Montgomery Building Pains

Foundation officials have been scrambling to find suitable lots near the Silver Spring campus. But finding the right piece at the right price has always been a challenge. There have been 35 student-built houses. Since 1998, nine have been built on a parcel along Dean Road and Connecticut Avenue, just north of Randolph Road. It took foundation officials almost 20 years to negotiate that deal.

But like many developers, they have discovered land is at a premium in that and other parts of Montgomery County, where the median sale price for a home is $435,000 and there are fewer and fewer places to build.

Other student home-building programs in the region have so far avoided the problem. Today, Fairfax County officials will break ground on their newest development, which is to be built on 13 acres in Springfield that were donated by the school system. That's enough acreage to keep the program going for 18 years, said Chad Maclin, coordinator for trade and industrial education for the Fairfax County public schools.

A program in the Prince George's County schools that is developing an 11-acre subdivision in Clinton has at least nine lots to build on before it has to look for new property.

But in Montgomery, the clock is ticking.

At the current site, just a five-minute drive from the Edison campus, four -- maybe five -- buildable lots remain. If foundation officials can persuade the state to give them acreage across from the Connecticut Avenue properties they're working on, they might be able to snag three more. There's also a chance the school system might have surplus land it could donate, but the deal would require approval from the county executive -- and the foundation would have to prove that it needs the land more than other county agencies.

But these days it takes so long to get the approval to build -- about 2 1/2 years -- that the folks who oversee the building program are getting nervous. One solution might be to move upcounty, near Clarksburg, where there's more buildable land. The logistics of transporting the students from their home schools to Edison in Silver Spring and then up to a work site near Clarksburg make it a less-than-ideal solution.

Boden said the foundation and school system have been talking to the Maryland-National Capital Park and Planning Commission about possible projects the students could complete -- maybe cabins or other outbuildings.

And there's also some chatter that the teens might be able to build sheds or help with remodeling old homes.

When Zack Calandro, a 16-year-old with an easy grin and laid-back attitude, enrolled in the carpentry program, he wasn't sure what to expect. What he did know is that he just wasn't into the classes he was taking at Sherwood High School and that his grades reflected it. He figured that at Edison he'd hammer a few nails in here and there and that would be it.

But the teenager soon found himself putting up a nine-foot wall, nailing together headers -- the critical piece that usually goes over a window or door opening and helps support the weight of the structure -- then taking them apart because they weren't quite right. "It was so much more than I expected," he said.

The difference, he said, is being able to step back and see something real at the end of the day.

"That's what makes this program," Stephen said. "You can say, 'I built that house, we're the guys that built that house.' If you can't do that, what are you going to say? 'We're the guys who built that shed?' It's just not the same."