Albuquerque's 1914 Old Main high school building holds 70 lofts. (The Lofts at Albuquerque High)

At an intersection on old Route 66, the 1914 Albuquerque High School was the Southwestern city's first and, for a long time, only high school. Until 1974. Then, and for the next quarter-century, only dust and weeds gathered on the campus in east downtown as its monolithic Collegiate-Gothic buildings stood vacant, a decaying reminder of days gone by.

Today the old school serves as a widely admired lesson in the local urban infill movement because its renovation has triggered a loft-building fervor in Albuquerque. It‘s also an example of a national trend in the sometimes tricky marriage between infill and preservation.

From a preservation perspective, a historic building could lose its context after a renovation. From an urban infill standpoint, it often may seem easiest to tear the thing down and start from scratch. But according to Ed McMahon, senior resident fellow at the Urban Land Institute in Washington, D.C., and former National Trust advisor, "The most successful infill projects almost always involve a strong preservation component."

Denver's Roller Coaster

Some 400 miles due north of Albuquerque lies the 27-acre site of Denver's first amusement park, Elitch Gardens. It was also the city's first zoo and botanical gardens. Old photos from the late 19th century show bustling groups of men, women with parasols, and children as gleeful as black-and-white can render. Crowds gathered in front of rickety-looking roller coasters and the carousel; they strolled the lawns and looked at the animals; they took in a show at the Elitch Theater. Fast-forward a century and, in 1994, the place was abandoned when Elitch Gardens Amusement Park moved to a different location.

1925 carousel house, now a farmer's market (Perry-Rose)

Today, in place of the park, Highlands Garden Village is a mixed-use, mixed-income community, the result of sensitive infill development near downtown. The project adds 306 residential units, including affordable, senior and co-housing, along with retail and restaurant spaces, a school, a theater, and open space.

"Highlands Garden Village was designed and developed to create an alternative model to suburban sprawl," says Charles Perry of Perry-Rose, which developed the site. "What we've really done is to re-weave an abandoned site back into the fabric of the urban environment, and put it back into productivity. And in doing so, we've created a community where its members can easily walk somewhere to take care of their most basic necessities. And finally, with our climate rapidly changing, we wanted to show that we can cost-effectively build greener." 

Alongside new houses in this green, mixed-income community, Highland Gardens retains several original 1890s buildings. Although its roller coasters are gone, the 1890 theater and the renovated 1925 carousel house are still in use. Today the carousel house hosts a farmer's market on Sundays and concerts and plays in the evenings. The empty theater, once renovated, will also be used for some of the same purposes, as well as for educational lectures.

Lofty Ideas in Albuquerque

In 1999, owner of Paradigm & Company Rob Dickson won a city competition to develop the old Albuquerque High School campus. "Our team felt that residential was the best use for the property," Dickson says. "In looking at the individual classrooms and their high ceilings, going with an open loft floorplan became a given."

(Lofts at Albuquerque High)

Beginning in 2001, the project converted four historic buildings into residential and office uses and added several new buildings nearby with residential, retail, office and civic uses. The Old Main, classroom, and gym buildings are now residential lofts; the library became commercial office space; and the manual arts building, still to be renovated, will have two floors of residential lofts over ground-floor commercial space. Altogether, four new loft buildings and a parking garage have been added to the old campus.

The Gym Lofts, which were built inside the old auditorium and gym spaces, have their own foundation and structure. "They literally … float inside the old structure. From the outside, the historic building looks exactly the same," Dickson says.

Portland's Best Beer 'Hood

The West's oldest, continuously operating brewery had a good run of nearly 150 years, but in 1999, the Blitz-Weinhard brewery closed its doors, and the five-block complex in Portland's Pearl District was put up for sale. Local development company Gerding Edlen bought the site, hoping to redevelop the property as a mixed-use project in a relatively lifeless part of town.

Brewery Blocks (Gerding Edlen)

"We were a pretty young company, and we truly loved the urban environment," says Managing Principal Mark Edlen. "We loved mixed-use, and we loved historic preservation. But it was a challenge. Building a two-and-a-half block parking lot below ground beneath all these very old buildings was tricky. And the Henry Weinhard Brewhouse had a chimney, about 100 feet high, that served absolutely no practical purpose. We spent about $750,000 to restore it and keep it standing because it's so iconic."

By salvaging brewhouse elements—including the smokestack, weather vane, historic rails and a flue that now acts as a skylight for the fifth floor—the developers reduced their landfill waste and added character to the new neighborhood. The historic Portland Armory was delicately converted into the first performing arts center in the U.S. to achieve LEED (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design) Platinum status. All the while, it retained its place on the National Register of Historic Places.

Today, the Brewery Blocks house not only arts performances but office space, private residences, retailers such as Whole Foods, Peet's Coffee, and Anthropologie, and an invigorated—and invigorating—urban community.

"There were only about 200 people working in these five blocks back in 2000," Edlen says. "Now there are between 3,000 and 4,000 people living and working here. And what we've learned and really embraced along the way is that the juxtaposition of the historic and the new enriches both."

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