campaign details
leveraging resources for affordable homeownership
Habitat is leveraging multiple financial resources to create the Weavers Grove community in a key location in Chapel Hill where families can live close to work, schools, and transportation. The total cost of the development is $30M. The funding model combines revenues from the sale of Habitat-owned lots to market-rate builders, annual fundraising allocations, government grants, financing sources, and philanthropy.
You can be part of an exciting new opportunity: a mixed-income community that offers affordable homeownership to Habitat families and to market-rate homebuyers.
Your gift to the $7.5M Weavers Grove Campaign is the essential accelerator for achieving this bold vision.
For more than 37 years, Orange Habitat has been a creative leader in seeking forward-thinking approaches to safe, affordable local homeownership, particularly as housing stock and available land have become more scarce and more expensive.
Weavers Grove is an innovative approach to building community among mixed-income homeowners, and has few comparable developments in the country.
Campaign Leadership
The Board of Directors is responsible for the campaign, and the Honorary and Steering Committees provide critical leadership. Our campaign chairs are community leaders Betsy Blackwell and Mimi Hock.
Betsy Blackwell grew up in Davidson, North Carolina and attended The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill for her undergraduate degree where she met her husband, John Watson and then graduated from the Columbia Business School with her Masters in Business Administration. Betsy worked in the financial services industry and eventually became the Director of Marketing for a major regional bank with a specialty in business-to-business marketing, market research, and targeted marketing. Betsy moved to consulting in 1994 and then retired to a career as a volunteer. Since retirement, Betsy has focused on volunteer organizations in the Washington, DC area focusing on education, housing and other social justice issues. Following her family’s move to Europe, she became involved with Habitat for Humanity International. She has chaired several successful multi-million-dollar capital campaigns in Washington, DC, France, and NC. She has chaired several gala and major event committees including the first Susan B. Komen ball in Frankfurt, Germany. Betsy has served on and chaired various committees and boards for schools, including the Episcopal Church in Europe, American Friends of Chantilly, the Courtauld Institute in London, UNC-Chapel Hill and, now, the Nature Conservancy of NC, Habitat of Orange County, Playmakers, Carolina Performing Arts and the Ackland Art Museum.
Mimi Hock grew up in Durham, North Carolina and attended The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. She then moved to NYC to attend the Mailman School of Public Health at Columbia University where she received a Masters of Public Health with a focus on health behavior. Mimi briefly worked in public health research before pivoting to a career in commercial real estate and small business ownership. In addition to managing real estate investments alongside her husband Tanner, she ran a small Franklin St. coffee shop for a few years which closed due to the COVID-19 pandemic, and has recently launched an interior design business for residential and commercial spaces called Understory Design. Mimi lives in Chapel Hill with her husband and three children. Issues pertaining to public health inequities and community service are important threads in her life. Mimi currently serves as the Vice-Chair on the Downtown Partnership of Chapel Hill.
HONORARY COMMITTEE
Sylvia and Fred Black
Moses Carey
Rev. Justin Coleman
Jean Morton Elia
Susan Gravely and Bill Ross
Alice and Trig (George) Horton
Susan Levy
Prue and Peter Meehan
Wyndham Robertson
Christy and Joel Shaffer
Jane and Adam Stein
Ron Strom and Cathy Pascal
Heather and David Yeowell
STEERING COMMITTEE
Lisa Carey and Matt Ewend
Nicci Gafinowitz
Amy Guskiewicz
Taylor Ludlam
Charles Merritt
Paula Noell
Ellen O’Brien
Hassan Pinto
Elizabeth Sasser and Jimbo Parrott
Denise and Steve Vanderwoude
donate
Your investment in the Weavers Grove campaign creates more Habitat homeownership in an ideal location in Chapel Hill, on a large scale, and on one of the last available tracts of land in town. You help create a new way to live together as neighbors.
Contact Major Gifts Officer Michael Magoon at 919-932-7077 ext. 235 or mmagoon@orangehabitat.org for questions about pledging your support.