FARMINGTON — The goal for a federal $250,000 Community Development Block Grant for the 82 High Street rehabilitation project is to have every unit as energy efficient as a newly acquired energy star mobile home, the Rev. Scott Planting told Selectmen Tuesday during a second public hearing on the grant.
Maine State Housing Authority has purchased a new 14-foot by 70-foot Redman home for this High Street apartment and home rental community. While a family will move in to the new home next month, the intent is to use the home as a demonstration model of what can be done to the 17 homes up for rehabilitation, Code Enforcement Officer Steve Kaiser told the board.
With a goal to increase energy efficiency by at least 40 percent, the 20-year-old mobile homes are well used but re-habitable, he said. Compared to the price of a new home at $70,000 to $80,000, the average of $20,000 spent upgrading each of the 17 units is expected to expand their use for another 20 years, he said.
The town’s obligation as administrator of the grant involves an environmental review, paperwork and overseeing the project, Kaiser told the board.
The rehabilitation includes new insulation, windows and roofs with most of the work put out to bid by Western Maine Community Action. Painting and landscaping work will be left up to tenants, he said.
An empty older home sits next to the new Pennsylvania-built Redman model and work will be started on that unit first, said Keith Swett, maintenance worker for 82 High Street on Wednesday. The work is expected to be started soon and done mostly by Swett and volunteers to “see what we can do,” he said. That information will help create a bid process for the other homes.
Once this first unit is finished, a tenant from another home will move in and the work will begin on that vacated home.
The board also held a second public hearing on the Fairbanks School Neighborhood Association’s Shared Use Kitchen project. Working with the Good Shepherd Food-Bank, equipment including blast freezers will help produce locally grown food for local food banks, Mary Frank, chair of the Kitchen committee, told the board.
No votes were required by the board Tuesday and residents approved the town’s involvement with both CDBG grant applications during the annual March town meeting.
abryant@sunjournal.com
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- This new Redman Homes energy-efficient mobile home, purchased by Maine State Housing Authority, will serve as a model for what can be done as a rehabilitation project begins at the 82 High Street housing complex in Farmington. Work on the older mobile home behind it will begin soon.
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