Seeing Ray's MTB, the abandoned factory building that a guy named Ray turned into a thriving indoor mountain bike and BMX park, was one of the things that got me thinking about new uses for old buildings, many years ago. Still one of my favorite videos form Ray's MTB, Taj Mihelich and Jeff Lenowshi's "Odd Couple" video.
In the architectural and commercial real estate world, it's a concept known as "Adaptive Reuse." That's when a group of people take some old, abandoned, or unused building, or location, and renovate it and put it back in service with some new use. I've started a new blog about this general idea. My interest in this basic idea actually has its roots in the 1980's, when I got the idea to someday build a house with a bunch of ramps and have a guest house, so riders and skaters from around the world could hang out when in town. Obviously, if you know me, that never happened. But the idea hung around.
While I was stuck in North Carolina for ten years, I had a lot of time on my hands, since I couldn't find a job there, except for taxi driving for a year. Like much of the Eastern part of the U.S., and other heavily industrial areas, there were a lot of empty factories, warehouses, and other buildings that were abandoned. I used to sit there, on a bus bench, or in my taxi, and think of how I could start a really cool bike and skate park using those old buildings. It was a constant daydream back there. So the basic idea of adaptive reuse turned into a casual interest.
Now, with what appears to be a serious recession looming, it looks like there will soon. be a lot more empty or unused buildings, even here in expensive, crowded, Southern California. So I started a blog a couple of weeks ago to dive into the adaptive reuse idea, and begin to learn more about it. That was the initial idea, I was just going to "collect" videos and articles on a blog, and not really promote it, for a while, then decide where to go from there. Right after I built the blog, the whole Silicon Valley Bank collapse and bank crisis started.
Being the futurist/economics geek that I am, I decided that the Adaptive Reuse SoCal blog would be a good place to chronicle some of the major points in that story, as it unfolded. Very much to my surprise, some people started checking out the blog, which I linked ot on Twitter. Yes, after two days, this new blog got banned from linking on Facebook and Instagram, like all my other blogs, except one. Anyhow, now the blog gets a few views, and I have several posts on it about the banking crisis, linked to stories, as it unfolded. Now I'm getting back to the initial idea, and beginning to put some posts on it about adaptive reuse of buildings. I don't just want to chronicle the big, major projects, but dig into smaller projects as well, things "normal" people might actually be able to do, like turn an old storefront into a cool restaurant, brewery, art studio or gallery, or, of course, turn an old warehouse into a skate and bike park.
While my life has kind of kept me away from bike riding for a long time, it's still something I really want to get back to, when I can. It was a Props Road Fools video that first introduced me to Ray's MTB, and the "Odd Couple" video above, with Taj Mihelich and Jeff Lenowski, from about 2009, is one of my favorite videos of Ray's. Ray's proved that a moutain bike park can be a viable business in a really large building, with the right people building and running it. My dream for years was to find an old factory, and build a BMX, skate, and MTB park, with a climbing gym, and art studios as well. The basic idea was to get a whole bunch of cool, creative, weird people in a big building, and see what came of if it.
This is an obscure thing, I know. But it's a big theme in commercial real estate, for maybe 20 years now, as we've seen factories, dead malls, retail stores, and now lots of offices, empty out of their original type of tenants. Many new uses have been tried on some of these buildings, and lots of abandoned buildings.
Back in 2010, my mom and I visited the last factory my dad worked at in Ohio when I was a kid, Plymouth Locomotive Works, where they made custom locomotives, like this one, and a couple other things. The factory, like so many others, was sitting empty, with the parking lot overgrown and unused. We moved away in 198o, and the plant closed in 1983. That's one of the old buildings I actually remember actually go to, and in when it was thriving, as a kid.
Anyhow, that's the basic idea of the new blog, if any of that seems interesting to you, check out the post telling more about how I got interested in the idea, below, or the latest post at the link above. I'm also going to put most of my financial and futurist ideas on this blog, as well, from now on. So that's one thing I've been up to lately, of many.
As I was going to log into this new blog again, before coming back to proofread this blog post, my alternate Google accounts, on which I have several of my blogs I've tried over the years, just disappeared. Censorship taken to another level? Or just some tech issue? I don't know yet. But this blog is still here, at the link. I just can't add to it right now.
Blogger's Note- 3/27/2023- Those three Google accounts are gone, and this blog idea got taken out at the knees. Apparently my timing happened to be a little too good, the investment world turned its attention to commerical real estate as the banking crisis took hold, days less than two weeks after I started blogging on the subject. Commercial real estate is not looking good, right now. In addition, it seems a new group of business people have discovered my blogs, and aren't too happy with them. In any case, my Adaptive Reuse blog is toast before it got going. I'll keep writing on this blog.
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