Work record / Development / Greensburg, Kansas / Questions answered
Greensburg, Kansas: questions answered
What people ask me about Greensburg, Kansas, and my answers. The project itself has its own page.
How many manufacturers ended up in the Greensburg build?
Dozens of manufacturers and vendors, with DuPont as lead sponsor. And it was not building products alone. When you rebuild a town the reach goes far beyond construction: cars, clothing, food trucks, food stands. The town was wiped out and the cameras were present, so plenty of vendors wanted their names attached for the press. That is one reason a single sponsor per category mattered. What the homes needed set the shape of the build, and who wanted airtime did not.
Which donated product came closest to failing the fit test against the surrounding design?
DuPont's hurricane glass. They gave us exterior railings made of pure windproof glass, very contemporary. On a technical level it made sense, since the town had just been hit by a tornado. In practice it was a little ridiculous. It had no place in Kansas, and working it into the look of the buildings was hard. We had to push to get it onto the commercial buildings.
How did sponsors feel about where their products finally went?
They did not care much. Their aim was to show the product, and they judged the donation by the impressions it earned on the show. Some of it was never used. That did not bother them as long as the impressions came.
Did the high-performance standard last after the rebuild?
I find it hard to say and I would rather be straight about that. Much of the rebuild was never finished. Some common spaces were done. The homes were harder, and the work stalled once payment broke down. About a year and a half in, we turned the homes we had begun over to the general contractor and walked away. That is not how we wanted it to end. My lesson: a high-performance standard holds up only as well as the payment structure beneath it.
How did you bring manufacturers into the program?
I pitched the cameras. They wanted their materials on screen. Wrap a house in a maker's printed house wrap and every house on the block carries that name on national television. To them it was ad placement on the shows.
Who controlled how visible the manufacturers would be?
Not me. It came down to camera placement, and Discovery Channel and the related shows handled it very well, so it was never a concern for us. It was obvious. That was the deal.
How did you coordinate products across the sponsors and the construction teams?
With one sponsor in each category, a lot of the organizing took care of itself, because no two companies were chasing the same spot in a house. Each product still arrived on its maker's schedule and spec. We had to make every one work inside a single design, and install it at the stage the crews were filming.