Sean C. Morgan
One man’s garbage need not find its next stop at the landfill.
Tim Theodoroff and Clayton Stagmier want it.
They plan to open Resurrection, Inc., sometime next month after they can complete a lease agreement with the City of Sweet Home for the use of the Flex Building.
Resurrection will be a nonprofit corporation dedicated to “resurrecting” the debris from home demolition and anywhere else they can get their hands on old wood, floors, windows, doors, bed frames and much more.
Theodoroff and Stagmier want to cut down what goes into landfills and at the same time provide local jobs. They won Planning Commission approval to do just that last week following the withdrawal of opposition to the business.
“Our goal is to demolish structures with reuse in mind instead of refuse,” Theodoroff and Stagmier said in a written mission statement. “We pride ourselves in the belief that our resources should not be wasted, and where we can re-use timbers, fixtures, plumbing, etc., we should.
“We at Resurrection, Inc., will focus on providing jobs for our town, low-cost building materials to help in remodeling of homes, a reduction of waste in our landfills and re-using all types of materials that would typically be thrown away.”
Stagmier described how the process would work. When a home is demolished, for instance, the oak flooring might be donated to Resurrection or taken to Resurrection if the company is demolishing the home.
Workers would pull nails from the flooring, replane it, clean it up and make it reusable. Chances are that Resurrection will already have a buyer lined up, but if not, the company will include a small retail function where customers could drop in and buy the flooring or other materials.
The flooring could be used to build table tops, cabinets or a butcher block. Stagmier and Theodoroff have ideas for just about any used piece of building material. Among their ideas, one of the items they will feature are benches made from the headboards and footboards of old beds, old moulding can be cut into pieces and used to frame pictures and mirrors.
“Revive it,” Stagmier said. “Resurrect it.? One of the keys to our success is we’ll operate on a donation basis.”
When persons are figuring out how to get rid of old building materials or household furniture, there’s a good chance Resurrection will want it.
“Bring it to us,” Stagmier said. “We may be able to make a job out of it.”
Creating jobs, a Resurrection goal, is also the goal of the city’s Flex Building project, a 10,000 square-foot building designed to incubate new businesses. The building was used to help expand circuit board manufacturer Cirtek, which moved to Lebanon when it grew too large for the Flex Building.
The City of Sweet Home offered a break in rent for the building based on the creation of jobs. The lease with Resurrection has not been negotiated yet nor had council approval.
Resurrection plans to tap three kinds of workers. They hope to provide jobs for Sunshine Industries’ developmentally disable clients. They want to use volunteer help.
They also want to provide jobs and training to low-skilled, unemployed persons.
“There’s a lot of people that are unemployed,” Theodoroff said. Many of them are looking for work but have no skills and are untrained. They want to teach them and help them.
“We believe that if we can train someone to tear down a home properly, we can teach them the skills to put one up,” Stagmier said.
Stagmier and Theodoroff initial goal is for 10 employees and expanding after that, but they hope they can do it even faster, expanding quickly to 50 employees or even more.
They want Resurrection to have crews in each area of the business, including a contractor crew, an asbestos removal crew, finishing crew and demolition crew.
“We want to make money,” Stagmier said. They would receive paychecks as employees of the company, but “we want to be nonprofit.”
After operating successful businesses in Sweet Home, “we want (Resurrection) to be a successful business, so we can give back to the community,” Stagmier said. “If we’ve been blessed with the ability to give back, we should do it.”
The business of re-using building materials ‘has been around for a long time, actually, but the popularity is increasing,” Stagmier said. Much of the product is attractive to home builders and remodelers for its antique nature.
On a more practical level, when remodeling homes, some materials are only easily available this way. An home owner may want to replace a fixture or door in an older home. Finding a new one that will fit the into the original plans for an older home can be difficult. Instead they can turn to companies that may have such items in stock.
Stagmier moved to Sweet Home in 1994 and has owned and operated Road of Life Automotive since 1996.
Theodoroff moved to Sweet Home in 1990 and has worked as a contractor in the area since 1993.