sure that minimal changes to defining characteristics, character, and distinctive features are preserved. “These standards are also related to goals of green building, urging repair rather than replacement,” says Greg Paxton, Maine Preservation’s executive director.

While many historic buildings were built without modern energy conservation tools like insulation, historic building advocates argue that it’s more energy-efficient to save and retrofit rather than to tear them down. Many believe that older buildings have billions of BTUs of “embodied” energy in materials and construction that would be wasted if the buildings fell to the wrecking ball.

“The greenest building is an existing building,” says WBRC architect Malcolm Leigh Collins. “Older buildings also have a much higher level of craftsmanship. You can’t recreate a historic building cost effectively,” he says and adds that a lot of the wood used back then can’t be found today. Buildings that were built 100 years ago were built to last with sturdy materials, unlike buildings erected in the 1960s and ’70s. “The biggest waste of people’s money is replacing historic windows,” Paxton says. “Repairing, adding new weather stripping, and adding storm windows will cost you less and the old windows will last longer.”

Not only does rehabilitating historic buildings make environmental sense, federal and state tax credits and incentive programs make it affordable. Last year Governor Baldacci signed a bill that changed the state Rehabilitation Tax Credit for certified historic structures. These changes included a 25% state tax credit for any rehabilitation that qualifies for the 20% federal credit, a Small Project Rehabilitation Credit, and an Affordable Housing Rehabilitation Credit increase.

Tearing down historic buildings isn’t cheap. It would have cost the city of Bangor $1 million to demolish the Waterworks building. But instead of relegating the rubble to a landfill, the project saved money and energy by using what was there rather than purchasing new materials.

“Any preservation project is a story of sustainability,” says Collins.