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Weapons of Mass Construction provides 500 hours in a day
The Princeton Athletics family; student-athletes, coaches, staff and faculty fellow spent Sunday, April 5, 2009 working with Isles Inc. to help renovate a mostly vacant former textile mill on the Trenton-Hamilton border.
Isles, Inc was founded by Marty Johnson '81 (football, baseball). Marty started Isles right after graduation and the company came out of a student-initiated seminar at Princeton that he developed while a senior on campus. Over 30 years later, he has dedicated his entire career to this organization. The mission of Isles, Inc is: "To foster more self-reliant families in healthy, sustainable communities". Isles, Inc. focuses on Community Planning & Research, Housing & Real-Estate, Youth Education & Training, Financial Self-Reliance, Environment & Community Health and Energy & Green Job Training.
Volunteers had the chance to work on the renovation of a beautiful, mostly vacant, circa 1895 former textile mill on the Trenton Hamilton border. Along the northeast corridor rail line, the 6.5 acre site is being converted by Isles into a mixed use "green" village. It will include offices for public interest and environmental organizations, a training facility for inner city youth, homes, artists' studios, and other uses. Because of the unusually strict "green building" approach embodied in Isles' redevelopment plans, Princeton University's Civil and Environmental Engineering fall course titled Sustainable Design CEE 477, focused on the mill's unique opportunities and challenges.
The community service initiative was very well supported and student-athletes from the following teams participated enthusiastically: women's basketball, women's ice hockey, women's cross country, women's track & field, men's swimming & diving, football, women's squash, field hockey and women's swimming & diving. These Tiger student-athletes joined forces with a few Tiger coaches including: Kathy Sell (women's tennis), Peter Farrell (women's cross country and track & field), Roger Hughes (football), Phil Spiniello (women's swimming) and Jamie Holder (men's swimming).
Also joining in the fun on the day was D.A Graham who serves as a faculty fellow to the football team and Evan O'Reilly '08, a football alumnus who spent the summer between his junior and senior years working for Isles Inc. and wrote his senior thesis on the history and development of Isles Inc. as a non-profit community development and environmental organization. Princeton Football Association President Anthony DiTommaso '86 also stopped in to see the impact of the work being done.
The jobs performed throughout the day included: interior demolition of walls, cielings and bathrooms; exterior demolition of shipping pallets; scraping of old paint, priming and painting walls with low odor latex paint; exterior beautification, debris pick-up and gardening.
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