JQA Young House update

Friends of the John Quincy Adams Young House met in March to discuss plans to bring our historic house on Cornell to a point where we can start some renovations.

As we discussed last October, the house will need to have a new foundation built that is slightly further back on the property, away from Cornell Road. That is the kind of unglamorous work that is very hard to find grants for. For that reason, the Friends group plans to ask the board of Tualatin Hills Park & Recreation District board of directors to budget money for the work in their 2013-2014 budget.

Building the new foundation and moving the house will cost about $26,000. Permits and design costs will add another $10,000 so we'll be asking for around $46,000 for the project. (The total THPRD budget for FY 2011-12 was about $150 million.)

We'll be making a presentation to the board at their May 7 meeting. A petition will be available to the public to sign to encourage the board to agree to this. Copies of the petition can be downloaded from the Friends website, and can be dropped off at the Cedar Mill library, where it will also be available to sign. We have also set up an online petition linked from the home page of the Friends Group website: jqayounghouse.org.

Originally, the Friends group was supposed to raise all the money for work on the house through grants and donations. The total cost of the project was estimated at around $650,000. We have since learned that it's very unlikely that we'll find anyone interested in funding this preliminary work. That's why we're asking the THPRD board to jump-start this important project.

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