Available for renovation?

From the mailbag:

"I've been thinking about how to deal with this for a long time because
there are just so many of these places rotting away. Some of them are
spectacular too; its a damn shame that nobody is doing anything with
them. . . Which brings me to my point. I want to try to buy one of
these places myself and make it useful again. My idea is to pay for
as little as humanly possible, try to salvage as much as I can from
the original building, make use of reclaimed materials, and throw
build parties to try to get some free labor for the heavy stuff. I
basically view it as an art project I can live in for a while and then
sell to a family that can really use it. I have some fairly handy
friends who I could enlist if we had a place to work with as well.

It seems like you have good readership on your blog, and maybe some
idea of how to go about acquiring one of these properties so I thought
you'd be interested. I need to get in touch with the right people in
the city govt and basically just get out the word that this is going
on. I'm not rolling in money or anything, but I'd be able to put up
some cash for this venture, and I'd love to find some other people who
might want to contribute time money or materials in exchange for
equity in the finished product.

Any thoughts?

-Clay"