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After it was announced that SCRAP, SF’s beloved nonprofit creative reuse center, was losing its home last year, the arts community was thrown into turmoil. Where were crafty San Franciscans eager for recycled materials for their projects, budding creators diving into new worlds via SCRAP’s voluminous workshops, and gallery-goers slavering for more of the center’s fabulously sustainable art shows to do?
During its 50-year-history, Scrap—aka the Scroungers’ Center for Reusable Art Parts—had operated entirely in borrowed or leased space, and for the last 25 years was housed in a San Francisco Unified School District warehouse in Bayview. After voters approved a fund for improvements at SFUSD sites, SCRAP’s 7,000 square-foot space was slated to become a central kitchen for making student lunches.
Then, a break: When a 26,000-square-foot, two-story building became available on Industrial Street nearby, SCRAP snapped it up for $5.3 million and purchased its first forever home. Launching the ship took months, but on August 15, a grand opening celebration welcomed the community inside the Depot. Even before crossing the threshold of the front door, it was obvious to all that the new space offers immediate advantages and significant potential for expansion.
More than double the size of the previous location, the new SCRAP Depot boasts a fenced-in parking lot, an outdoor dirt patch that will be landscaped with drought-resistant plants, and more room for sorting and displaying the 1000 pounds of materials—donated by local individuals, businesses, and institutions across the Bay Area—that employees and volunteers process each day. The storage space for donations has jumped, allowing for accepting a greater volume of items; up to 100 tons more per year.
Eventually, workspaces for employees will go from pinched to pleasant, and classrooms for workshops and special events will expand the programs already available. Two Teacher Giveaway days continue, along with arts education classes, community workshops, and indoor signage will remain hand-drawn in blue Sharpie. A $7.5 million capital campaign continues as plans develop.
When Anne Marie Theilen and Ruth Asawa founded SCRAP in 1976, they might never have imagined it would become a grand, vital resource for public school art teachers and students, local professional artist, and the Bay Area community. Their mission was simple: repurposing discarded materials instead of tossing them in landfills. In a new home, the power of their vision and SCRAP’s creative approach to nearly intractable problems live on and stand to grow.
