PHILADELPHIA (KYW Newsradio) — The Philly Reclaim salvage shop in Tacony is closing on Monday, and all of its contents are being given away for free — with a catch.
The owner of the warehouse sold the building, so Philly Reclaim must turn over its keys. Everything must be cleared out by Monday, which is why it’s all free. But, patrons must haul the items away themselves.
“Cleaning out a 20,000-square-foot wharehouse, you just keep finding more stuff,” said Greg Trainor, executive director of the Philadelphia Community Corps, the reuse nonprofit that ran the Philly Reclaim store. “All of the cabinets, all of the wood paneling, the wall there, the curio cabinet, that curio cabinet, the space heater.
“Even in the last week or so, when everything was free, we had about 50 vehicles in our parking lot at one time,” he continued. “You see truckload after truckload leaving the parking lot.”
The Philadelphia Community Corps deconstructs buildings. Those who hire the nonprofit to do the work can get tax deductions if they donate the architectural elements to the nonprofit. That’s where the reclaim store came in — keeping the materials out of the landfill and selling them to the public at low cost.
Now without a warehouse, the nonprofit is planning to sell the materials from the deconstruction sites.
“When we deconstruct buildings, we sell as much as possible from the work site,” added Trainor. “Usually we sell about 10% to 25% of it from the work site, and then whatever is left over comes here to Philly Reclaim. Now we will just be doing the work site part of it.”
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The high warehouse rents in the region are preventing the store from immediately reopening at another location.
“It’s possible that Philly Reclaim can come back in the future, but for now, for the foreseeable future, we are closing down,” he said.