Habitat for Humanity, Anyone?
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Our Old North neighborhood was recently approached by Denark
Construction about the possibility of them putting a Habitat
for Humanity home in the neighborhood. At last month's meeting, your
board voted to investigate the possibility further and appointed a committee
consisting of Tomica Miller, David Vogel, David Palmer and Eric
Andrews to meet with the Denark people for further discussions.
This committee recently met with Frank Rothermel, the president of Denark and Terri Adams, a contract administrator with Denark who is the point person for their Habitat construction. Mr. Rothermel is also the president of the Knoxville area Habitat for Humanity group. Denark is committed to building a Habitat home this year and they would like to put it in or near a historical area of Knoxville. A good friend of preservation and architect, Randall DeFord, has drawn some plans for a home that would meet the requirements for a Habitat home that would meet the requirements for a Habitat home and be acceptable visually to be placed in an area such as ours. One of the points which appears to be a sticky one is the use of Hardy Plank as the siding of the house. Mr. Rothermel feels that Hardy Plank is the siding of the future for Habitat homes rather than the presently used vinyl siding. While we certainly won't argue the benefits of just about anything over the use of vinyl, there is some question as to its being proper for use within an H-1 overlay district. Everyone does agree, however, that the use of Hardy Plank in adjacent areas of the neighborhood would be acceptable. At this time, the situation is still up in the air. In order to build a Habitat home, we need to identify and acquire a lot within the area generally bounded by Central, Woodland and Broadway. The lot needs to be fairly small since the Habitat homes are fairly small, and , most important, the lot needs to be cheap (free!). If you know anyone who owns a lot within this area that might need a great tax write-off (and at this time of the year, who doesn't?), have them contact any member of the committee listed above. Neighbor Tom Brechko has volunteered to take on the unenviable task of going through the city records to try and identify someone who might fit our criteria that we can approach to donate a lot for this worthy cause. At our neighborhood meeting March 29, Frank Rothermel, Terri Adams and a Habitat for Humanity home owner were present, and they shared their thoughts on the benefits of Habitat for Humanity, presented pictures of other Habitat homes and literature on Hardy Plank, and passed around a piece of Hardy Plank for everyone to inspect (we found that it withstands human bites and tastes pretty bad). The presentation was well- received by those present at the meeting, and the consensus was that the neighborhood would proceed with trying to locate a lot outside the H-1 overlay (as discussed above) as the next step in this process. |