Buying Time for Heritage: How to Save an Endangered Historic Property

As part of efforts to save endangered properties and encourage downtown and neighborhood revitalization, many of the nation's most successful historic preservation and downtown development organizations have become actively involved in real estate. Buying Time for Heritage explains how one nonprofit organization, Preservation North Carolina (PNC), has creatively employed common real estate strategies to save more than 500 endangered historic properties from destruction. As Myrick Howard explains, large sums of money are not always needed, but knowledge and passion are required.

Howard provides practical tips on how a neighborhood, downtown, or preservation group can get involved in beneficial real estate work with only modest resources. Inspiring photographs illustrate his premise that a property is rarely "too far gone" to be renovated, and the rewards of renovation are abundant. Buyers of PNC properties have put them to a multitude of new uses, adding millions of dollars to local tax rolls and creating numerous jobs. Several properties have been adapted into affordable housing, and thousands of acres of open space have been placed under protective covenants, perpetually restricting their development. Rather than face off against developers, PNC itself has become a developer--for community benefit. This volume offers a model for other organizations working to make historic communities thrive.