[MassHistPres] Historic buildings and code

[slater at alum.rpi.edu]

St. Jude's (aka St. Aloysius) church in Springfield was built in 1874.
It was hit by a microburst in 2011 and was closed due to damage to the
roof. Engineers hired by the church found that some structural beams
were cracked and some of the masonry was also damaged. 

The church did not spec out the cost to repair just the damage - the
engineering firm advised them that they would have to bring the entire
building into compliance with building and handicapped accessibility
code. The cost would have been $3.1 million to do this. They said that
this was due to the fact that the entire roof structure would need to be
removed, making the work area ?%" (a 50% work area triggers the full
upgrade, and work that costs more than 30% of the assessed value
triggers the ADA code upgrade, which would have included elevators).

The engineering firm appeared before the Springfield historical
commission to justify a waiver of our Demolition Delay Ordinance. Here
is what disturbed me: the engineer stated that even if they could have
gotten a waiver or "looked the other way" and structured the project to
not trigger a full upgrade, he said that he would not do this. He
brought up an example of a school in upstate NY that did this and was
subsequently damaged in a microburst, he claimed 15 children died
(though I can find no record of this). 

The engineer also stated that he advises all his clients to stay away
from older buildings, especially masonry, because they are so expensive
to bring up to code and he does not consider them safe until they are
updated. He basically painted all older buildings as inadequate because
they did not use modern materials or techniques.

A member of the public, speaking out, called his bluff a bit, saying
that if what the engineer said was true, nearly every single church in
the city should be immediately closed because they are dangerous.
However the impact of the argument was effective - the SHC voted 3-1 to
immediately lift the demo delay; the church will be demolished. They
will rebuild a smaller church for the $1.1 million in insurance that
they received, a building that will likely be hard-pressed to last more
than 50 years (since that it the threshold they build to these days).

My question is, how do we counter something like this? This is not the
first time we have "had to" demolish an older building because the cost
to bring it up to code exceeded its value (remember, Springfield has far
lower property values than Eastern MA - for example, there is a 12-unit
brick apartment building on the market right now for $425k). There is a
pervasive and growing attitude that "older" means "obsolete" and should
be cleared out whenever possible, even when nothing new is built in its
place.

Ralph Slate
Springfield Historical Commission

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