In my last column, I wrote about the problem with the Quito Hotel. Its owners insist on developing a real estate project with high-rise towers, and the architects’ guild, the academy and community representatives insist – rightly – on the preservation of the property because of its historical value in our recent history.

the last bastion

Hotel Quito is a perfect example of the lack of existing tools to encourage the preservation of buildings listed by the National Institute of Cultural Heritage. And it is precisely this lack that makes the testimonies built from our past more of a burden than an opportunity. Because of this, in our country there are many houses and other buildings that are doomed to failure, since their owners do not have the means to maintain them, and current laws do not allow adaptations, transactions that could serve as income that would improve the living conditions of the listed properties.

There is an agent that has been proven effective in other countries and whose use here is in diapers. I mean the difficult concession of rights, or as it is known in English, “Transfer of Development Rights”.

It was thanks to this resource that it was possible to preserve Grand Central Station in New York, which was to be replaced by the Marcel Breuer building. A difficult assignment of rights consists in allowing the owner of the heritage property to sell to others the right to build on that surplus building area, specified in his factory line, which he cannot use to maintain his property in its original state. Put simply, if I own a heritage-listed two-storey house on land where I could build up to 10 storeys, I should be able to sell the right to build those 8 storeys that I can’t use to preserve the property.

There is an agent that has been proven effective in other countries and whose use here is in diapers.

In Ecuador, Lotugs is the one who defines the heavy right concessions, but as I mentioned before, I think he makes a mistake: by defining the municipality as the “building right holder”, he defines it as the only buyer and seller of the building right. In the North American model, they can sell these rights to third parties without any intervention from the municipality. In this sense, the Lotugs turn municipalities into monopoly traders.

The Quito Hotel will be internally remodeled to compete with Airbnb-type services under the new business scheme

Is there a way to fix this? Two alternatives come to mind. The first would be to reform the civil law so that the sale of building rights has a legal basis equal to any commercial transaction. The second – perhaps the most feasible – is to review the regulation on onerous assignment of rights, which turns the Municipality into an intermediary between interested parties for sale and purchase. In this way, the Municipality could control that the said transaction does not violate its own regulations and charge a commission for each concession granted.

It seems to me a scenario in which everyone would win: buyers, sellers, municipalities and goods that deserve to be preserved. (OR)