Camp Small helps — or helped — local artists turn trash into treasure.

After a massive wood fire Thursday night lit up the sky at a wood recycling plant near Baltimore’s Woodberry neighborhood, Jennifer Goold, executive director of the Neighborhood Design Center, hopes Baltimore City will reinvest in the five-acre site.

Goold’s organization partners with residents and local leaders “to build equity” through community-led design to improve area parks, revitalize commercial districts, develop environmental strategies and make public spaces more sustainable.

Many of these residents relied on the wood from Camp Small to create benches, stools, mulch and other projects used for pocket parks, playgrounds, vacant lots, forest patches, urban farms and other beautification efforts across Baltimore City.

“It’s so rare that we can have real ‘win-wins’ in our city,” Goold said. “Camp Small turns what many people view as trash and makes treasure for our community partners. The local arts and design communities have fully integrated Camp Small’s offerings into our projects. The Camp Small team’s creativity, vision, and thoughtfulness align with grassroots projects happening across the city.”

Camp Small has become a national model for building local circular economies with city governments.

“The concept, activities and outcomes of Camp Small are remarkable and are truly worthy of our deep support towards reopening when safe,” Goold said. “The fire at Camp Small brings the value of this team, the resources that they provide, and the role they play in Baltimore into focus.”

Fells Point resident William Earley has been collecting firewood at Camp Small since 1979 and hopes the city will keep investing in the site because of its recycling efforts.

As a Camp Small Firewood Club member, Earley said he can cut one load of wood per month for personal use for a yearly fee of approximately $60. He has used the wood for projects at his daughter’s office space in Butchers Hill and created two desktop shelves and an above-ground gardener’s planting bed in her backyard using rough sawn white oak.

Earley, a retired builder who specialized in the renovation-restoration of old buildings, suggests that the city invest in a fire suppression system that mirrors the systems on snow-making equipment on mountains throughout the U.S.

“It is a much simpler system in that high-pressure water runs from buried water lines in the ground up through 30’ steel pipe masts, water nozzles mounted on tripods, etc,” Early said, “It will come on automatically in certain affected zones.”

Bel Air resident Shannon Rogers hosts a podcast around the lumber industry and has featured Camp Small with yard master Shaun Preston about his initiatives and urban forestry. Rogers also visits Camp Small as a consumer woodworker and is adept at turning waste into a usable product.

Rogers said, ironically, some good can come from the fire as it will raise awareness about the positive impact Camp Small is making.

“It’s heartbreaking at first but I am trying to put a positive spin on this,” Rogers said. “It’s a shame all of the stumps and trunks all burned but it’s not like there’s not more coming. Now, they have a blank slate and I think they can probably do a better job than they’ve done before.”

Neena Maizels could see the fire from her home in Hampden and is among several area residents who support the re-opening of Camp Small. Maizels appreciates what Camp Small delivers to the local community.

“I think it serves an incredible purpose,” Maizels said. “There are a lot of woodworker friends who use that wood for their art. I feel like I would want it to reopen. It’s been a really dry season. How long has it been around and how many fires have there been?”

Clipper Mill resident Robinson Miller said he doesn’t believe Camp Small is a threat for further fires and lauds its impact on the community.

“I think it’s pretty safe,” Miller said. “I am not too worried about it. It was sort of an act of God situation.”

Lexi and Brian Haedrich were walking their dog around Clipper Mill Saturday and told The Baltimore Sun that they are not worried about the impact of the fire. The Hampden residents said they only noticed there was a fire by a helicopter circling overhead.

“We just smelled it yesterday,” Lexi Headrich said. “There was a little bit of traffic on Falls Road. It only affected the area on the night of the fire.”

Briony Hynson, deputy director of the Neighborhood Design Center, appreciates Camp Small for offering everything from mulch and lumber to “beautiful hardwood benches” and climbing materials for urban playscapes. Many of the community members partner with the organization to design and build local green spaces. These partners rely on the products from Camp Small to make local public space improvements viable and environmentally sustainable.

“Camp Small is small and mighty — their team has developed innovative ways to integrate environmentally responsible urban forestry practices and provide valuable lumber products for community projects,” Hynson said. “We love to see initiatives like this that take to heart the environmental, social, health and economic opportunities in managing something as common as the lifecycle of a city tree. … Local landscape architects, community leaders and local artists have all learned to make great use of this phenomenal asset right here in Baltimore.”

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