CARY - A new nonprofit will open a sizeable scrap material store in a town of Cary building. The Cary Creative Center, similar to Durham's Scrap Exchange, will have a limited opening in about two weeks.

Betty Dassau says the group has assembled 10 tons of assorted material and $10,000 funding from a major corporate donor.

"We're all about collecting and redirecting materials that would have been destined for the landfill, and putting them into the hands of creative people," said Dassau, who learned the scrap business from the Scrap Exchange's Ann Woodward.

The business will open in an 1,800-square-foot warehouse near Town Hall, which the Cary Town Council agreed last week to lease. Cary is renting 155 Wilkinson Ave. to the nonprofit for close to market price, said Downtown Manager Ed Gawf.

"It was a building that we had that was basically vacant," Gawf said. "I was looking for ways to occupy it to support the downtown."

Dassau anticipates the new business will need an annual budget of about $150,000 and should employ four people full-time by the end of the year. She hopes the business will sustain itself with sales of its material. For now, the nonprofit is seeking about $60,000 of funding.

The warehouse will be a repository for art supplies, materials and miscellanea that should be useful to "homeschoolers, parents, children, artists, senior citizens, day cares, theater groups and PTAs," she said. The group accepts and curates a wide variety of donations, from cardboard tubes to videotapes.

"When artists look at things, we look at things differently," she said.