Photos: JARC Rededicates Huntington Woods Group Home

Even Mother Nature showed her support Thursday as the day's rain gave way to soft evening sunlight during JARC’s Raise The Roof: The Medow Home Makeover celebration in Huntington Woods.

The rededication ceremony was the culmination of a process that began last year to renovate the Shirley T. Medow Home on Roycourt that is home to six women with special needs. The project transformed their residence, which was built in 1956 and has been used as a group home since 1982, into a barrier-free, energy-efficient home where the ladies can live comfortably as they age.

The upgrades include:

• a new geothermal heating and cooling system;
• a new barrier-free kitchen;
• new high-efficiency appliances and lighting;
• a new three-season porch;
• new native landscaping; and
• new eco-friendly paint.

The women, who stayed at another JARC facility in Farmington Hills during the renovation, have been home for approximately a month and a half and are loving the changes, said Medow Home manager Tammie Johnson.

"It's very accessible," she said. "They're happy every time they wake up to see it and they're excited to be back home."

A second phase of the project will include a new roof, driveway repairs and encapsulation of the home's crawl space for greater energy efficiency, said JARC Chief Executive Officer Rick Loewenstein, who also thanked the volunteers, donors, businesses and government agencies that helped make the transformation possible.

before the renovations began.

JARC is a Farmington Hills-based nonprofit organization that provides residential services for people with special needs. 

During the rededication ceremony Thursday, Dan and Lynn Medow addressed the crowd from the front porch of the home their family purchased and donated to JARC in memory of their mom Shirley several years after her untimely passing in 1977.

"I'm proud to be here 25 years later for the rededication," Dan Medow said.

Rep. Ellen Cogen Lipton, D-Huntington Woods, also participated in the celebration, reading a tribute from the state of Michigan and sharing her personal thoughts on the home's transformation.

"Walking through it today, what a thing of beauty," she said. "This is really a great testament to volunteer commitment and the responsiveness of the community."