Value
We need to retain it
A few years ago, my wife and I sold our last house. Before we put it on the market, we followed our middle daughter’s advice (she’s a realtor) and made some improvements. Not a lot, but we did some painting, some professional carpet cleaning, and some staging. It wasn’t a huge bit of work, just some things to make the place look its best for potential buyers.
I’m quite certain that we have all done something similar. We undoubtedly try to clean the fallen french fries out from between our car seats before we try to sell our old car.
I was reminded of all this because our old house is going back on the market now, and my daughter will be selling it once again. She’s told us all the things that the current owners are doing to ensure that they receive maximum value for it once it is listed.
Recently I was wandering through a really cute small downtown and ran across its Masonic Temple. It didn’t take much to find, it was a large building, standing right there on the busiest street corner of the downtown.
Like a lot of our Temples, it was architecturally interesting. Obviously the men who built it spent a lot of time and treasure creating something that would stand as a testament to the greatness of our Ancient Craft.
But, that’s where the goodness ended.
It was in horrific condition. Instead of elevating the otherwise really pretty downtown it stood so prominently in, it brought everything down. There was that huge Masonic sign, itself battered and worn, standing as a bright signal that Freemasonry is perceived by its own members as being without value.
And that is not the only Masonic Temple I have seen in such condition, a beautiful old building allowed to rot, bringing down the area surrounding it.
In a lot of ways, we are saddled by the buildings our Brothers put up during the great Masonic building boom. They built Temples far too large for our needs, very rarely considered provisions for income from those properties, and didn’t create endowments for their perpetual care and maintenance.
Not to mention, they never seemed to ask themselves if our Lodges really needed to own significant real estate in the first place.
So a great many of our Lodges own these large expensive buildings that they mightily struggle to keep afloat.
But, here’s the thing…
We absolutely know, well in advance, when we can no longer afford to maintain our buildings. The signs are there. Income is outpaced by expense. Fundraisers need to be held just to keep the regular costs paid. Our Lodge is always poor, because our building hogs our resources. Necessary maintenance is deferred forever.
We know long in advance if we won’t be able to keep it going.
But, we never seem to admit that to ourselves. We struggle, month after month, to somehow keep the bills paid, to keep it going. Knowing perhaps that it will have to be sold eventually, but always hopeful that the fateful day comes after we are dead, lest we be seen as having failed.
That’s just it though. The failure isn’t the placement of a For Sale sign on our building, the failure is continuing to bury our heads in the sand, allowing our building to slowly rot around us.
And there it was. That dilapidated Masonic Temple I saw recently had a Real Estate For Sale sign on it.
The Brothers have apparently decided that it is time to move out.
But that sign needed to have gone up twenty or thirty years ago. Not now, when virtually all of the building’s value has been lost due to a lack of necessary maintenance.
When we, as individuals, sell our homes we take steps to ensure that we will receive the maximum value for our real estate investment. So why do we, when acting collectively as a Lodge not do the same? Why do we allow our buildings to be completely degraded by time and wear before we decide to take decisive action? Why don’t we, just as we do in our personal lives, strive to retain maximum investment value?
If we know now, that our Lodge can not afford its building over the long haul, we need to convince our Brothers to sell it now. While it retains its value. We can’t wait until it is falling down around our ears to eventually sell it on the cheap.
MW, I’m going to differ with you slightly on a few things when it comes to temples. Temples
Can be kept but there has to be an iron will to see things through and there HAS to be buy-in from the members. Our SR temple in Little Rock was built when we had approximately 1800 members. It was the home of the only SR bodies in the state and by 1929 we had almost 3,000, and that necessitated building the Fort Smith temple. In the 1920s Freemasonry had a higher percentage of the population that was masons but lower numbers than we had post-WWII. Sometime during that membership swell we cheapened it and made impossible to run these buildings. I think I’ve said this before, by great-grandfather paid the modern day equivalent to $2,000 to be a Scottish Rite Mason in 1943. That’s 14yrs after the official end of the ”Golden Age of Fraternalism” but fees/dues were still significant even during the war. I heard the other day one of the York Rite guys say that in Arkansas to be a Templar used to cost $261 a year in the 1920s. That’s $4,745.37 nowadays, you’re going to take an organization that costs that much VERY seriously. The members saw VALUE in what we did and we were, and they paid dearly for it.
We have a pretty good success story in AR, but it required planning, work, and a degree of iconoclasm.
Today we are down to somewhere less than 2,500 SR members and the original temple, but seeing the VALUE of the edifice for all Freemasonry in AR our SGIG instituted something we call the “Orient Concept” which did away with superfluous secretary pay in the smaller valleys centralizing all admin/clerical work under the Orient out of Little Rock. He made it known that the temple was no longer solely the property of “The Valley of Little Rock” and henceforth would pay rent. The SGIG then changed dues structure to include an annual “Orient Assessment” for the running of the temple/admin and so on. Then the BIG one…he hired a 25y/o “black cap” to run the office and get the rental business started.
Branding, public and private facing websites, catering to wedding and special events, tactical advertising was all under the young mason’s purview. There were brethren who grumbled about his age, and about the decision to “open up to the public” but they were told in no uncertain terms that that was the only way to keep the building and retain membership. This came from the same SGIG who showed up to Grand Lodge, in the temple, with a “for sale” sign to let everyone know how dire the situation was. But it all worked, young men, vibrant energy, and new ideas all worked.
Additionally, with less members and office space needed the Orient determined that some old office space no longer needed by the Grand Lodge could be rented to non-fraternal entities which led to a few brothers renting offices for their respective businesses helping diversify income sources even further. From starting a magazine to using rentals as a way to help raise the question “how do I become a Mason?” all the way to allowing brothers to be compensated for working these events more men have become engaged and invested in the SR and our temple.
I rant and ramble to tell brethren that just as there’s hope mentioned in the MM there’s hope for temples…but you can’t do what you’ve always done.
ARScottishRite.com
APdowntown.com
This subject is tied to the migration of families after WW2 from the city to the suburbs, and the birth of the truly american invention called the shopping mall.
After WW2, the country was still recovering from the depression, and the sudden return of millions of american soldiers who needed jobs. Historians don't really talk about this part much, it wasn't until Truman slashed income tax rates that the economy began to recover. The GI Bill also helped veterans get degrees and thus, gainful employment with better pay. The explosion of automobile ownership also contributed to the problem.
As families moved away from the city, businesses in the downtown core began to suffer, and one by one, businesses left for the new shopping malls that began to replace downtown.
Lodges in the golden age of masonry had built lodges in those downtown cores, but slowly over time, the decay of the inner city brought empty buildings, crime, drugs, and vagrants. Once businesses stopped paying taxes in the city, the infrastructure began to suffer as well.
Today, a lot of those large edifices to the craft sit in areas that are mostly, to put it frankly, shitholes. Property values are almost non existent, even if the building is well maintained. The city is forced to raise taxes to offset the losses of businesses and increased costs from crime and vagrancy. Thus, selling those builds is nearly impossible as even the land the building sits on isn't worth anything.
That's why it is in the best interest of these lodges to file for exemption of property taxes as a 501c10. It's a ton of work, but once done, can save the temple boards thousands of dollars a year. Money that can be best spent on badly needed repairs.