Hands on Athens Gets Handy on Hancock

Looking out along West Hancock Avenue from her front porch is a favorite pastime for 89-year-old Fannie Jordan. She’s seen quite a few changes in the Reese Street neighborhood, where she grew up and graduated from Athens High and Industrial School in 1939. In the coming weeks, she will see changes in her own house, thanks Hands on Athens volunteers, who will begin repairing Ms. Jordan’s house today.

Her parents’ house, around the corner on Church Street, was demolished in 2004 to make room for two smaller dwellings. And a few years later, a UGA fraternity tore down several other turn-of-the century houses in the same block. But a significant amount of the area’s historic character remains nonetheless.

For several decades now Ms. Jordan has lived in the very house her grandparents built in the 1890s. She is fond and proud of the home -- and her neighborhood -- and spends several hours each day out on her front porch.

But a few months ago she began noticing cracks in the concrete porch floor, and soon enough several sections of concrete began dropping and the entire porch appeared about to fall in. So in recent weeks Ms. Jordan has abandoned her favorite porch swing and confined herself a small chair right beside her front door. She doesn’t dare walk across her porch to the steps leading down to the distinctive, historic herringbone-patterned brick sidewalk along West Hancock Avenue.  

In the 1990s a concrete porch was installed as a replacement for the original porch of Ms. Jordan’s house. A concrete slab was placed on elevated wood framing and sheathing, connected to masonry walls (original brick piers with concrete block fill). Over time the wood started to rot away, causing the concrete porch floor to begin collapsing this spring. Ms. Jordan’s niece, Mary Lumpkin, contacted me, the Hands On Athens’ Administrator, to see if there was anything the local, low-income home repair program could do.

Established in 1999, Hands On Athens is a largely volunteer undertaking administered by the (ACHF) and supported with annual Community Development Block Grant funding through Athens-Clarke County. HOA has an over-arching goal of neighborhood revitalization. It  targets residences in several older Athens neighborhoods. This April, HOA completed its 12th annual spring work weekend, making repairs to the homes of a dozen low-income homeowners. To-date HOA has worked on close to 100 houses and completed work valued at well over $500,000.

I asked several of HOA’s volunteer contractors, as well as an architect and a preservation planner on HOA’s Steering Committee, to evaluate the situation.

 “I don’t believe there’s a quick-fix for this one,” said John DeMent of the local design and construction firm DSI when he took a look. “The best course of action would be to remove the concrete, framing, and sheathing and replace it with a wood deck.”

Not easy, but everyone agreed it was work HOA needed to undertake.

“Hands On Athens has certainly never done anything on this scale outside of our spring weekend,” said  ACHF Executive Director Amy Kissane (full disclosure: she’s my wife).

But Hands on Athens is in the process of implementing two additional scaled-back work weekends, one in October and one in January. That’s time table has the organization looking at situations like this – to be more responsive to the needs out there, which are substantial.

HOA worked on Ms. Jordan’s house a few years ago and it certainly an important house in the Reese Street Historic District, Amy Kissane said. There are funds available to cover the cost of materials and volunteers willing to do the work, so HOA is really excited to be going forward on the project.

Heading up much of the work will be local contractor Tosh Lickliter, a key Hands On Athens volunteer for many years. Lickliter and an HOA team will begin this Saturday, and the group expects to be at work several weekends before the job is completed.  Athens Patch will follow progress on Ms. Jordan’s house and report on how things go.

If you wish to volunteer with Hands on Athens, send an email to hoathens@bellsouth.net.