History

The City of Buffalo has a unique challenge. The once bustling city that boasted a population of over 500,000 people in 1950, now struggles with the issue of urban abandonment. With a declining population of less than 290,000, Buffalo is faced with the burden of thousands of unwanted structures and a city footprint that far exceeds its current needs. It is estimated that 23,000 housing units stand vacant in the city and an additional 16,000 vacant units in the region. The City has ambitious plans to demolish 1,000 structures a year for the next ten years at a cost to taxpayers of over $100 million.

Buffalo ReUse is a not-for-profit organization, established in 2006 in response to the City of Buffalo’s plans to develop deconstruction as a competitive alternative to the demolition of abandoned housing stock. Almost 2 years, a committed team of volunteers began work to develop our organizational structure, raise funds to support a full-time start-up, obtain a license and insurance to deconstruct buildings in the City of Buffalo, deconstruct two entire structures, salvage over 25 abandoned structures, and initiate part-time sales of used materials. We continue to grow as more volunteers support our effort and as we expand our Board of Directors.

Currently, we have a full-time deconstruction crew that can work on refining the process of deconstruction and create a model for other cities that struggle with the same issues. If we can demonstrate our proficiency at this task, we’re confident that we can return numerous benefits to the city in the form of job creation and training, recycling and material salvage, economic development, and support for community development. The decision to deconstruct a building becomes an opportunity to reinvest in our communities to create opportunity from what otherwise would be thrown away.
Our First Year (and a half)

It’s been a busy year. Since our founding in early 2006, we’ve accomplished a lot:

Responded to the City of Buffalo’s groundbreaking Request for Proposal to deconstruct up to ten houses.
- Developed a hard-working board of directors and a small volunteer staff
- Obtained seed funding of nearly $250,000 from government and private sources
- Developed a realistic business plan to create a self-sustaining social enterprise
- Built an extensive network of vendors, suppliers, donors, volunteers and supporters
- Trained intensively in the hybrid deconstruction method
- Received lots of positive press and word-of-mouth attention
- Deconstructed TEN houses
- Proved the hybrid deconstruction concept by deconstructing two houses in ten days
- Diverted nearly thirty tons of debris from the landfill (from our first 2 structures)
- Harvested more than ten tons of usable lumber from the houses (now available for sale)
- Began creating and training our first deconstruction team
- Worked with the local community to find good uses for the resulting vacant land
- Worked closely with City Hall to optimize the deconstruction process and exceed their expectations
- Salvaged a large quantity of building materials, fixtures, stone, brick and other materials from houses to be demolished and private donors
- Opened our retail store and began selling reused building materials
- Attended and presented at the Building Materials ReUse Association conference
- Began hiring additional part-time staf