By Michael Howell
Habitat for Humanity celebrated the opening of its new Re-Sale Store and office last week. The new Re-Sale Store, located at 130 Old Corvallis Road across from the Fairgrounds, offers a wide variety of household items from light fixtures, to toilets, to kitchen and bathroom sinks, and faucets. In fact they carry most every item down to the nuts, bolts, doorknobs and hinges that might be used in building a house or re-furbishing and upgrading an old home.
Of course, house building and/or restoring an old home is what Habitat for Humanity is all about. Running the Re-Sale Store is simply another way to facilitate that objective by raising more funds. The items sold at the Re-Sale Store are all donated and the funds raised from the sales go towards running the non-profit organization.
So far the local Habitat for Humanity has built five homes in the valley, one in Darby, two in Hamilton and two in Corvallis. They are currently canvassing the town of Stevensville looking for a development site for their next project.
Habitat for Humanity manager Don McGourdy told those gathered at the ribbon cutting ceremony that he had been examining all the organization’s minutes of past meetings.
“We are right on track for what we set out to do one year ago,” he said.
Board member Mike Keebler, who recently served as interim manager, said that he kept track of the work going into the new Re-Sale Store and that it was done over the course of four and a half months with over 1,500 volunteer hours.
“Interest in the project has been huge,” he said. He said a lot of contractors, businesses and individuals had donated to the project and that kind of generosity was going to be needed to make the store a continuing success.