In a gritty section of downtown Portland, Ore., a whimsical building stands out amid the nearby overgrown lots and rusting industrial warehouses.  The ReBuilding Center is an oddity with its mismatched wood and windows - not to mention its fantastical entrance, which looks like a fairytale forest inhabited by creatures made of screwdrivers, plumbing valves, hammers and bells.

Inside is the largest inventory of recycled building materials in the Northwest.  Lines of customers form daily to pay 50%-90% off retail for everything from the tiniest screw to giant HVAC systems. The non-profit ReBuilding Center trades in the construction industry’s castoffs and is a leader in the nascent deconstruction industry, which offers individuals who are remodeling or tearing down a home a green alternative to the wrecking ball and backhoe.

“We wanted to prove that every person can make a difference using the resources in their own backyard,” said Shane Endicott, the executive director of the non-profit Rebuilding Center, which was founded in 1998 by a handful of neighborhood activists with a beat-up, Econoline van.  “The idea was to take materials that society has decided are waste and find a use for them.”

The ReBuilding Center’s quirky 3,900 sq. ft. warehouse contains items donated by builders, architects, designers and individuals.  Moreover, the building itself was wholly constructed in 2005 from recycled materials.  Light streams through a collage of windows from every era.  The floor is a patchwork quilt of old doors.  “We sell to the public seven days a week but we also donate a considerable amount of material to the community like to schools or to seniors on fixed incomes,” said Mr. Endicott.  

The desire to help others as well as to be responsible environmental stewards inspires people to not only shop at the warehouse but also to hire the ReBuilding Center to deconstruct rather than demolish their homes.  While deconstruction (disassembling and salvaging usable parts of a home) costs as much as 25% more than standard demolition, the tax-deductible donation of the reclaimed materials often offsets the added expense.

Patricia and Mark Millemann opted for deconstruction when they decided to tear down their hillside home in Portland to build in its place a new one with vaulted ceilings and larger windows to take advantage of the view.  Diligent recyclers of paper, plastic, aluminum and glass; the couple couldn’t bear to have the remains of their house carted off to the dump.  

“It seemed such a waste,” said Ms. Millemann, a former school teacher.  “We wanted to make it available to people who could use it and who might not be able to afford these kinds of things otherwise.”

Over ten days, a crew from the ReBuilding Center meticulously removed every salvageable scrap from their home.  Cabinets, doors, windows, hot water heaters, sinks, appliances, pipes, flooring and even insulation were taken away in a fleet of five biodiesel fueled trucks and sold at the ReBuilding Center’s warehouse.

While deconstruction took significantly longer and cost $4 more per sq. ft. than demolition would have, Ms. Millemann said she had no regrets.  “When they called to tell me that all the lumber had been sold within a couple of weeks, I felt so good about it,” she said, imagining the wood incorporated in other houses in the community.  Moreover, she and her husband, who is a managerial consultant, calculated that the tax deduction for all the salvaged material they donated would match the added cost of deconstruction.

The Rebuilding Center’s Mr. Endicott said the biggest barrier to getting people to deconstruct rather than demolish their homes is making them aware that it’s even an option.  “People just don’t know that they can do this,” he said.  “When they are educated, their only question is ‘Why wouldn’t you do this?’”

There are hundreds of companies nationwide that now offer some sort of building deconstruction or salvage service, up from a few dozen five years ago, according to the Building Materials Reuse Association based in Beaverton, Ore (links to these businesses are on its Web site, www.bmra.org).  “There has been significant growth in the last year with the new administration promoting green jobs,” said Bob Falk, the association’s director.  Indeed, the United States Department of Labor this year began offering grants to train workers in deconstruction. 

The ReBuilding Center is an exemplar in both the fields of deconstruction and recycling – turning over eight tons of used building materials daily to generate $3 million annually in revenue.  The funds are use to pay for operations as well as for community projects like, for example, an effort to get orthodonture for a local teen whose family otherwise couldn’t afford it. 

Public and private groups from Sacramento to New York and even from Greenland have visited the ReBuilding Center to study the organization’s business model.  “I’m not so much proud as thankful that this idea is actually working,” Mr. Endicott said.

The idea came about after a drive-by shooting occurred in the neighborhood and no one called the police.  “We wondered how things got so bad and we wanted to do something to make things better,” said Mr. Endicott.  Influenced by an uncle who used only salvage to repair his home, Endicott and four fellow community activists began collecting unwanted building materials from construction sites and selling them to raise money for local causes.

A decade later, the Rebuilding Center has 40 employees and an unending stream of customers shopping in its warehouse and requesting its deconstruction services.  “The exciting thing for me is all the old growth lumber we get in here,” said Mr. Endicott.  The well-defined vertical grain indicates it came from trees that were hundreds of years old.  “You can’t harvest anything like that today,” he said.

More poignantly, his deconstruction crew has discovered love letters and antique silver coins hidden decades, if not centuries, ago in walls of old homes – things that would have been lost forever during a standard demolition.  Mr. Endicott said they keep such mementoes if homeowners don’t want them: “We’re thinking of maybe putting them on display one day.”