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Building Affordable Dreams in Kansas City
The Softwood Forest Products Buyer
By Clare Adrian
Cash Bargain’s Wally Binney, flanked by co-owner sister, Betsy Calcara and
daughter, Erin.
Kansas City, Kan.—The American
dream comes in all shapes and sizes
with reveries of home ownership held
high on the list of aspirations. For immigrants
that settle in the Kansas City
area, the dream is more frequently an
affordable reality than if they had to purchase
all new materials to build a starter
home. For over 75 years, Cash Bargain
Builders Surplus has been supplying
discounted building materials to immigrants,
landlords, the retrofitters and
rehabbers, section eight housing
Manager Beverly Boldez, has worked at the company for 21 years, and
Barry Findley has been in the door department for 30 years.
renters, anyone at the lower end of the
economic spectrum wanting to save
what they can while getting the supplies
they need.
With some variability, depending on
what is available, the inner city-based
company is consistently well-stocked
with anything and everything to rehab,
repair or remodel a home or property,
according to Wally Binney, who co-owns
the business with his sister, Betsy
Calcara. An assortment of surplus offgrade
lumber, damaged doors, used
Binney purchases 270,000 board feet per year of No. 2 or better,
untreated dimensional wood.
windows, off-grade sidings and plywood, mis-tinted paint, oriented strandboard, 7/16
waferboard, Yellow Pine, plywoods and siding are forklifted into a 60,000 square foot
warehouse for customers to peruse. “We’re at the mercy of what’s out there,” said
Binney, who is on the phone continuously with brokers. “We get it in and advertise.”
An affiliation with Do-It-Best Hardware fills in the gaps with a consistent full line of hardware,
plumbing and electrical.
Dimensional lumber is the most cost effective framing material anyway, so there’s no
need to compromise the compressive strength of the skeletal structure. Binney purchases
270,000 board feet per year of No. 2 & Better, untreated dimensional wood, usually
Canadian SPF from reputable distributors, such as Bluelinx out of their Denver office
and Cedar Creek in Tulsa.
“Somebody’s got to be here,” said Binney, who, along with his sister, Betsy, has expanded
the business to four locations in a circumference around the greater Kansas City
The back warehouse stores economy grade studs,
available in 1x4-8 ft., No. 3.
DURGIN
CROWELL
TRIED AND TRUE.
Manufacturers of Quality Eastern White Pine
area, all in depressed neighborhoods,
one in northeast Kansas City,
Independence, Raytown and Kansas
City, Kansas, built up over the past 15
years. The company motto is “good stuff
cheap,” in 75 years of meeting needs of
the underserved economic level communities.
The customer demographic is
largely Hispanics, African-Americans
and Vietnamese. When Binney’s grandfather
Walter Harriman started the business,
it was mostly Polish and Italian.
Harriman needed a bit of turf to stack
the lumber he and brother Whitney were
accumulating by tearing down buildings
in Kansas City. It was 1932, during the
depths of the Depression when he bid on
the original plot that occupies a city block
facing Truman Road in the northeast
section of the city. “The seller wanted
$2,000, but grandfather offered the most,
a grand total of $600. He had saved the
Continued on page 27
A treated dimension lumber store is situated outside
in the lumberyard compound.
• 30 Million BD FT of Production
• 630,000 BD FT of Dry Kiln Capacity
• Inline Moisture Detectors
• Waco 30 XL Moulder
• Modernized Cut Up Shop
DURGIN & CROWELL LUMBER CO.
231 Fisher Corner Rd.
New London, NH 03257
P: 603-763-2860
F: 603-763-4498
www.durginandcrowell.com