Reuse / Rebuild : Innovation + Job News

Most people wouldn’t look at local government agencies and see big cash, but that’s exactly what Greg Berry, founder and CEO of Municibid, has done. While serving on the Pottstown council, the former CEO of Jonestown-based PointSolve discovered municipalities were losing considerable money by putting their out-of-use items up for "sealed bid." His online competitive bidding platform currently serves 800 government agencies across the country; its annual merchandizing value is growing 300 percent every year. He's looking to hire experienced sales reps to approach a largely untapped market of 90,000 agencies selling $2.5 billion of merchandise annually.

"[Pottstown council] would sell an old police car worth $3,000 for about $300, then we struggled to come up with $1000 to pay for something else," says Berry. "Very few people knew the items were for sale. This same problem was, and still is, affecting tens of thousands of local government agencies."

When Municibid customers trade their classified ads for online bidding, they recover considerable money on valuable items, including police vans, tractors, walky-talkies, cafeteria tables, plate makers and traffic signal heads—even a plane recovered from a drug trafficking operation. The small town of Mansfield, Maine exceeded expectations for their annual auction by $85,000. Baton-Rouge, Louisiana made $125,000 in their first round. Municibid has been reeling in an average of 25 new clients per month and Berry believes they’ll reach 5,000 clients in five years.

"Bidding used to be limited to those in the know," says Berry. "Now, more and more, we’re seeing parents buying cars for their teenagers through Municibid. We have found a way to better engage the general public."

Source: Greg Berry, Municibid
Writer: Dana Henry

For the past decade, the Elkins Park East commercial corridor, home of the once thriving Ashbourne Market, struggled to retain businesses. With help from Weavers Way and considerable investment from the Cheltenham community, Creekside Co-op will open where Ashbourne once stood. They are hiring a financial controller and several store positions.

“The Ashbourne Market operated for over 30 years and was a destination for many folks from all around Philadelphia looking for quality food,” Max Minkoff, Creekside Board President, says.  “We hope that Creekside will be an anchor for the great businesses [of Elkins Park East] and boost the entire area.”

Previous attempts to reopen the Ashbourne site were less than successful. The comercial district, however, is revitalizing with a newly beautified High School Park and several emerging businesses including Shakti Yoga, The Stitching Room, Fresh From Provence, and The Whistle Stop Café.

Creekside Co-op will operate as a full service grocer offering local, gourmet, and all-natural selections. Most co-ops attempt a few hundred memberships, but CreekSide already has 1,500 members, who provide over $200,000 in equity and $330,000 in loans to the new market. In recent years, Mariposa expanded, Weavers Way opened a second store and  Fishtown organized a co-op, proving cooperative neighborhood food stores are succeeding in Philadelphia. CreekSide Co-op opens mid-November with a grand opening celebration in January.

“Turning an empty building dragging down the neighborhood into a thriving, tax-paying business is something that is easy to get behind,” Minkoff says. “Some are motivated by the opportunity to buy local, quality food, some by the ability to have a food market within walking distance, some by revitalizing the neighborhood, and some by increasing property values, but we can all get together and create this business that makes sense for these and so many more reasons.”

Source: Max Minkoff, Creekside Co-op
Writer: Dana Henry

The foliage blossoming from the roof of the Shake Shack at 20th and Sansom in Center City is the work of Mario Gentile and his company, Shift_Design. Their portable 'living tile,' aka green roof tile, offers urban homes and storefronts a DIY method of adding rain-absorbing shrubbery to any impervious surface, be it a concrete patio or any of the countless flat roofs in Philly. Their latest edition, the Fairmount Living Tile, will be demoed at the Design Philadelphia event, Up and Dirty.

“A green roof for the masses is not easily accessible yet,” Gentile says. “The costs associated are exorbitant. We wanted to solve larger issues—stormwater management, heat island effect, and air quality—by offering an accessible, well designed living tile kit that makes it easy for the end user. No need for a structural engineer, landscape architect, contractor, roofer, installer, etc.”

The tile, a rectangular aluminum tray, includes specially formulated Gaia soil, which is half the weight of typical soil, but absorbs twice its weight in water. According to the company’s structural assessment, Gaia soil can be supported by the roof of a row home during maximum snowfall, but it’s so light weight it easily blows away. Shift_Design includes burlap casing, made from La Colombe coffee sacks, to mimic natural ground floor covering and keep the soil in place.

Shift_Design was founded in 2008 when Gentile—who currently teaches biomimicry architecture at UPenn—pulled a few of his former Temple design students for a residential rain barrel project. The company has since graduated from Good Company Ventures as experts in elegantly designed passive stormwater management technologies—ie raised gardens, living walls, rainwater collection etc. Their work is installed at Shake Shack, Urban Outfitters Headquarters, and countless homes across the city.

Sure, it looks pretty, but greening also serves an impending urban need. Sixty percent of Philly’s sewers are “combined" sewers meaning they carry both sewage and rain water. As climate change increases the east coast’s annual rainfall, combined sewers carry the risk of overflow, creating a potential citywide sanitation hazard. The Philadelphia Water Department has proposed a $2 billion plan to catch excess water before it hits the sewer using greening and other passive technologies—it’s a lot cheaper than building new pipes.

In addition to stormwater reduction, green walls and roofs support dwindling pollinators, remediate air and water pollution and lower household energy consumption by regulating temperature. In their market segment study, Shift_Design found east coast cities, including Philly, New York and Baltimore, have a profusion of impervious surface ripe for alteration.

“Flat roofs are abundant and they’re doing nothing for these cities,” Gentile says. “Adding just a little bit of greening, a little bit of life, to your home reduces stress. If many households do it, the added benefits [for the city] are incredible.”

Gentile, who has a track record of hiring his employees directly from Philly schools including UPenn, Temple and UArts, will also launch a kickstarter campaign for manufacturing toolage during Design Philadelphia. With advanced equipment, Gentile says, Shift_Design can increase production and lower the price point even further while adding a few green manufacturing jobs to our area.

Source: Mario Gentile, Shift_Design
Writer: Dana Henry