Briony Penn is co-founder and the current vice-chair of The Land Conservancy of BC. Her article below, Who will pay for heritage?, was published in Focus magazine’s January 2014 edition.
The Land Conservancy of BC went to court in December, as part of a restructuring process, to clarify its legal position on whether the sale of a designated heritage house—Binning House in West Vancouver to a private philanthropist who can afford to look after it—is more in keeping with the donor’s wishes and the public interest than a charity keeping it without resources to maintain it. (Regardless of who owns it, Binning is as protected as it can be under the limited tools available in BC from significant change under West Van’s heritage by-laws and a National Historic Site Designation.)
Justice Shelley Fitzpatrick will be deciding whether the sale is a reasonable option, weighing the public interest with the rights of creditors. Her decision will guide the future of TLC’s heritage properties, including Victoria’s Ross Bay Villa and Abkhazi Gardens.
As a board member of TLC, having spent the last two years raking the global commons for successful case studies of heritage property conservation, and now watching the drama unfold in the courtroom, I believe a judicial decision is needed. Why? Because the bigger question of “Who should pay for heritage conservation?” needs society to weigh in.
Interestingly, Britain is embarking on a risky experiment with similarities to the TLC situation. The British government recently announced that Stonehenge, Dover Castle, Charles Darwin’s home and 420 other places that adorn postcards will no longer be managed by a government-funded agency. Rather, with a pat on the head and an $80-million endowment, the government has given that unenviable task to a newly created charity which “will have more freedom to generate commercial and philanthropic income and eventually become self-financing.”
TLC can attest to a number of problems with this idea, and the main one is: The math doesn’t work.
Consider the British example. The interest on $80 million at three percent generates $2.4 million dollars a year. That amounts to about $5700 for annual maintenance for each of those 420 properties. Thankfully, TLC has never owned a castle, but six thousand dollars will not even maintain Darwin’s lawn where his earthworms roamed, let alone the rest of his house, the leaking roof, the ant control services, the heating bill, the heritage consultants’ fees or the attendant selling the tickets. Even with a hoard of volunteers clipping the hedges and shining the brass, there is a need at least for a full-time person to manage the volunteers and send out the Thank You notes.
No, the new charity will have to raise money—lots of it. In today’s bleak philanthropic landscape, that is more than a challenge. Try raising money for a leaking roof or an endowment for an old house when issues like poverty, climate change, endangered species, and affordable housing have been off-loaded into the non-profit sector. Relying on “heritage philanthropy” is a risky business.
It is also noteworthy that this new English charity will be in competition with an existing charity, the National Trust of England and Wales, which emerged, as did TLC, when government agencies capped the number of sites they would protect—while heritage just kept on coming. The UK National Trust model relies on huge membership lists coupled with tourism to fund new sites. But they are already stretching the extent of “heritage philanthropy.” From Britain with its Stonehenges to BC with its more modest, contemporary Ross Bay Villas, enough people have to care to give at a scale necessary for their long term maintenance—the donor, the taxpayer or the owner, or some combination of the three.
The recent UK decision’s significance is underlined by the fact it occurred in a country where heritage sites underpin a $17.2 billion tourism industry and that has 63 million people to drawn on for support. Canadian cultural heritage, not at the top of our destination hotspots, has no chance of reviving support in this current political and economic climate.
Both our federal and provincial governments got out of the heritage business decades ago. Heritage Canada The National Trust (its new name) deliberately chose not to take on ownership of large numbers of traditional house museums. Instead it has successfully acquired, rehabilitated and sold properties, protecting them with heritage covenants. Heritage covenants are agreements that a charity or any other owner can enter into to lay out a defined level of protection. They provide flexibility for both owner and covenant holder to agree on the terms, including
the option of public access. These covenants flow with land title.
In BC, although enabling legislation has been available for local government to hold heritage covenants, with about 147 in the province, there isn’t a provision at the moment for a charity to hold them—nor tax incentives. (Conservation covenants exist for ecological protection across Canada with tax incentives and TLC has been using this tool for years.)
Natalie Bull, executive director of Heritage Canada The National Trust illustrates the value of a covenant-and-sell approach with two recent examples: their heritage headquarters in Ottawa, and a historic house in Annapolis Royal. She says, “Selling the properties was the very best solution all around: The buildings are now protected in perpetuity
with covenants, they are in the hands of owners who can afford to invest in them, and one of the covenants even requires the building to be open to the public on a limited basis.”
New Zealand adopted this type of model after trying to emulate the UK National Trust but failing because it did not have the membership base. It transformed its two national trusts (natural and cultural) into primarily covenant-monitoring organizations like Heritage Canada; the interest on government endowments at least covered the costs of
the annual monitoring of the covenants.
Janice Henry, president of Heritage BC, points to one of the rare BC success stories of heritage philanthropy with the Mackie House in Vernon where a million-dollar endowment was left by the donor to cover maintenance of the buildings and grounds. Revenues are supplemented by bookings for private functions, but it is also open to the public at certain times, meeting the donor’s wishes for public accessibility.
But most roads in the heritage world today lead to privatized “repurposing.” The Hudson’s Bay and Craigdarroch Castle are prime local examples. The City of Victoria has been doing it for years. As Bull argues, “Heritage advocates definitely need to think outside the box and accept that in all but the most extraordinary cases, the tradtional house museum is not the ‘go-to’ solution for preserving historic places. Covenants, adaptive use, new ownership models and commercial partnerships are essential tools in our evolving tool box.” Of course, this is where the question of government versus private responsibility raises its interesting head. Can you—or should you—sell Stonehenge?
Should Darwin’s house be privatized? What about Abkhazi and Ross Bay Villa? Are the privatized Butchart’s Gardens and Royal Roads unreasonable options?
Sixteen years ago, a naïve TLC adopted the UK National Trust model of bringing in membership and tourism dollars to keep the doors open. Cultural heritage was always a secondary focus for TLC (ecological properties being its main concern), but one that increased as government dropped the ball.
It was a risky experiment from the start. But it was a well-meaning one. Every one of the heritage properties that TLC saved or accepted had a compelling story that made it worthy of preservation. When people left properties to us with no endowments, or they came to us asking us to save them, it was difficult to refuse, and we believed the money and members to look after them would follow. They didn’t. Part of the problem was that none of them were Stonehenge or Darwin’s House. Even if they had been, it’s doubtful the money needed to maintain them, while pursuing noble aims like public access, would ever have materialized. Even in England, it’s uncertain whether its heritage sites can survive without big entrance fees, advertising plastered over ancient stones, or being privatized.
TLC is now where New Zealand found itself years ago: in debt and needing to find good homes for its heritage properties as it has proved impossible to finance their maintenance through memberships and tourism. TLC has to eliminate its debt and build an endowment to ensure the 250 covenants that it currently holds will be monitored and defended. If it survives, TLC will return to its primary mandate of conserving natural areas and monitoring its existing conservation covenants. Land donations will have to come with endowments or they will be refused. Conservation covenants will continue to be placed on properties, which can then be transferred or sold to appropriate agencies, just as TLC has done with hundreds of properties like the Sooke Hills.
This is the plan put before the judge last month and which was granted under a restructuring process. What’s left out of the plan is something TLC cannot do—own and maintain heritage sites, whether it is Abkhazi Gardens, Ross Bay Villa or Binning House. That will be the challenge for others.
There are three necessary but missing elements needed in BC to improve heritage conservation right now: sizeable endowments, an expansion of legal tools, and/or government fiscal support. All those interested in heritage should be watching the judge’s decision. Like Britain and New Zealand, society will need to decide where the line between public and private responsibility is drawn.
Briony Penn is a co-founder and a current vice-chair of The Land Conservancy of BC. She has been reporting on the environment since 1975. She lives on Salt Spring Island.
