BUILT HERITAGE PROTECTION AND THE CITIZEN PARTICIPATION INSTRUMENTS – A CASE STUDY OF THE ROUNDHOUSE IN BYDGOSZCZ

: In the reality of private properties embedded in a free market economy, the very fact of providing an administrative protection to the building of special value can be problematic. The possibilities of challenging and revoking such decisions are often used by property owners. Conflicts between the conservator – a state administration official trying to provide legal protection to a monument – and the owner – an investor who pushes to achieve the intended investment goal regardless of the cultural value of the place – are extremely strong.


Introduction
The management of architectural monuments, which are part of the cultural heritage 1 of the nation, is a major challenge for the authorities, both at the regional and national level.On the one hand, the right of equal access to cultural goods 2 , already included in the Constitution, as well as the 2003 Act on the Protection and Care of Monuments, as well as a number of related legal acts, impose wide-ranging requirements for the protection of architectural monuments.On the other hand, however, a significant number of historic buildings are privately owned, which makes it significantly difficult to provide equal access.Both in terms of access to the original, historic building, equal for our and future generations, and in terms of the physical possibility of seeing and experiencing the monument today by a local, regional or even global community.

Methodology
A case study of a conflict situation occurring during the procedure of entering the building into the Register of Immovable Monuments was carried out.On the basis of the case study, generalized conclusions were drawn using the inductive method regarding the use of social participation in the process of protection of architectural monuments.The analysis and inductive reasoning were based on Polish legal, administrative and geo-social conditions.The example used from outside Poland does not violate the sequence of argument, but only aims to present an example of good practice.

Case Study 3
PESA Bydgoszcz S.A. is a Polish company that manufactures and repairs rail vehicles, with traditions dating back to the mid-nineteenth century 4 .From the very beginning, the company has been located in the immediate vicinity of the Main Railway Station in Bydgoszcz.Currently, it sells new rail vehicles all over the world as well as repairs and modernizes of rolling stock in Poland and in Europe.Employing over 3000 people, it is one of the largest employers in the region 5 .
PESA, expanding and modernizing its production lines over the years, has adapted many historical buildings in their owning (none of them has been entered in the Register of Monuments) and erected new production halls in the immediate vicinity of historical buildings.In 2012, the company began applying for a demolition permit for the round building of the tender plant, built in the 1870s, and completely unused since the 1980s6 .The tender plant was located right next to the railway tracks.Its location provided a clear view of the historic building from the Main Railway Station in Bydgoszcz and the surrounding public spaces.The building was located on land owned by the company, was its exclusive property and was not under any legal protection.The company intended to build a modern production hall in its place.It was then that the Municipal Conservator of Monuments in Bydgoszcz, joined the matter and, seeing significant historical values in the building, began talks with the company's management, urging them to keep the building.Unfortunately, due to the limited area owned by the company and its physical isolation from the rest of the city by rail and road arteries, the preservation of the facility would make it impossible to implement the company's ambitious development plans.The failure of the talks prompted the Municipal Conservator to start efforts to enter the building into the Register of Monuments.The company's Management Board, suspecting the next move of the Conservator, provided the media with official information that the construction of a new hall in place of the historic roundhouse would enable an increase in employment by 300 to 500 people.At the same time, reports began to appear in the media that PESA was considering moving some of its production to another city.The Mayor of Bydgoszcz immediately joined the case and decisively sided with PESA.The media delivered an unofficial proposal of the Mayor of the City to transfer city plots free of charge for the purposes of further development of the company's production.However, the inability to offer a plot of land in the immediate proximity of the existing plants caused the company to comment on the proposal as impossible to implement from a technological point of view.
In 2013, the Municipal Conservator of Monuments submitted the first application for entering the tender plant into the Register of Monuments.In response, PESA appealed to the Minister of Culture and National Heritage to revoke the entry and the Minister revoked the entry in the Register for procedural reasons.It is worth noting that the revocation of the entry in the Register of Monuments for procedural reasons does not undermine the legitimacy of placing a given object in the Register.It does not refer to whether the building is valuable or not, but only proves that all obligations were not fulfilled during the performance of the administrative procedure.
The Municipal Conservator has once again begun efforts to enter the tender into the Register of Monuments.PESA has begun to openly talk about moving part or all of its production to a different city.At the same time, however, taking advantage of the lack of the legal protection, the company completed the documentation for the demolition of the historic tender plant and the construction of a new production hall.At the beginning of 2014, an application for a permit to demolish the tender was submitted to the Construction Administration Department of the Bydgoszcz City Hall.At that time, the Municipal Conservator of Monuments was on long-term sick leave, so the initiative to enter the tender into the Register was taken over by the Monument Conservator of the Voivodeship.
In less than a month, he submitted another application to enter the roundhouse into the Register of Monuments.The pace of the procedure was so fast that the Conservator went to the site to inspect the tender plant after all the documents had been submitted.This was one of the most frequently cited reasons in the media that this Register entry should also be invalidated.PESA, of course, appealed to the Ministry, but this time Minister did not find any procedural reasons to revoke the entry.On 23 May 2014, the roundhouse, known also as tender plant, was officially entered into the Register of Immovable Monuments of the Kuyavian-Pomeranian Voivodeship under the number A/1654 7 .However, this did not end the dispute, but rather intensified it.PESA had the opportunity to continue to appeal against the merits of the registration decision, but being aware that it would be much more difficult to annul the decision in this way, it did not take any action in this direction.On the other hand, it strengthened the media coverage of preparations to move the company to another city.At that time, the initiative was taken over by the Mayor of the City, trying to act as a mediator between the Conservator and PESA.The growing bitterness with the impasse of the conflict, both among its participants and public opinion, resulted in extremely harsh statements by the Mayor.Of the many, let us take as an example one sentence from August 2014: "It may have been a joke, but there is some truth in every joke.I told the president of PESA that I would personally go with TNT, blow it up and serve no more than three years, but we would achieve the goal" 8 .Finally, the mediation was joined by the Voivode, the direct superior of the Monument Conservator of the Voivodeship.As a result of the agreement, PESA undertook to carry out inventory, dismantling and protection works of the tender plant at its own expense 9 , all under the supervision of a Conservator.The city, on the other hand, undertook to take over the responsibility of reassembling the steel structure 10 and reconstructing the brick facades of the building elsewhere in the city 11 .
On 26 November 2014, an agreement was signed on the transfer of the structural elements of the historic tender plant (previously dismantled) to the city12 .At the same time, PESA applied for a building permit for a new production hall.The roundhouse is still entered in the Register of Monuments, but the location and date of its restoration remain in question.There are also voices raised whether the original steel structure, many years after dismantling, will still be in a condition, that will enable the reassembling13 .9 Due to the entry in the Register of Monuments, the demolition of the building was legally impossible, but the law allows the relocation of the building in exceptional situations, e.g. by dismantling, conservation and reassembling in a new place (possible only in the case of wooden or steel structures).10 Gazeta Wyborcza [on-line:] https://bydgoszcz.wyborcza.pl/bydgoszcz/7,48722,16841990,  znika-stara-parowozownia-dokad-powedruje-zdjecia.html(accessed: 30.06.2022).11   In the case of the brick façades of the building, there can be no question of reassembling, but of building a completely new wall, partly from historical material.Ironically, due to the company's financial difficulties 14 shortly after the events described, the production hall that was supposed to be built on the site of the roundhouse was never built.

Discussion
It is significant that although in the cited case both sides deliberately appealed to the mood of public opinion, for the entire period of more than two years of the conflict, the public was not given the opportunity to express its opinion on the matter.Despite the fact that the Constitution itself emphasizes that cultural heritage is to serve the entire nation, Polish procedures related to the protection of monuments do not provide the participation of stakeholders themselves.Probably, indirectly, this results from the recommendations of both the conservation doctrine and the provisions of Polish law, which define the values by which a building can be considered a monument.In order to assign and correctly evaluate the individual values of a building, it is necessary to have an extensive knowledge, vast experience and the ability to thoroughly analyse and synthesize.Hence, the scientific evaluation of monuments can only be done by an experta conservator, or preferably a team of experts 15 .In Poland, this requirement has implied the belief that the expert's assessment is the only one taken into account when deciding whether a historical object should be included in the Register of Monuments or not.
Meanwhile, international doctrinal documents pay particular attention to the fact that it is the local society that has the right to decide what it considers to be its heritage 16 .Of course, this should be supported by relevant knowledge, provided to the public by regional experts.An interesting way to involve the public in the difficult process of monument protection was found by the Germans, who during the revitalization of the post-industrial areas of the Lusatian Coal Basin and the Zollverein in Essen, made the facilities available even before the work on their adaptation began.As a result, it was possible to gain social acceptance for their maintenance and to involve the local society in the decision-making process17 .Emscher Park International Building Exhibition (IBA) established in 1989 in the Ruhr district consequently expended the area of its activity, now reaching 800 square kilometres.More than 120 adaptive re-use of the industrial heritage buildings and sites were conducted, introducing a variety of new functions into degraded industrial landscape.One can find the former power plant, which is now used as a concert hall, the former gasholder containing a diving tank and gym or climbing walls created 14 Wyborcza.biz[on-line:] https://wyborcza.biz/biznes/7,156481,22465975, pesa-szukainwestora-jest-w-najtrudniejszej-sytuacji-od-lat.html(accessed: 09.01.2024).

16
A particular example of this is the Nara Document on Authenticity (1994), which states that each culture has the right to decide what it considers authentic.on the remains of concrete ore bunkers 18 .The versatile programme introduced to the area, which was developed together with the local communities, creates places full of life and fuels the development of tourism.
Interestingly, in the presented case, both sides of the conflict referred to the good of the local community, which was understood in a completely different way.Representatives of the company and the Mayor of the city explained that the new investment will ensure the economic development of the city and new jobs.On the other hand, the Conservation Office argued that the tender plant has exceptional values, is one of the last two preserved roundhouse in Poland and should be used for social purposes, being a substantial witness to the industrial history of Bydgoszcz.
Perhaps the inclusion of the inhabitants of Bydgoszcz in the discussion would make it possible to find a compromise faster, or at least prevent the parties from delivering baseless statements on behalf of the entire local community.
The extent to which the inhabitants of the city counted on the opportunity to express their opinion on the roundhouse is evidenced by the great interest in the competition organized by the local newspaper Gazeta Pomorska in the autumn of 2014 to propose a new function for the tender plant after it was moved 19 .It is a pity that it was only an attempt to accustom the society to the decision that had been made earlier20 .

Summary
There are no provisions in the Polish legislation imposing the necessity to use instruments of social participation when carrying out procedures for placing an object under conservation protection21 .Nevertheless, due to the community-building nature of architectural monuments and the constitutional right of access to them, it seems justified that the voice of society should be taken into account in this area.

Fig. 2
Fig. 2 Tender plant or a roundhouse, built in the 1870s, demolished in 2014.View from the Main Railway Station.Photo: author, 2014