What is Building Value? | buildingvaluelickrun

Deconstruction: A revolutionary idea

The workers at 1656 Westwood Ave. work at Building Value, a nonprofit social enterprise located in Northside. Building Value has two components: a deconstruction crew and a retail store. Unlike pure demolition crews, Building Value's deconstruciton team does architectural salvage work, meaning they strip the building of any usable parts before demolition. "We call it deconstruction because you're reverse constructing," said Chris Miday, Building Value's deconstruction manager. Building Value then sells those products in the retail store to fund more deconstruction projects.

Deconstructing a house before demolition can cost up to 10 percent more than a traditional demolition, but it will save about 60 percent of the building materials from ending up in a landfill, according to the Metropolitan Sewer District.

Chris Miday, deconstruction manager at Building Value discusses the shifting public opinion toward deconstruction

Building Value has recycled nearly 7 tons of scrap metal, 1,750 tons of concrete and 12.7 tons of lumber to date.

“Too many buildings are just knocked down with a backhoe, and all of the materials are just carted off with the construction debris to a landfill," said Margo Warminski, the preservation director of the Cincinnati Preservation Association. "In many cases this is a very wasteful practice because there are materials in there that could be used by someone else."

Warminski described the concept of embodied energy as the energy it took to produce, transport, and construct everything in a building—from an ornate staircase to the nails holding the floorboards down. “If you take down a building and take away the materials before their lifespan is over that’s terribly wasteful,” Warminski said.

Miday describes the three kinds of customers who shop at Building Value

Despite Building Value's role in deconstruction, many on the staff appreciate the history of the homes they work with and view their job as a way to preserve that history in the face of unavoidable demolitions. “I like the look of historic homes versus newer homes," said Chris Govan, a deconstruction supervisor at Building Value. "When they get torn down its kind of disheartening."

Building Value's social improvement message carries through to their employment opportunities.

"We take people that have had trouble finding work in the past or with a slight criminal background and we help get them into the work force," Miday said. Their job training program helps people with barriers to employment gain experience and work ethic, and then Building Value sends them to work for larger construction companies.

Miday calls Building Value a "triple win" and says why he keeps coming back