The John S. and James L. Knight Foundation handed out its 2016 Cities Challenge grants on Tuesday, and a big one is coming to northwest Indiana.
"Steel City Salvage" will be created by Chicago-based Delta Institute to allow specially-trained demolition contractors tear down abandoned houses in the city of Gary and get the lumber and other materials ready for re-use. The project was granted $385,000 for the project.
Eve Pytel works on the project. She says they found some of the oldest houses in Gary were made out of the best lumber.
"What we found was that because when these homes were built – most of them built before 1940 — that they have very high-quality lumber in them," Pytel says. "And this is important because furnituremakers, designers, craftspeople, even artisans that are in Gary now, really desire this as a feedstock for their work."
The Knight Foundation created the Cities Challenge in 2014 to follow up on the Knight brothers' mission: to make communities in which it once owned newspapers more vibrant places to live and work.