1/18/2013

The Globe Elevator wood reclamation project will be featured on “Ax Men,” the History Channel's reality TV series, beginning Sunday, Jan. 27, 2013, at 8 p.m. Central.

“This show will put Superior on the map and, hopefully, help us keep 5 million board feet of irreplaceable old-growth wood out of the landfill,” said David Hozza, CEO of Wisconsin Woodchuck LLC, the local company that is carefully dismantling the historic grain elevator.

Adding a team of urban salvagers to the show brings a new and different perspective to the lumber business. The typical “Ax Men” participants are traditional loggers, who cut down green trees in the Pacific Northwest, and river loggers, who retrieve sunken logs from swamps in the Southeast.

Another difference between the other crews and Wisconsin Woodchuck is that the Woodchucks’ boss is a woman. Hozza’s partner is Judy Peres, a former newspaper reporter and editor from Chicago. A Hollywood producer, Liz Finelli of Original Productions, discovered Peres last summer when the producer was surfing the Internet in search of new cast members for “Ax Men.”

“Liz liked the idea of loggers who don’t cut down any more trees,” said Peres, who serves as president of Wisconsin Woodchuck and CEO of its marketing arm, Old Globe Reclaimed Wood. “I think she also liked the fact that we had a couple of strong female characters.” (Woodchuck’s yard and office manager is Annette Tracy.)

Hozza and Peres started the ambitious task of salvaging the Globe’s 6 million board feet of old-growth Eastern White Pine in 2006. They had reclaimed less than 20 percent of the extinct lumber when the recession hit, drastically slowing demand for high-end building materials. Now their mortgage lender is threatening to foreclose.

While “Ax Men” documents their struggle to survive on television, Peres and Hozza are also waging their fight in real life.

“The Globe Elevator contains an incredibly valuable resource,” said Peres, “the biggest known supply of old-growth Eastern White Pine in the world. This is all that’s left of the magnificent pine forests that once covered this part of the country. You can’t get old-growth white pine anymore, unless you recycle it from existing structures.”

Hozza, a former investment banker and urban planner, said the bank is unlikely to reclaim the wood when it calls in its loan. “Most likely they’ll sell the site to the highest bidder and the buildings will be demolished. The wood will either be landfilled or burned.”

Wisconsin Woodchuck will hold a press conference at 7:30 p.m. Sunday, Jan. 27, to announce a plan to save the wood that remains in the Globe Elevator – an estimated 5 million board feet, the equivalent of about 20,000 trees, or more than 40 acres of forest. The press conference will be followed at 8 p.m. by a premiere party with “Ax Men” cast members. Both events will take place at VIP, 1201 Tower Ave., in Superior.

• Ground broken for new Superior SuperOne store - 5/21/2013
• Magnetation secures expansion financing - 5/21/2013
• Great Lakes vessel traffic down sharply - 5/20/2013
• Meeting will address potential LNG plant - 5/20/2013
• Family-owned Rice Lake firms work together at opening - 5/20/2013