By Dan Hounsell

What do you do with an aging building? Many managers of institutional and commercial facilities in all markets have faced this challenge when the time finally comes to make a decision on an aging and underused or vacant facility. 

Some organizations have been able to repurpose old buildings, even prisons. Ironically, the COVID-19 pandemic — which tested the ingenuity of facility managers pressed to upgrade facilities in the interest of occupant health and safety — gave managers temporary opportunities to turn their vacant facilities into field hospitals and vaccination centers. 

Managers in the nation’s K-12 school districts might have the most experience with this issue. For decades, many have struggled with a growing stock of aging, under maintained and vacant schools that served mostly to drain away valuable money and time devoted to maintaining them. 

For hospitals and other healthcare facilities, the issue of vacant or severely underused facilities presents a distinct set of considerations. Some healthcare systems have been able to repurpose aging buildings to meet a community need and benefit the bottom line, but because of many hospitals’ specialized architecture, options have been limited. 

One Philadelphia hospital recently presented an extra layer of complexity to the problem, given its architectural importance. The Samuel Radbill Building, Philadelphia Psychiatric Center — a three-story psychiatric hospital completed in 1953 and one of Louis I. Kahn’s seminal works of architecture — was demolished in December 2021. 

Despite its historical significance and any potential for repurposing, the hospital is a reminder that despite managers’ best efforts to maintain and preserve facilities, they operate in a society that loves to build shiny new buildings but too rarely provides the resources to maintain them effectively. 

A healthcare facility manager’s first and strongest instinct often is to stretch the budget and the staff to maintain an aging facility, but sometimes, the smartest move is realizing when the end has arrived. 

Dan Hounsell is senior editor for the facilities market. He has more than 25 years of experience covering engineering, maintenance, and grounds management issues in institutional and commercial facilities.