Shane Endicott still gets goose bumps when he talks about the events in his neighborhood that led him and a group of volunteers to start the ReBuilding Center. Building materials are only part of the story.

Shane grew up in a family that always looked for a creative reuse of materials – making furniture out of found objects, a wall of glass bottles. “I never looked at it as environmental or sustainable practice. It was more just the way you do things.”

When he saw a help-wanted ad for a new initiative to recycle building materials, he sent in an application that highlighted this firsthand experience. The job was part of St. Vincent de Paul’s “Wood Depot,” started in 1994 as a two year pilot project funded by Metro, Portland’s regional government. When he was offered the job, Shane told them, “I can’t believe that somebody is going to pay me to recycle materials!”

“I was real passionate about it, and it took off,” says Shane. “It was a really big success. Unfortunately, it wasn’t a part of St. Vincent de Paul’s mission, so when the two year grant was up, they had a different idea and plan for the property. They kept me on and promoted me, even though it felt like a demotion.”

In the meantime, some provocative things had been happening in Shane’s Portland neighborhood. “Back in 1996, in this neighborhood, there was vandalism, there were thefts from people’s houses and cars. People were calling the police and calling all of the social agencies to address these issues, but the issues persisted.”

A change began following a shooting in a neighbor’s house on Christmas Eve, 1996. People realized that no one had even bothered to call the police, and they started talking with each other to understand why. Shane recalls, “Why with all society’s best efforts to address these social problems why do they continue to persist and manifest?” Some of the conversations around kitchen tables went far into the night.

“One of the key pieces was that people started talking about what was important to them,” says Shane, who participated in the conversations about issues like safety and quality of life. “So neighbors started talking to other neighbors and the circle just continued to widen. We approached some of the people that we knew that had been involved in criminal activities, but not in a negative, accusatory way. Just having conversations with them and inviting them to the table. Now it was us as a community talking. We started to learn about each other. What came of that was we started identifying needs. And the neighbors pulled together as a collective and started addressing the needs.”

Inspired, neighbors started looking for ways to help each other. They asked the community to pitch in to raise money for a local kid that badly needed braces. An elderly lady living alone was given a whistle she could use to call for help. Basketball hoops were installed in driveways for neighborhood use. Shane remembers thinking, “Why aren’t all of our communities doing this? Why aren’t we engaging each other? It’s how we live and live with each other that helps us make healthy decisions.”

Shane and several other volunteers decided to start an organization, Our United Villages, to share the stories and lessons they had learned. Says Shane, “It’s an organization that inspires people to look at what they can do as individuals to increase the health of their local community.” They decided from the start to avoid some of the pitfalls of dependence on grant funding. “We asked ourselves, ‘How can we create a sustainable source of funding that also models the spirit of our mission?’”

Shane remembers. “Someone said, ‘The Wood Depot was a great thing. That was really a bummer that they stopped it.’ Then all of a sudden I started talking about how successful it was and how disappointed I was. Then that conversation evolved to ‘Why don’t we do it again, but on a much grander scale?’ That was how it happened.”

Shane left St. Vincent de Paul and spent a year as a volunteer preparing a business plan to lay the groundwork for the ReBuilding Center, which became the first project of Our United Villages. “We started the ReBuilding Center as an example of taking local resources that are being wasted, taking thousands of pounds of waste, and turning it around to benefit the community directly,” explains Shane. “We take the proceeds and reinvest them back into the goals and activities of the Rebuilding Center – which is diverting waste for reuse. Any proceeds above that are reinvested in local communities to get people to come together around a common table in their immediate neighborhood to talk about ideas to make their neighborhood a healthier place to live for everyone.”

Our United Villages incorporated in 1997, and the ReBuilding Center opened just eight months later. Launching the non-profit business was a labor of love. They had no money, no place to store materials, and a lot of volunteer energy. “We had no building and we were saying we would take anything from a doorknob to a complete house. And we got a complete house donated from the roof to the foundation.”

“Volunteers loaded it in their driveways. So we had these building materials in driveways waiting for a space. We were these crazy people that had no money. We had nothing, other than a lot of passion for our vision.” They found a temporary site and borrowed $15,000 against a volunteer’s credit card. With that, they signed a month-to-month lease and started paying four employees. Says Shane, “We were in the black right away. We paid that $15,000 back. It just kept going from there.”

Knowing their lease could expire at any time, they searched for a permanent site. Shane called about a building that looked promising in north Portland. “I think at that point we might have had less than $1,000 in the bank. It was ridiculous.” The building was listed at $1.2 million dollars. Undaunted, Shane looked into federal loan opportunities aimed at creating jobs in underserved communities. They qualified for a $700,000 loan. Portland’s Meyer Memorial Trust came up with another $200,000. After nine months, they were still short $300,000.

The owner of the building called Shane into his office. Shane remembers, “He said, ‘You know, when I got the call that you wanted to buy my building and you had no money, I said to my broker that these guys are like kids who aren’t old enough to drive walking on a car lot without enough money to buy a car.’” But their dedication had impressed the owner, and he now wanted to make the deal work. He told them, “You buy the building from me, and I’ll donate the land – it’s worth $322,000. We’re done. And I’m glad you’re going to bring this to the community.”

They sealed the deal in December 1999, just one month before the ReBuilding Center had to vacate its temporary site. Says Shane, “We had worked on this thing day and night. Some of us were working seven days a week. I had a bed at the old ReBuilding Center because I would work so late. It was intense. It was wonderful.”

The ReBuilding Center began offering DeConstruction Services just before they moved into the new building. “We bid just like a demolition company. But we do it all by hand. We deconstruct systematically, the reverse of the way the house was built. We go in and take all the finish material out. We take the roof off, and work our way down the foundation. We de-nail everything. We re-wrap it. We prepare it for reuse, and then we bring it to the ReBuilding Center. The homeowner or property owner gets a tax deductible receipt.”

In 2002 the ReBuilding Center further diversified, launching a line of home furnishings made from castoff materials with little or no potential for reuse. ReFind Furniture is crafted to accentuate the textures, holes, and gouges that make their materials unique.

The ReBuilding Center’s revenues have grown every year, starting around $300,000 in 1998, to $1.7 million in 2002. “To this day, not one dime of grant money has funded our operations,” says Shane. The ReBuilding Center has received some government grants targeting businesses in waste reduction, but the Meyer Memorial Trust support for the building is the only grant they have received as a non-profit.

In less than five years, the organization has grown to 44 staff. The minimum wage for employees is $10/hour with full insurance benefits. “We’ve had a lot of growing pains going from four staff to 44 in four years. It’s been incredible. The credit is so broad that it would be out of line for me to just name a few of the people: everyone who’s come and brought materials here, everyone who’s used this as a resource, the organizations that supported our efforts.”

“Now we’re trying to finish the ReBuilding Center. It’s not done,” Shane laughs. “We have over 40,000 square feet that is undeveloped land. We want to cover it. We’ll more than double our capacity to divert materials. And consequently, we’ve determined from our growth and from our experience, that we’re going to double the tonnage of waste we keep out of landfills.”

At the same time, Shane and the organization are refocusing on the mission of Our United Villages, preparing an outreach campaign that will involve canvassing and more community-based conversations. Working with Our United Villages, Shane hopes to inspire more people to take responsibility for themselves and their community. “When you do an action and you change a situation, it has an outcome. When people acknowledge you for the action, you can never go back to being complacent and isolated, because now you’ve found your voice.”

“People throw things away, and they don’t think about how that thing they’re throwing away can benefit other people. They’re detached. This is my belief: people will do healthy things if they have the knowledge.” And the opportunity. The ReBuilding Center makes it easy for Portlanders to make the most out of locally available building materials, while giving something back to their community.

“As it’s turned out, the ReBuilding Center, with DeConstruction Services and ReFind Furniture, is unlike any other used building material place in the nation, in the sense of what it’s achieved in such a short amount of time,” says Shane. “We brought the Our United Villages spirit and vision to the table, and those were the secret ingredients.”

Contact

ReBuilding Center
Shane Endicott,
Executive Director
3625 N. Mississippi Avenue
Portland, OR 97227
503.331.1877
www.rebuildingcenter.org