Thirteen-year-olds P.J. Rausch-Moran, left and Francesca Merrick, right, from the Greater Ithaca Activities Center Summer Conservation Corps program, get instruction from Erich Kruger of Finger Lakes ReUse on how to remove difficult embedded nails as the building recycling takes down an old barn Monday in Fall Creek. / SIMON WHEELER / STAFF PHOTOS
Instead of blue jeans and green Greater Ithaca Activities Center Conservation Corps T-shirts, Susan Cosentini thought they should wear red capes and blue shorts like Superman.
She suggested this wardrobe change to eight 13-year-olds who were taking apart two old barns on Aurora Street Monday afternoon. The barns, which Cosentini owns, were being dismantled and salvaged to make way for three new sustainable homes to be built on-site.
“Basically, you people are the change agents in the world,” she said to the group of students. “I will be dead when the benefit of all this starts to happen, so hopefully you and your children will benefit from it. By working here today, you are saving the world.”
Finger Lakes ReUse teamed up with the GIAC Summer Conservation Corps to take down the barns and salvage the building materials. Then, Cosentini’s New Earth Living LLC will build The Aurora Dwelling Circle in place of the barns.
The dwelling circle will be made up of one three-bedroom unit and two two-bedroom units, Cosentini said. The theme throughout the whole project, she said, is sustainability.
“We are recycling the materials from the barns, and then using the space to build houses that will hardly use any fossil fuels whatsoever to heat and cool,” she said. “Almost (all) of the landscape will be edible, people will share resources. This is going to be the new paradigm.”
Property owner Susan Cosentini talks to the 13-year-olds in the Greater Ithaca Activities Center Summer Conservation Corps program about her plans to redevelop the space around her home on Aurora Street in the Fall Creek neighborhood. The youth were working with Finger Lakes ReUse to disassemble the old barns on the property.
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