BY KAREN BOSSICK
Want a piece of the Ellsworth Inn? Look no further than the Building Material Thrift Store in Bellevue and The Barkin’ in Hailey.
Members of ARCH Community Housing Trust and those two nonprofits recently cleared the inn’s elegant furniture, linens, dishes, glassware and anything else that could be repurposed from the historic inn in Hailey.
Proceeds from the sales of the items being repurposed will benefit the Crisis Hotline and Mountain Humane. And the emptying of the nine-bedroom inn and its one-bedroom caretaker unit clears the way for ARCH and the City of Sun Valley to begin transforming the property into workforce housing.
The City of Sun Valley purchased the property for workforce housing. It selected ARCH to renovate the project beginning this spring.
The first phase will involve transforming the nine-bedroom inn into six one-bedroom apartments. The one-bedroom caretaker unit will also be renovated.
ARCH has secured more than $1.5 million of funding to fund that first phase.
It’s hoped that ARCH can renovate and build with minimal debt to ensure it can serve households on a first-come first-serve basis rather than having to offer homes only to households with incomes that would enable the organization to service debt.
Debt-free construction also enables ARCH to have a revenue stream to build additional affordable housing.
A million-dollar matching grant provided by Sun Valley resident Jeanne Herberger is in place with any donations being matched at 50 percent. Go to http://www.ARCHbc.org for more information.