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Urban Lumber Intitative

title. An Urban Lumber Initiative

 

date. August 2018 - Current

cityLincoln, Nebraska

 

detailsI believe in the value of a communities natural resources and their ability to grow from within. This Urban Lumber Initiative was born out of pure confusion, as to why my community was facing large, expensive development plans meanwhile, small concerns and investments were continuously being ignored. For example, I live in a community in which the porches are falling in, there is a lack of public seating, trash, and recycling receptacles as well as 35% of our housing stock needing some kind of interior capital improvement. However, while this very same community had over 25,000 board feet to help address some of these expressed needs, almost all of the wood was being extracted from the community, mulched, and sold by municipalities. While one could understand their actions as preventative care, I saw it as wealth extraction -- intended or not. 

 

After some pushback from the City, especially in regards to attempted public awareness projects, I began to become extremely vocal about the issue. I began to see this as more than just a problem of wood-use but rather, of wealth extraction and an inability to acknowledge the value in assets of lower-income and distressed communities. I thought it particularly unjust that the City specifically saw this material as a liquid asset, but did not consider the context in which that asset was found. For this reason, I began a pursuit of utilizing the trees extracted from our community for community-centric projects including public seating, bus shelters, and donated materials to makers, woodworkers, carpenters and in some cases, property owners. 

This initiative included door-knocking, gathering signatures of support, attaining funding for urban wood use projects, and collaborating with various partners to harvest lumber from drying, to milling, to end-use. The partners included: â€‹

  • BVH Architects: designing and building a kiln, specific to the South of Downtown CDO needs 

 

  • StarCity Wood: consulting for the proper build-out of the kiln

 

  • Kim Slezak of Trees2Products: for milling, slabbing services 

 

  • Nebraska Forest Service for consultation,  transportation and in-house drying of trees 

 

  • Nolan Golgert of Forgamere: a design company, pushing a Lacrosse Initiative, donating 150 Lacrosse sticks (made from Ash) to Community Centers across Lincoln, NE 

 

  • Jeff McCabe of Lincoln East High School: building two public benches nearest the F Street Community Center with wood we've harvested

 

  • Lincoln Parks & Recreation Department: in which we sourced our trees that were removed from our community

As part of the Urban Lumber Initiative, I was able to host a Maker Fair and Milling Demonstration to show people not only the beginning processes of harvesting lumber but also the end-uses applicable to the Lincoln community. Over 80 people attended the event. For me, this was particularly successful because it was the most well-attended outreach event of the initiatives, including various community meetings, a design charrette, and a public art project. 

 

Eventually, I was no longer able to remain employed at the South of Downtown Organization, as I needed to focus more heavily on graduate school. Thus, the Executive Director of the firm, Shawn Ryba, has taken the lead since my leave. 

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