During a luncheon held May 20 at Barrel 118 in Eatonton, Habitat for Humanity of Putnam (HFHP) announced the development of Carter Crossing in the Twin Bridges area of Putnam County, off Avant Road.
The new neighborhood is being named after former U.S. President Jimmy Carter and his wife, Rosalynn, both Georgia natives who were well-known for their support of the Habitat for Humanity mission.
“Let me share with you how we arrived at this point at Carter Crossing,” HFHP Executive Director Murali Thiramul told the Barrel 118 crowd. “For the past couple of years, our board chair, Linda Moore, has been driving around Putnam County looking for land. She has been knocking on doors and writing letters to local landowners. She has called on people who she thought may have a small patch of land to build a Habitat house. She was relentless in her quest to find buildable land.
“Fast forward to November 24th, 2024, and that’s not very long ago, and our treasurer, Craig Murphy, found a small, single lot near Carter Crossing and then proceeded to find this entire, partially developed subdivision that had been sitting there for nearly a decade.”
The eventual Carter Crossing development will feature at least 30 HFH-built homes, situated alongside a network of already paved roads that terminate in circular cul-de-sacs at each end.
Putnam County Manager Paul Van Haute confirmed to the crowd that all houses built at Carter Crossing will feature house numbers beginning with “39,” in recognition of Carter’s term as the 39th president.
The initiative is supported by local leaders and volunteers, including architectural firm Lord Aeck Sargent (LAS), which is contributing pro bono services for the master planning and design. The project has received significant funding, including a $1.05 million grant from the Department of Community Affairs to build the first six homes.
“We’re really honored to be part of the ceremony today,” LAS senior associate Marco Ancheita said. “It has really amped up our eagerness to be part of this project. We’re a firm of about 80 years of service. We’ve been in Atlanta for a long time with 155 staff in different offices, but we’re headquartered in Atlanta. We’re architects, landscape architects, or designers."
“Within this project, we’ll be using our housing and mixed-use expertise, our landscape architecture expertise, as well as our urban design expertise to really bring as many resources as possible,” Ancheita said. “We’re really conscious about the way we use our resources, the way we impact the land, specifically around places like this where the land is extremely beautiful.”
Ancheita explained that LAS focuses on “responsive design,” which means it weighs its client’s needs against the community’s needs.
“We’re not here to tell you our vision for this project; we’re here to understand what you all want and make sure that we give you what you need for this to move forward,” Ancheita said. “So, we very much treat our clientele as we become partners, we become friends. It’s not a transactional thing. Projects like this, we find extremely, extremely rewarding.”
Thiramul wrapped up the presentation by emphasizing Putnam County as a small, rural Georgia community “just trying to continue replicating what the Carters did, but with a lot of help from you.
“Thank you all for coming,” he told the assembled audience. “We appreciate everything you do, and we’ll continue to keep the conversation going.”
He later added HFHP hopes to break ground at Carter Crossing “sometime next spring.”