MUSKEGON HEIGHTS, Mich. — The first newly constructed home in Muskegon Heights in nearly two decades is almost done, and students from a local career tech center completed most of the work.
It’s the first newly built home in the city in 17 years, and Samuel Pope gave FOX 17 an inside look.
“Turn over here, we have two rooms, same size,” Pope showed us. “Then if we walk right here, here’s our walk-in closet for the master bedroom, and it’s a full-size walk-in closet.”
The two-bedroom, three-bathroom home is 1,500 square feet.
“It’s overwhelming. It’s, it’s joy. Happiness is just knowing that whenever I take a picture of a house, when I come, I arrive by, I see a light, a beam from Heaven,” Janet Robinson, the property owner, said.
Robinson’s great-grandmother owned the house that used to be at the corner of E. Hume Avenue and Jarman Street.
“I look at that as my great-grandmother, my grandmother, showing me that they are smiling down from Heaven, have the approval of this house,” Robinson added. “I think that the newness, I think there’s no better place to start than here. It’s the gateway, as I look at it, to East Park Manor. It lets people know that this is something we can have. This is just the beginning.”
Pope, along with 60 other students from the Career Tech Center in Muskegon, brought this space back to life.
“Open. I would consider my house to be open instead of closed in like how people do it,” Pope explained. “It feels like you’re not, like, trapped in your house. Like, I feel like this is just, like, you can go anywhere you want.”
Robinson helped make this project happen— giving them the land to build on after her great-grandmother’s house started falling apart.
“When people see this…I hope they feel the same love and energy that I feel,” she said. “This is in your community, take care of it.”
Robinson has yet to decide if she will put the house up for sale or buy it herself.
