[DetroitSky]

Hope its okay to include a Battle Creek development I came across here.

Land bank seeks to restore historic Battle Creek homes

The land bank owns 26 historic homes that it doesn’t want to demolish, but that need to be rehabbed. It wants to use the workshops to get the word out.

One such home is 373 Riverside Drive, known locally as the Warren B. Shepard house and considered Battle Creek’s oldest.

The land bank took ownership of the Shepard house last year after a tax foreclosure. Since then, the home has been evaluated by an engineer and found to be structurally sound.

The house at 26 Fremont is an 1870s Victorian with five bedrooms, intricate woodwork, stained-glass windows and a turret or small tower that faces the street.

To rehab it would probably cost $200,000 to $300,000, Trout-Edwards estimated. Funding to restore historic homes comes from a variety of sources including grants, loans and the land bank’s own fund.