You may find it surprising to learn that
Habitat for Humanity, one of the best known and most beloved charities in the country, operates a charity of its very own. Appropriately enough, it serves the general contractor community and the DIY home-repair crowd.
And while
ReStore, as the business is called, isn't technically a charity in the strictest sense of the word, it's tough to come up with a better way to describe the place. But here's an honest effort: It's a cut-rate, bargain-basement retail shop, where all manner of donated and used home-repair supplies are on offer. It sells everything from door knobs to window panes to penny nails, as well as the pre-loved furniture you'll need in order to properly transform a rehabbed house into a livable home.
Until very recently, the ReStore existed only within the somewhat dim confines of the Habitat for Humanity's 19th Street warehouse in North Philly. Come July 23, however, the ReStore will relocate to a proper retail space at 2930 Jasper Street in Kensington.
"The most successful ReStores are about 18,000 square feet," says Gail Lankford, the store's director. (Habitat for Humanity operates 700 different ReStores across the country.) "We needed to find something that was affordable, and that was a warehouse space." The Kensington shop, she says, clocks in at about 19,000 square feet.
The
William Penn Foundation, in fact, helped out in grand style with the new space's affordability, donating a total of $85,000 to the project. Which was certainly an appropriate gesture, given that 100 percent of the ReStore's proceeds are given directly to Habitat for Humanity, which in turns uses those funds to construct houses for the less fortunate.
Following the ReStore's July 23 "soft opening," a grand opening will happen on September 10, says Lankford, complete with a ribbon cutting ceremony, major sales, and prize giveaways.
Source: Gail Lankford, ReStore
Writer: Dan Eldridge
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