Quad City Times
By Alma Gaul
Saturday, September 30, 2006

New neighborhood rises from old park

John Schultz/QUAD-CITY TIMES Tarica Gay, along with her daughters, Ashlie, 14, and Aquaiya, 6, sits on the foundation of their new Habitat for Humanity house in Rock Island. The organization is building a veritable neighborhood of seven houses in the same area, a first for the Quad-City Habitat chapter.

Habitat for Humanity has built 40 homes in the Quad-Cities. Now, the nonprofit ecumenical housing organization is poised to build a neighborhood.

After a blessing today, volunteers will begin framing a home at 807 11th Ave., Rock Island, the first of seven Habitat intends to build in a former park, tucked in the Old Chicago neighborhood west of the city’s downtown and east of the Centennial Expressway.

The land had been a park for at least 30 years, but there were just a couple of pieces of rusted equipment, and it wasn’t used much. The city decided the land would be better used for housing, so it sold the land to Habitat for $1, said Alan Carmen, the city’s planning and redevelopment administrator. The city also will cover half the cost of sewer and water service connections to the homes, expected to be about $35,000, he said.

“We’re looking at redeveloping the neighborhood,” Carmen said.

Those associated with the project hope the construction will be a leaven for the area and that blight – including a boarded-up home across the street from the property – will be eliminated.

Although the seven-house project is the largest single undertaking for Habitat in the Quad-Cities, four homes were built in one stretch of Davenport’s Scott Street, and they have had a positive affect on their surroundings, Barb Hiesterman, Habitat’s office manager, said.

“There are two (Habitat homes) side by side and two across the street, and the families have bonded together with each other and with other nice families in the area, and they have gotten the drug dealers to move,” Hiesterman said.

Additionally, Habitat has a partner in bringing new life to the area.

Rebuilding Together Quad-Cities, a nonprofit organization formerly known as Hearts and Hammers, has received a $43,000 grant from the Doris and Victor Day Foundation to use in helping repair and spruce up existing homes that face Habitat Park, as the new subdivision is called.

“We’re hoping to elevate an area that already is starting to be elevated,” Rod Jennings, executive director of Rebuilding, said.

Another positive aspect of the redevelopment effort is that three-fourths of the homes facing the subdivision are owner-occupied, as compared to 25 percent to 30 percent owner-occupied in the rest of the neighborhood, Carmen said.

All this is good news to Tarica Gay, who will be the owner of the first house. Gay is a Rock Island native who moved back about three years ago after a time in Alabama. She has two daughters, Ashlie Gay, 14, and Aquaiya Phillips, 6, and has worked at Seaford Clothing Co., Rock Island, for about three years.

All partner families are required to work a minimum of 250 volunteer (“sweat equity”) hours per adult on other Habitat projects, so Gay has learned how to install insulation and dry wall. And she is looking forward to taking homeowner classes in January so that she will know how to manage her home and make small repairs as needed.

Asked what she is most looking forward to in her new home, she said – with considerable enthusiasm — “Moving in!”

And by 2009, she’ll have seven new neighbors.

Alma Gaul can be contacted at (563) 383-2324 or agaul@qctimes.com.

Rebuilding Together will repair existing homes

While Habitat for Humanity is building seven new homes in Rock Island, another nonprofit organization — Rebuilding Together Quad-Cities — has received a $43,000 grant from the Doris and Victor Day Foundation to repair and spruce up existing homes that surround the area.

The project came about when the director of the Day foundation asked Rebuilding to do an “impact” project in Rock Island — a project that would make a big difference in a neighborhood, said Rob Jennings, Rebuilding’s executive director. The organization decided that work in Habitat Park would make the biggest difference.

Rebuilding is still looking for interested applicants; letters were sent to adjoining homeowners and a meeting will be held Thursday at the Martin Luther King Center to see who is interested and what their needs are, Jennings said.

Jennings envisions doing work such as painting, siding and roofing on four to six properties.