An emerging movement in Cleveland sees an alternative to knocking down the region’s thousands of vacant homes.
The process is known as “deconstruction,” and it differs from demolition because up to 40 percent of a building’s remains can be saved from the landfill — from Southern Yellow Pine joists to the oak flooring capable of regaining life as furniture or millwork.
Northeast Ohio is fertile territory for the movement. The region has an abundance of structures to be taken down, many of them monuments to the foreclosure crisis. Cuyahoga County alone has 27,000 vacant and abandoned properties, more than 12,000 of them in Cleveland.
An effort is growing here to start a deconstruction industry that can contribute to the economy. The problem is, the process can cost twice as much as demolition.
“The theory behind deconstruction is that even though it is more expensive to do — because it is more labor intensive — that you will reclaim and salvage enough usable material and resell it, and that that income will offset the additional expense,” said Frank Ford, senior vice president for research and development at the nonprofit Neighborhood Progress Inc. – or NPI, which has been in the forefront of Cleveland’s movement.
A Piece of Cleveland, a Cleveland company that deconstructs buildings and makes furniture from the components, and the Cleveland Institute of Art intend to test whether the process can be profitable. The partners will construct 130 Hive modular studio workstations for the school using wood from deconstructed buildings. Hive workstations, constructed from sustainable materials, use hexagonal shapes as found in bee hives.
They reason that the additional costs of deconstruction can be offset by businesses, including making furniture of reclaimed wood and selling the bounty on the wholesale market.
Company owner Chris Kious said a deconstruction industry would be trailblazing. Interest is high in places like Seattle for environmental reasons, but such cities often don’t have thousands of vacant and abandoned structures. On the other hand, Buffalo, like many cities in the Great Lakes region, is struggling with abandoned housing and also is trying to fashion an industry.
“What we are doing is so radical that there really isn’t anyone to learn from,” Kious said.
Source: Cleveland.com
By Olivera Perkins