Who's got "Interpersonal Capital?" We do! We do!

Cleveland may be torn to pieces in a lot of ways, but the one thing that sets it apart from many other places is the sense of identity Clevelanders have with their city. I once heard that Brown's fans were the biggest fans, even though the team is notoriously sub par. So how can we tie this strength, a strength in a very strange, anomalous, and more often than not, incomprehensible pride for Cleveland into a matter of sustainability? By deconstructing it, I guess?

A Piece of Cleveland (APOC), Urban Lumberjack's of Cleveland (ULOC), and Cleveland's Urban Reclaim Lumberyard (Curly for short) all operate together to deconstruct vacant buildings in the city and reuse the materials for other projects. And being that vacant homes are ubiquitous here, it seems like a consistent source of capital. But deconstruction can be a lot more expensive than traditional demolishing (in some cases the costs are doubled). This does not, however, keep these groups from looking into ways to make the process viable, and even profitable.APOC deconstructs homes and other buildings and reuses the "harvest" (salvageable materials) from the deconstruction and sells them as high quality furniture. It is upcycling at its best. Not to mention, most of these pieces of furniture are rendered from older buildings in Cleveland and provide local history and nostalgia to the owners. Most cities can not stand to guarantee a high turnover of upcycled furniture made from old buildings the way Cleveland can, and this guarantee of a higher turnover is due to the "interpersonal capital" available in Cleveland (an economic term used to acknowledge the implicit capital accrued by a city due to the strong identity denizens have with it).

No one loves Cleveland more than Clevelanders.

Here's a good example of the things APOC does with historic buildings.