New Living Green Building + Home in Rice Village had it's July 4 grand opening and the city breathed a collective, cleaner sigh.
It's where Wagner Hardware used to be but they are fighting a snobbery issue!
“We’re up against this misconception that green is for rich people,” says Jeff Kaplan, one of the partners and the go-to guy for the store’s overall concept. “Our job is to get the cost down on green products and make them accessible. We’re focused on health and design.”
When you walk in to New Living the atmosphere is so relaxing! The open floor plan and muted color scheme leads to the line of Novoc paint, which is toxin- and odor-free, naturalorganic mattresses, green cleaning supplies, reclaimed wood flooring, even an environmentally friendly playhouse for kids.
“In a way, we’re the evolution of a hardware store,” Kaplan says. “It’s a practical place. I think the most frivolous thing we sell is a candle.” (but it's soy and smoke free)
The new Rice Village business has good bones for its broad mission.
For 60 years, the space at 6111 Kirby was home to Wagner Hardware, a homegrown chain founded by Eugene Wagner in 1938. Those were the days when hardware stores were community gathering places, catering to commercial business on weekdays and neighborhood folks on the weekends.
“We used to sell refrigerators, lighting and fireplace fixtures,” says Nancy Abernathy, Eugene Wagner’s daughter. “Now there are stores that sell lighting only. We just didn’t have places like that back then.”
At the height of the business, there were five Wagner Hardwares open at the same time: Palm Center, Highland Village, Lantern Lane, Bellaire and Kirby. Each was calibrated to the specific needs of area homeowners, with plumbing and lighting fixtures that reflected the age of the houses. Of course places like Highland Village has all but kicked out all of the locally owned mom and pops for the big rent payers. Greed is not good in this case!
Her Dad always liked to put his hardware stores near grocery stores, Abernathy adds, because he thought more people would wander in if they were already out and shopping.
As a kid, Abernathy didn’t spend a lot of time in the family business. “I was a girl,” she says with a shrug. But she remembers that her dad always had a hard time closing on time: “We never turned anyone away.”
Abernathy left Houston as a young adult but made her way back after a divorce left her in need of a job. She started working in the Bellaire store full -time in 1989, overseeing charge accounts and payroll. At that point, her brother, Hank, was pretty much running things. When Hank died about four years ago, Abernathy closed the Bellaire store and relocated to the Kirby location.
Then Jeff Kaplan came along.
At first, he didn’t tell her his big plan. He took over some floor space in November 2007 and started selling environmentally friendly products, testing the waters with traditionally minded Wagner customers. As Abernathy fantasized about closing the last family hardware store, Kaplan and his business partners dreamed about opening a new kind of business that would house merchandise, office space and a common area for special events. KISMIT!!
When Kaplan finally told Abernathy what he wanted to do, she was thrilled. Still is.
“Jeff has a total open mind,” Abernathy says. “He wants feedback, and he’s willing to make changes.”
But there were obstacles.
For one, Hurricane Ike ripped through town last September, delaying Abernathy’s closing plans by more than a month. Then the economy tanked. And finances were a constant concern.
“I didn’t know if we had enough money,” says Kaplan, 30, who describes himself as a serial entrepreneur. He owns small pieces of a handful of other local businesses, including Caroline Collective, Beaver’s Ice House and Trentino Gelato. But with the build-out of New Living in late 2008, he put more on the line than ever before.
Kaplan and his partners raised money. They got loans from Green Bank. And the people they hired to design and build the new store — including architect Brian Malarkey and Forrest Custom Construction — pretty much worked for cost.
In the end, the 
build-out cost less thanunder $1 million, says Kaplan, and added an upstairs loft with office space for local green businesses was added, along withand a demo kitchen downstairs. It also gave the business a chance to practice what it preached.
New Living reused wood from shelving in the old stores and retrofitted the original light fixtures with lights twice as efficient as the old fluorescent florescent bulbs. The original floor was made of recycled metal mixed with concrete, and New Living recycled that recycled floor. The old Wagner Hardware sign still hangs out front, and a number of objects from the old store have made their way into the new environment.
Abernathy is amazed at the transformation.
“They took a filthy store, 60 years of grime and dust, and stripped it down,” she says. “We used to joke about the Grand Canyon aisles. They’d just go up and up. It looks so different now.”
Despite a delayed grand opening, the store has been open for months with a dedicated staff, including Jennifer Touchet — who said she’d be the chief operating officer if New Living had titles like that — and Sara Cooney, who considered her title for a moment and said “visual coordinator.” Lewis Caufman, the only employee “recycled” from Wagner Hardware, is New Living’s green- product specialist and just became passed a U.S. Green Building Council exam that certifies him as a green building professional.
Customers are already in place, as well.
Ashleigh Guadagnolo is a regular. After she and her husband decided on a green remodel for their Old Braeswood home, they bought a lot of materials from New Living, including NovocOVOC paint and a green staining product for their hardwood floors.
“I have two small children crawling around on the floor and did not want 2,400 square feet of toxic stain,” Guadagnolo says.
She’s happy with the results — and with New Living — though the remodel wasn’t without incident.
“We learned that contractors say ‘great’ when you tell them you want a green remodel, but the subcontractor situation melts down. They want to use what they know, what’s fastest and cheapest. These green products don’t dry or stain the same; they can be less forgiving.”
When subcontractors laid the first coat of floor stain and it streaked, New Living actually sent to Guadagnolo’s home an employee who got on the phone with the manufacturer and figured out what went wrong. Today, she says, the stain looks great.
Kaplan and company understand that there’s a learning curve with any new business — for owners and customers. They consider New Living a work in progress.
“The people who have already found us say, ‘Thank God you’re here,’ ” Touchet says. “I think people are glad to not have to sort though a lot of junk.”
For Kaplan, whose enthusiasm for the business often veers toward the intense, the sky’s the limit. He wants to hold eco-socials, host product demonstrations and offer yoga classes at New Living.
“We’re selling essential goods,” he says, “and people are starving for community.
(Most of this story is from Maggie Galehouse from the Chronicle, Great Story MAGGIE!!)
Monday, April 9, 2012 at 10:47AM 
