Merewether Surf House is the latest building to be crossed off the neglected-building list by a demolition ball.

Council is in talks with a group that expressed an interest to redevelop the site but not the building.

There is a three-month deadline, and if an agreement is not reached, council will knock Surf House to the ground anyway.

Newcastle Ocean Baths has had a reprieve. It is being upgraded but only after it was let fall by the wayside.

Then council had to spend more than $3.5 million to restore it because it was rampant with concrete cancer and second-rate facilities.

This knock-down-and-rebuild-new mentality seems to have become common in Newcastle.

However, throughout Australia and worldwide adaptive reuse has been adopted to ensure cities and towns retain their distinctive cultural heritage.

University of Newcastle architecture and built environment professor Steffen Lehmann said Newcastle had fallen by the wayside.

“It is international best practice, but Newcastle is not doing this enough. By more (knock down) development our heritage is being destroyed.”

As Mr Lehmann points out once you destroy it you can’t get it back.

“Lots of cities try to recreate heritage artificially . . . but it doesn’t work.”

Newcastle City Council heritage committee member and councillor Keith Parsons agrees that it would make more sense if the older buildings in need of renovation were adapted for reuse.

Current maintenance problems, he said, were a result of council’s lack of action.

Cr Parsons said without tangible reminders of our past, Newcastle’s history would be lost.

“(Preserved historical buildings) are better than looking at books of what the city used to look like.”

Council heritage officer Sarah Cameron agrees adaptive reuse was the answer to keep Newcastle’s iconic buildings with their history and cultural value.

While the most favourable outcome was for a building to be kept, Ms Cameron said adaptation for the future was the next best strategy.

“It (keeping a building) can always be done, it just depends how much money you want to spend and if there is an owner willing to do it.”

However, if keeping the building was not on the cards, cultural and heritage buildings could still be maintained through ecological sustainable development and making sure all the embodied energy was harvested and put to a new use, Ms Cameron said.

Examples of adaptive reuse in Newcastle include David Jones, Baccus restaurant, old YMCA building on King Street, The Winchcombe Carson Woolstore at Islington and Honeysuckle Railway Workshops.

“We (the council) don’t want things to be locked in time; we (the council) want things to have a viable economic use.”