Submitted by the San Juan Community Home Trust
There have been two recent land donations to the San Juan Community Home Trust.
Tucker and McDonald Streets
On Dec. 29, the San Juan Community Home Trust staff announced it had received a donation of a parcel of land in Friday Harbor. The property, at the corner of Tucker and McDonald Streets, is a gift by David and Patricia Giuliani of San Juan Island. The lot is 9,900 square feet and has no structures.
“The Home Trust is delighted at this completely unexpected gift, it’s a great way to end 2017,” said David S. Gow, Executive Director of SJCHT.
“The Giulianis are keenly interested in being part of the solution to the affordable housing crisis in the San Juans, so we are most grateful for the confidence they are putting in our home building and home ownership program,” he said.
“We will repay that confidence by creating a permanently affordable family home there in the near future, which will serve as an attractive and welcoming portal to the McDonald Street-Friday Avenue neighborhood,” Gow said.
Turn Point Road
The new year also kicked off with the donation of a large parcel of land to Friday Harbor’s Sun Rise neighborhood of permanently affordable homes. The gift of 5.85 acres in the 1200 block of Turn Point Road was made by Larry Soll on Dec. 29, according to Gow.
“This gift by Mr. Soll is a critical piece for the community, because it reemphasizes that area, the official Urban Growth Area, is the future for expanding the supply of permanently affordable homes locally. The Home Trust is grateful for this donation, and for Mr. Soll’s leadership on the affordable housing issue, which is unmatched,” Gow said.
The Turn Point Road parcel is 900 feet east of the Home Trust’s Sun Rise development at 473 Grover Street East. The property eventually will be the site for more than 30 affordable units; it is already the location of the Urban Growth Area’s state-of-the-art “living machine” wastewater treatment center. Soll was one of the founders of the San Juan Community Home Trust.
