The St. Johns Builders Council, a regional council of The Northeast Florida Builders Association recently partnered with the Emergency Services and Homeless Coalition of St. Johns County to rehabilitate a 100-year-old, single-family home on their West St. Augustine campus.
After much planning, the council under the leadership of Seth Kelley of MasterCraft Builder Group, who was also the SJBC board chairperson for 2022, voted to adopt 61 Chapin Street at the Homeless Coalition’s campus and started work with a group of volunteers and professionals, to make the home safe and hospitable again for the Homeless Coalition.
The mission for the property was to provide homeless families with minor children with housing and services required for them to remain intact, stabilize their lives, save toward affordable permanent housing, and break the cycle of homelessness.
Work began in earnest in early October 2022, and very quickly after what was expected to be some minor framing and a lot of cosmetic repairs, it was discovered that the 100-year-old home, originally built for railroad workers establishing the East Coast Railway, needed significant work across almost all homebuilding disciplines, including rough carpentry, electrical, plumbing, HVAC, drywall and more.
Keeping a goal of making the home safe and sound for occupancy, all the while, respecting its history, and its place in the community, the council and several of its members solicited help from suppliers, trades people and the membership of NEFBA, to help supply material and expertise to bring the home back to life.
After many weeks of both professional and volunteer hard work, the council completed the monumental task, turned the keys back over to executive director of the ESHC, Debi Redding, on June 26, so that the next chapter in the home’s life could begin with its new tenant on June 28, a single mom, and her young son.
Estimates of the cost of the work performed by the council exceeded $53k.
However thanks to the generosity of over 36 individuals and companies in the building industry, and the dogged determination of MasterCraft’s Seth Kelley, the project ultimately had minimal costs to the ESHC, and actually resulted in both NEFBA, the council and their members, providing additional funding to the Coalition in more than $11k to help them support their mission and vision to help those in need.
“We couldn’t have completed this project without the support of over 36 building partners and members,” Kelley said. “If we asked, they said yes – nobody ever said no. Especially Jackie and Parker Rowland with Russell Rowland, Mitch Szymczyk with Tri-State Builders, Justin Shonk with Gleckler and Sons Construction and Building Materials, Jamie Warrington with Builders FirstSource, and Steve Brogdon with Brogdon Builders – they were all so generous. I’m extremely proud and humbled by this experience.”
