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This in-person lecture is part of the Fall 2025 Sciame Lecture Series, "rePURPOSE."

 is Vice President of Development Design at McCormack Baron Salazar, a leading national housing development company founded in 1973, with a portfolio of 188 projects in 45 cities and more than 26,000 high quality homes for families, seniors, and veterans. With expertise in sustainable building and tax credit finance, she works with joint venture partners, business leaders, government officials, and local community groups, to identify economic impact strategies, determine feasibility of sources and uses, locate gap financing, and analyze investment opportunities focused on the development of mixed-income and mixed-use initiatives in urban communities across the country.

"Adaptive Reuse and the Restoration of the American Urban Core": McCormack Baron’s historic renovation and restoration projects center on people and opportunity with buildings as the medium. They demonstrate the National Trust’s “ReUrbanism” concept: the power of preservation and adaptive reuse to not only retain a city’s historic fabric, but also to “marshal the formidable powers of the preservation community in the battle against inequity.” Over the decades, McCormack Baron has preserved and adapted dozens of historic properties. The company’s very first development project in the 1970s was the renovation of a turn of the century building in St. Louis that was facing demolition after years of neglect. Washington Apartments was originally built as a 200-room hotel to meet demand for World’s Fair accommodations. Originally designed by prominent architectural firm Eames and Young and crafted in Bedford limestone, its understated classic facade and protruding bay windows overlook busy Kingshighway Boulevard in the Central West End neighborhood. Today, Washington Apartments is home to 99 low-income families and seniors who enjoy quality rental units in a St. Louis neighborhood. Over the past fifty years the company has repurposed dozens of historic structures in cities across the country. In 2022 the company completed the restoration of the Arcade in Dayton Ohio. Considered a marvel of architectural engineering when it opened in 1904, its adaptive reuse demonstrates that the city’s creative spirit persists, and it affirms another principle cited by the National Trust: “New ideas, and the New Economy, thrive in older buildings. All over America, the most innovative companies of the 21st-century are choosing to make their homes in older buildings. These buildings fuel creativity by being distinctive, character rich, endlessly adaptable, and often low-cost.” The success of the Arcade is already having an impact on key areas of Downtown. After the renovation began, more than $200 million in building renovation and construction was launched in downtown Dayton, including four other adaptive reuse projects. They range from an 18,000- square-foot 1910 newspaper office to a 230,000-square-foot Brutalist-style office tower; both had been vacant for years. The developer of the tower renovation called the Arcade a “catalytic investment” that sparked interest in Downtown. In their modern interpretation, the buildings are inclusive, welcoming spaces that promote opportunity for all Daytonians. For every rescued treasure in Dayton, in Ohio, and in neighboring Rust Belt states, there are dozens of historic gems waiting for someone with vision, talent, and resources to restore their potential and, in the process, energize their communities.

Suggested Reading: 

"rePURPOSE" centers on the practice of adaptive reuse in the built environment. Repurposing, the practice of adaptive reuse, embedded in historical patterns of city building, and for the most part discarded in the modern movement, is undergoing a remarkable renaissance. In the Fall 2025 rePURPOSE lecture series, architects, planners, developers, advocates, and engineers will present the technologies, designs, economic incentives, and policy changes that are needed to advance a substantively renewed and at-scale program of repurposing in New York and other global cities. The reuse of old structures is not a new idea. (After the fall of the Roman empire, for example, the Colosseum was repurposed for housing and workshops during the medieval period). Although reuse is understood as a convention that both requires and imposes minimal impact, rePURPOSE shines light on how the methodology might not be entirely benign, how it might in fact have impact, and the ways in which it challenges and would necessarily disrupt the very conventions with which we typically assume it is aligned. Of special, although not exclusive, interest is unpacking the relationship of repurposing to the climate crisis. Might historic preservation sit at the center of technical innovation? Are all older buildings valuable as climate mitigation assets? What rules, laws, and incentives are needed to sustain innovative approaches to meaningful reuse?

Do preservation rules and laws need to be amended to allow for modification to protected historic fabric?
Will financing tax credit incentive programs need to be created to enable ROI and economic impact?
Measuring the environmental impact of reuse and whether it promotes or offsets economic development in emerging economies.
Will new uses, such as data storage in old buildings, undermine the LCA embodied carbon savings achieved?
To what extent will conversions such as office to residential require new zoning frameworks and complete reform of regulatory, density, and FAR considerations?
Could conversions enable innovation in ventilation systems and even off-site transfer of geothermal energy systems energy and if maximized could represent significant impact?

All lectures are free, open to the public, and held in the Bernard and Anne Spitzer School of Architecture Sciame Auditorium. For live captioning, ASL interpretation, or access requests, please contact  ssadean@ccny.cuny.edu " rel="noopener" target="_blank"> ssadean@ccny.cuny.edu .

This lecture series is made possible by the Spitzer Architecture Fund and the generous support of Frank Sciame ’74, CEO of Sciame Construction.

(Photograph ©Paul Raphaelson)