Timing Circular Regeneration with Adaptive Reuse Potential: A Century of Transformations at the Renoma Department Store, Wroclaw

Historic department stores are an underexamined lever for circular, low-carbon urban transition. This study tests whether Langston’s Adaptive Reuse Potential (ARP) can be applied retrospectively and how contextual readiness shapes the timing of interventions. Using the Renoma Department Store in Wroclaw, Poland (1930–2025), we reconstruct five adaptive phases and combine expert scoring of seven obsolescence dimensions (O1–O7) with a Readiness index covering finance, governance/approvals, use commitment, delivery/supply chain, and policy priority. Decision windows are interpreted via a WAIT–PREPARE–GO lens. Results show that peaks in ARP and Readiness aligned with major reinvestments—post-war reconstruction, socialist modernisation, and post-EU-accession renewal—while the original steel frame retained high structural reserves, indicating that timing was driven more by institutional and economic conditions than by technical decay. We propose ARP as an interpretive lens for circular regeneration and show that the Readiness index clarifies feasibility and risk. The combined ARP × Readiness approach yields a replicable, phase-sensitive diagnosis of adaptive capacity and intervention timing, contributing evidence to circular city practice and aligning with New European Bauhaus principles of sustainability, inclusion, and quality of place.