The Creative Repurposing of Plywood From Boarded-up Stores
Wood that businesses once used to protect their property is finding a second life in projects from tiny houses to public art.
An artist who goes by the name Cavier paints over a boarded up Puma store in Manhattan in June 2020. As boards that covered storefronts are taken down, organizations are finding ways to reuse them, from preserving the public art to building food storage facilities.
Photographer: Spencer Platt/Getty Images
In the weeks after George Floyd’s death, Jenny Kedward remembers driving past street after street of boarded-up storefronts in St. Paul, Minnesota, and its surrounding suburbs. “I knew that as soon as people felt more comfortable, all that plywood was going to come down and I didn’t know what they were going to do with it,” said Kedward, board president of the nonprofit ReUSE Minnesota.
Much of it, she feared, would end up in the landfill — unless her organization could get to it first. In June, with the help of the University of Minnesota and other community organizations, her group set up the Twin Cities Plywood Rescue program to collect wood from businesses and donate it to nonprofits. By mid-June, dozens of volunteers began putting up posters, calling businesses and driving around commercial districts in search of used boards.