As the National Trust has worked to develop a shared use model for Cooper-Molera in Monterey, California, we have worked to make our process as transparent as possible so that our lessons learned can be used by historic sites, house museums, and other types of historic properties around the country. While every historic property has unique challenges and opportunities, we feel that our work at Cooper-Molera has allowed us to develop and refine an approach to shared use that is widely applicable—from stakeholder engagement to initial planning for interpretation and from collections to preservation principles that also support the re-imagination of a site.

As part of our outreach effort, we are doing both onsite and online sessions entitled Commerce + Interpretation: The Possibilities, Pitfalls, and Principles of Shared Use at Historic Sites during the 2015 AASLH Annual Meeting in Louisville (#AASLH2015).  We have also developed this toolkit to assist other stewards of historic properties in considering a shared use model. You can download the documents on Slideshare in addition to viewing them below.