by Bob Reece
CUCHARA- Workers have been busy taking apart and tearing down two landmark buildings at the Cuchara Mountain Resort. Piece by piece and board by board, the old warming hut and the ticket office are coming down with much of the material going to a very worthy cause.
Rather than letting the materials end up in a landfill, volunteers from Habitat for Humanity in Pueblo have been working together with Cuchara Mountain Resort and Tom Lessar Construction to tear the buildings apart and take the quality materials out to be reused, recycled and repurposed. Items that are being reclaimed include lighting fixtures and ceiling fans, porcelain toilets and sinks, copper and iron piping, electrical wiring and conduit, metal doorframes, restroom partitions, fiberglass insulation and even the tongue and groove cedar siding.
According to Tom McCabe, Donations Manager for Habitat for Humanity in Pueblo, many of these items will end up at the Habitat ReStore, a retail store that opened in Pueblo in April of 2006. The Habitat ReStore is like a Goodwill store for the home improvement industry.
“Our goal in the Habitat ReStore is to be a de-construction business and to support the construction side of Habitat For Humanity….” McCabe said, “Our plan with the buildings at Cuchara Mountain Resort is to take away all of the usable items and materials and use them to support the Habitat for Humanity effort.”
Habitat ReStore works like other charitable nonprofit retail outlets. Donations of new or saleable used building materials are accepted at the store. Some of those items are used to build Habitat houses and the rest are sold to the public at up to an 80% savings off the retail price. Profits from the store also support the building of Habitat homes. By recycling usable building materials, Habitat is able to help many people who may not be able to afford the materials on their own.
“Habitat for Humanity is coming into a new world… we′re expanding into many different areas, beyond home building,” McCabe said. “One example is ′Brush with Kindness′, a program where we go in and paint the homes of those in need….”
McCabe expects to make as many as 30 to 40 trips from Pueblo down to Cuchara to fill the truck and take building materials back to Habitat ReStore. “Our current economy is helping to support these kinds of efforts,” McCabe said, “More important is the fact that we keep stuff out of the landfill… and give it another life.”
Habitat ReStore is located at 2313 S. Prairie in Pueblo.
Bob Reece is the Editor of CucharaValley.org, a daily blog about life, events and the people of the Cuchara Valley. An accomplished Web Designer and Marketing Specialist, his passion is all about letting folks know more about our little corner of Colorado.
