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Community, ITD to welcome neighbors home

Neighbors who have been displaced the past six weeks from their home near Headquarters will return Friday (July 25).

ITD employees are invited to help welcome Joy Sams and her teenage daughter Erin back during an 11 a.m. ceremony at 888 Rose St., just east of the ITD annex and Materials Lab.

What they see won’t have much resemblance to the home they left June 6. Their old 900-square-foot house, built in the 1920s, was demolished a week after they relocated to the home of a friend. Since then, the building community has scrambled to build a new home of nearly 1,200 square feet, completely furnished and landscaped.

It all started when Andy Schneider of Intermountain Gas took nominations for the annual community house-painting project. Initial inspection of the Sams’s home suggested that paint alone wouldn’t be adequate – it needed new siding. Further inspection led to a decision to raze the building and replace it with a new home, Schneider said.

Hubble Homes adopted the project and began work on design and construction. When word spread of the need, contractors stepped forward to volunteer time and materials. Teenagers from the Boise YMCA, Boise Capitals Soccer Club and Bishop Kelly football team assumed landscaping chores. Commercial Home Furnishings donated new furniture.

In all, the six-week project attracted more than 65 groups, organizations and businesses, each rallying to help a family in need. ITD also helped the effort by allowing a large commercial dumpster to be located at Headquarters and may be pressed into service during the Friday welcome home ceremony by allowing guests to park on the Headquarters campus.

Schneider has no idea how many to expect for the exchange of house keys and proclamation by Boise Mayor Dave Beiter. The more people who join the festivities, the better, insists Schneider, who helped coordinate the project.

Those who turn will be rewarded handsomely… Schneider said at least five restaurants have agreed to provide free food at the event, including Smokey Mountain Pizza/Pasta, Flying Pie Pizza, Busters (hamburgers and fries), Ruby River Steak House (chicken and ribs) and Hooters (boneless chicken wings). A disc jockey also may be on hand to provide music.

For more information about the project, visit miraclemakeover.blogspot.com .

See the Joy’s story