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CONCORD, N.H. A New Hampshire group organized to help people flooded out of their homes in May is asking for volunteers and donations to help 200 families repair or replace their homes. Daniel Steinbach -- who chairs the fund-raising effort -- says 25 of the families still are not back in their homes seven months after the disaster. The New Hampshire Statewide Disaster Recovery Steering Committee is holding a fund-raiser next Thursday in Concord to raise money. Steinbach says they need money to buy materials as well as volunteers to do the repairs. He says the families have exhausted their own resources. Deb Gaudette of Goffstown said she had enough insurance to pay for a new foundation but no money to put a modular home onto it. She said her mother loaned her the money for a downpayment but she doesn't have enough to pay the balance and get the modular home moved onto the foundation.
The foundation is in and workers have begun framing the first home in Gray Goose Estates, a new subdivision in Westbrook. It's a 1,400-square-foot cape with a base price of $204,000, roughly $50,000 below the median home price in Cumberland County. That price point is no accident. The builder, Windham-based Custom Built Homes of Maine, had initially planned "move-up" homes, with garages, paved driveways, gas fireplaces and other extras that would sell for $270,000 or so. But as the housing market slowed and potential customers had trouble selling existing homes, the builder redesigned the project to make it more affordable for first-time homebuyers. The strategy is working. Five of the 20 homes in the first phase went under contract quickly. Cutting amenities is one way southern Maine homebuilders are weathering the national downturn.
Thursday's record-breaking windstorm slammed Vashon Island with a vengeance, toppling hundreds of trees that crashed into homes, pulled down miles of power lines and left roads closed, driveways blocked and some people shivering in their homes for days. By early Friday morning, the entire Island was without power, and trees and branches were strewn everywhere, making the storm, by some measures, the worst since the famous Columbus Day storm in 1962. One person was injured when a tree crashed onto his modular home on S.W. Cemetery Road and 110th Avenue S.W.; the man, who was not identified, was taken by ambulance to a hospital, according to Mike Kirk, a spokesman for Vashon Island Fire & Rescue. And a chimney fire broke out in a home on the 9300 block of S.W. Bank Road Saturday night, leaving the owners — newlyweds Mike Stroble and Krystal Willingham-Stroble — dazed and temporarily homeless but grateful to the firefighters.
A Las Vegas home builder and developer is buying the century-old former Third Presbyterian Church building on Esplanade Avenue in Treme, believed to be equipped with one of the oldest pipe organs in the city, for a local pastor to bring social and spiritual services to a hard-hit area of the city. Brent Lovett, who is purchasing property in eastern New Orleans to build 16-by-70-foot steel-framed, concrete-floored living units, will create the interdenominational Jubilee Church International at the Third Presbyterian site for the Rev. Gregory Thomas, after spending an estimated $1.5 million on acquisition and repairs, Thomas said. The church, on Esplanade near North Broad Street, was built in 1909. Lovett, an architect, had come up with the idea for modular living units that can be stacked into 12-story towers.
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Franklin School Board member Patricia Moore was named chairman of the Venango Technology Center's Joint Committee at its reorganization meeting Tuesday. Kathy Karl of the Oil City School Board was elected vice-chairman, and Dwight Proper of the Titusville School Board was elected treasurer. All of the votes were unanimous. Moore replaced Forest Area School Board member John Mehalic at the head of the table. The committee also unanimously agreed to retain Joseph J. Liotta III as its solicitor and to pay him a retainer of $135 a month. It was the first meeting for Franklin school district Superintendent Ronald Paranick, who will serve a one-year term as the center's chief school administrator. He takes over from Forest Area Superintendent Duane Vicini, who served in the post for the past year.
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