A Piece of Cleveland: What Do Furniture Sales Have to Do With Neighborhood Redevelopment? (Hint: A Lot!)

One of the panelists in last week's forum "Beyond Foreclosure: Small Scale Solutions That Work" at the Levin College of Urban Affairs was Chris Kious, one of the founding partners of A Piece of Cleveland. Chris gave a rousing presentation that began with the admittedly dubious claim that, in his own words, "selling furniture can help to solve the problem of foreclosures in our neighborhoods."

Here's how it works. A Piece of Cleveland is a start-up company whose mission is to "rescue and upcycle good wood." In other words, the APOC team takes apart old buildings slated for demolition, salvages the wood and other materials that are inside, and hand-crafts furniture from the forgotten remnants. In doing so, APOC is preventing these materials from clogging our landfills, preserving pieces of our history (the furniture items include 'rebirth certificates' chronicling the materials' history), and creating jobs and economic benefit from deconstruction, a new industry.

Given that some of the foreclosed homes in our communities will eventually be torn down due to decrepit condition, APOC has created a viable alternative to demolition, as well as the budding of a new industry in Cleveland.

APOC has recently received media coverage in Northern Ohio Live, Crain's, the Plain Dealer and Inside Business. Their clients include Fahrenheit Restaurant in Tremont(APOC created all of Fahrenheit's new tables) and Starbucks at Cedar-Fairmount. APOC creates everything from cutting boards to lamps to tables from recycled wood.

Within the last 12 months, Progressive Urban Real Estate has partnered with APOC to recycle a portion of several houses slated for demolition. We are looking forward to partnering with this exciting new organization in the future.