DECONSTRUCTION HAILED AS ANSWER FOR AILING CITIES
Derelict buildings gradually taken apart, sold piece-by-piece
One sunny morning, several men and one woman wearing hard hats pick apart the insides of an old, vacant rowhouse.
Dust dances around what was once a living room. A rotting stairway looks as if it could collapse. The workers walk back and forth quickly, stomping their boots. It’s mostly the wood they are after. It will be resold to builders and do-it-yourselfers.
It’s all part of “deconstruction,” a method of taking down buildings that is growing in popularity across the country. Deconstruction is an alternative to demolition: Derelict buildings get torn down piece-by-piece, then those pieces are sold.
Advocates hail deconstruction as a win-win that is more economical and environmentally friendly than demolition. They say it creates needed jobs and can help depressed cities turn things around.
“The systematic deconstruction and dismantling of buildings has a profound role in transforming communities,” said Anne Nicklin, executive director of the Building Materials Reuse Association, based in Chicago.
Deconstruction seems to be on the rise, Nicklin said, citing programs in Baltimore, Chicago, Detroit, Portland, Buffalo, Cleveland and other places.
“All of those deconstruction and job growth programs have significantly increased over the last five years,” she said.
In some cases, as in Baltimore, many employees were desperate for the work — former inmates or former addicts trying to change their lives. In other cities, profits are donated to community grassroots efforts.
“It’s like weeding a garden,” said Jeff Carroll, vice president of Baltimore’s Details deconstruction firm. “You’re going to give the rest of the houses a chance to thrive.”
The 5-year-old Details is under contract with Baltimore to deconstruct buildings taken over by the city. Details takes down the structures piece-by-piece, dozens each year, and resells the parts in a building downtown. The employees say the work gives them confidence.
“It gives you a sense of responsibility,” said Details employee David Brown, a former heroin addict who has earned his lead abatement license since joining Details. “It makes you feel like you belong.”
Critics note that deconstruction can take four times as long as simply demolishing a property. They point out that the extra employees and time required make the method more expensive.
Alex Ihnen, founder of the NextSTL blog, which is focused on issues important to St. Louis, wrote, “Simply flattening a home and shipping everything to a landfill can cost about $6,000, while deconstructing it can be twice that amount.”
Deconstruction has been around for decades. It picked up in 1996, when the Used Building Materials Association formed as a non-profit group to assist people interested in deconstruction throughout North America, according to the ReUse People of America, a national deconstruc- tion non-profit group based in Oakland.
Cities once considered part of the “rust belt” embrace the concept.
In western New York, Buffalo Mayor Byron Brown said the downsizing of the steel industry and subsequent abandonment of homes and other buildings forced him to face the fact that there will never be an influx of newcomers to populate the blocks of vacated homes.
Buffalo ReUse, a deconstruction non-profit group, takes down properties and resells the parts at its warehouse. The organization says its vision “is of a thriving green community where people, materials and the environment have value and purpose.”
In Michigan, the Architectural Salvage Warehouse of Detroit resells the valuable parts of vacant structures — many of them victims of the downsizing of the auto industry. The organization trains workers for salvage work and other occupations.
Baltimore’s Details, a subsidiary of the Humanim non-profit human services organization, wants to help revitalize some of the neighborhoods beset by unemployment and poverty that were thrust in the national spotlight in 2015. That’s when Freddie Gray, a black man, died after a rough ride in a police car, setting off violent rioting that drew attention to unemployment, dilapidated housing and other troubles in the city.
The city has an “extraordinary need” for getting rid of derelict housing and for what Details has to offer, said Michael Braverman, Baltimore’s housing commissioner. “We lost 350,000 people since our peak,” he said.
Weeding out vacant housing gives cities a better chance to survive, Carroll said.
Details and its 55 employees deconstruct about 200 buildings a year, most of them in Baltimore, he said. “Whether it’s Detroit, Chicago, Cleveland, if you don’t hit a critical mass of occupancy, people are going to leave,” Carroll said.
Advocates tout deconstruction as more economical and environmentally friendly than demolition.