Another great day at The Pirates House! The club was fortunate to have a dynamic speaker in Daniel Carey who is with Historic Savannah Foundation. After all Rotary business items were discussed, Laura Lane McKinnon introduced Daniel to the club.
Historic Savannah Foundation has a $1.2 million dollar annual budget. It was founded in 1955 when a group of seven ladies saved the Davenport House. Since then, HSF has saved 370 properties. They usually are working on 2-3 houses at a time. There are criteria in place for the selection of buildings. They are 1. the building must be vacant, 2. the building must be endangered meaning it has suffered from long term neglect, and 3. the building must be in a target area (there are 17 historic districts throughout Savannah).
HSF are the champions of the value of the revolving fund and have been asked to talked to several communities throughout the country about this fund. The revolving fund has a committee comprised of people with various professions including, but not limited to, realtors, architects and contractors. The committee uses a 10 point scoring system and walk through of houses to help determine which properties can be saved. HSF fixes the buildings up enough to sell them but does not do a full restoration. Daniel then showed many before and after pictures of houses that HSF has helped save and it was amazing to see the transformation!