Shanon Miller, Director in the Office of Historic Preservation introduction Mayor Ron Nuremberg at the kickoff event for a new building materials salvage center with the backdrop of the historic Kelly Bungalow Colony, a cluster of 1920s houses once occupied by Kelly Field and Kelly AFB commanders on Tuesday at Port San Antonio Bungalow Colony.
“Think of it as organ donorship,” Mayor Ron Nirenberg said at a kickoff event. “Like an organ donor, a building may have reached the end of its life, but its parts and pieces will help extend the lives of dozens of other buildings.”, made up of 15 structures that once housed Kelly air base commanders and other historic buildings from the 1920s, will be the city’s base of operations for construction material reuse on the 1,900-acre Southwest Side aerospace and technology campus.
Shanon Miller, director of the city’s Office of Historic Preservation, said her staff wrestled with two key questions when considering deconstruction, starting with how to train a workforce. The city so far has trained 40 contractors on disassembly of structures for material salvage. A circa-1920s garage that will serve as the innovation center is the answer to the second question — “a place for material that the market wouldn’t just take immediately,” she said.