Spotlight: Sustainable Models for ReWeave Projects

Like trees, money doesn’t grow on 16th century Tudor facades.

An obvious fact that highlights the joint challenge faced by those investing in environment and heritage assets – how do you receive a financial return to at least break even?

The challenge is further compounded by the oft money devouring nature of these assets, both initial capital improvements under the shadow of ‘conservation deficit’ and then ongoing maintenance, operation and regulatory compliance costs. They all mount up, even more so when you add public access and societal benefit to the mix.

There are increasing opportunities in the environment sector for securing income via ecosystem services. These usually require a minimum scale to generate sufficient income and there can be a tension between land for eco services versus land for human access.

Some nature organisations are also leaning into commercial entrepreneurship including the Green Estate in Sheffield with their groundbreaking pictorial meadows and the diverse income stream model of the Wendling Beck | Nature Recovery Project, Norfolk.

On the heritage side, the typical income solution has been the visitor model. Organisations such as the National Trust, English Heritage and Historic Palaces have successful and sustainable models, breaking even and generating a surplus to invest in further charitable endeavours.

The heritage sector is a lot tougher for small organisations without the benefit of a large portfolio of accessible assets, broad brand profile or a large supporter base. Single asset organisations face massive challenges of making the scales of benefit and cost balance, often on a weekly basis.

Recently, a great model has been offered up by the Architectural Heritage Fund (AHF) in the form of their Heritage Development Trust (HDT) programme.

A HDT is defined as a charity or social enterprise that acquires and repurposes vacant or ‘at risk’ historic buildings, turning them into assets for the benefit of local communities. Sweating the assets to make them used and useful alongside protecting the historic fabric.

Critical to the approach is seeking to commercially manage a portfolio of assets with different functions and the ability to cross-subsidise and phase delivery. Although increased scale raises risks, there is benefit is achieving a critical mass of diverse assets that creates resilience in terms of offer, income stream and audience. It’s great to see several HDTs pop up all over the UK.

Another useful mechanism recently proposed by the National Trust is a Safe Harbour Scheme. The scheme aims to provide an organisation with an interest in taking on a new heritage ReWeave project some initial breathing room to figure out a viable future use. This would comprise a three year period of support, funding, critical capital works and advice to test and explore different options free from distractions of existential fire fighting.

In the US, several ReWeave projects have successfully commercialised elements within their core operating models to support sustainability, including the NY Highline and Delquindre Cut that can be found on the Inspiration map.

In summary there are three key take aways:

1. Diversification and scaling of asset portfolios increases risk but also increases opportunity

2. Entrepreneurship and diversifying income streams provides resilience to compliment grants and donations

3. Early phase support is critical to giving ReWeave projects a real chance of success ‍