“You could go down the street to a newly-built apartment building, and it looks the same as the one that’s built in the Northeast, that’s built in the Southeast, that’s built out in Texas. It’s the same building, right?” Fleming said. “But you come into these old buildings often built to very specific regional requirements, and you convert them to a different use, and you have something very much of a place. You create this uniqueness to it. It’s not replicated in any other residential unit, in any other place. It’s the kind of thing that could have only happened there in that spot.” In Savannah, the 110-year-old former Romana Riley Elementary School was incorporated into Romana Riley Lofts, a 57-unit development reserved for residents 55 and over on limited incomes. “That building sat dormant for decades, and was very much an eyesore and sort of a dead space,” McKinnon said. “It’s been made useful and vibrant, and has allowed folks to move from homes that they can no longer physically or financially maintain into this beautiful building that’s still in in the center of their neighborhood.”
YOU CREATE THIS UNIQUENESS TO IT. IT’S NOT REPLICATED IN ANY OTHER RESIDENTIAL UNIT, IN ANY OTHER PLACE. IT’S THE KIND OF THING THAT COULD HAVE ONLY HAPPENED THERE IN THAT SPOT.
In Texas, a company called ICON is 3-D printing homes out of concrete—though Georgia’s humid climate might make that tough to pull off here, Fleming said. And then there are the tiny homes at The Cove at Dundee, which exemplify the barriers that can be faced by innovative housing solutions, and the degree of collaboration often required to overcome them. Perhaps more so than the building themselves, it’s the teamwork—between developers, municipalities, engineers, architects, nonprofits and more—that’s most important to the success of adaptive reuse projects and other innovative housing ventures. “The details matter, right? And then the concept, it blossoms,” said Lamar Mercer, principal and civil department manager at Thomas & Hutton. “Having to work through putting all the pieces of the puzzle together, that’s really when it comes to be. Everybody has an idea, and it seems so simple on paper. But it takes all the players coming together as one, as a united team, to make such a worthwhile project happen.” A
34 Engineering Georgia
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