Spotlight FRONT’n About

Gene Marrano

Courtesy photo

Restoration Housing, the non-profit that restores older dilapidated houses and turns them into affordable multi-unit housing, has cut the ribbon on its sixth completed project. Executive director Isabel Thornton says the home on Stewart Avenue Southeast in Roanoke is already occupied by two families: “there’s a 68 percent rental rate in Southeast. A lot of it is substandard. We wanted to offer a quality alternative because of this need. The city has seen it and is starting to fund more rentals. When I first started home funds weren’t going towards rentals, only towards home ownership.”

Restoration Housing invested around $300,000 in the Stewart Avenue house project, but grants, donations and historic tax credits helped to fully subsidize the

Courtesy photo

remodeling of a two-story house, well over a century old. While her husband Lucas Thornton (Hist:Re Partners) is focused on building brand new apartment units in downtown Roanoke where the old Campbell Court bus station used to be, Isabel Thornton and her Restoration Housing non-profit has been turning neglected older housing stock into affordable multi-unit rental properties. “We feel good about it – but we only did two [properties] in a year. It’s definitely not solving the problem, but I do feel good about meeting a need in some capacity, and also reducing blight and vacancies.” Thornton estimated the Stewart Avenue property had been vacant for at least six years. A first-time $28,000 grant from the Roanoke Valley-Alleghany Regional Commission (via a $2 million federal grant they received) also helped subsidize the restoration of the 100-year-old-plus home. RVARC says they look to provide grants to dozens of other affordable housing projects in its coverage area.

Submitted photos

After a month of soft openings, The Construction Zone at Kids Square in downtown Roanoke has launched at Center in the Square. The Branch Group and Carter Machinery have teamed up for construction-related exhibits where kids can also operate a mini-excavator, a dump truck and use tools to build a "house." Felicia Branham is the Kids Square executive director: “we’ve had people come from Lynchburg to experience our construction exhibit. We believe reaching children in their earliest years not only helps them develop cognitive and physical skills that they need to succeed, but also inspires a lifelong enthusiasm for career [options].”

The Construction Zone will also go on the road in a smaller format to local schools, where it will be linked to STEM-related concepts. Branham says one goal is to improve perceptions about careers in the skilled trades The Branch Group and Carter Machinery collaborated with Kids Square and helped put together the Construction Zone exhibit.