When the Salisbury Community Development Corp. held an open house for the first three new homes it had built in the Park Avenue neighborhood, Salisbury Police Officer Shanita Millsaps stood outside, directing traffic for the event.

Months later, Millsaps now stands on the inside, the pending owner of the fourth new home built by the non-profit Salisbury agency in this revitalizing area.

Millsaps and her four children will close on their new four-bedroom house at 512 Park Ave. at 2 p.m. Thursday. The family and Community Development Corp. will then host an open house from 4 to 6 p.m.

For the Community Development Corp., it’s a celebration of another “affordable home ownership project.”

For Millsaps, a single mother with a 13-year-old son, 10-year-old daughter and 4-year-old twin boys, it’s the celebration of a dream.

She has rented for 14 years. In her current apartment, the twins have to sleep with her.

“My children are very excited,” says Millsaps, who serves as an officer for public housing in Salisbury. “That’s all we’ve been talking about every day.”

Millsaps says she likes the way the house is built, including special touches such as the rear bay windows, a big bedroom closet and the two columns just inside the entrance.

“The whole neighborhood is so excited that’s she’s moving in,” says Chanaka Yatawara, executive director of the Community Development Corp.

The tan-colored house has a front porch and a gambrel roof that some people also have compared to a turtle-backed design. It closely resembles the house that used to stand here but was beyond repair and preservation.

Yatawara estimates that the old house stood vacant and boarded-up for close to 10 years beside Park Avenue Methodist Church. The city had difficulty buying the house because 15 to 16 different heirs shared ownership. But the Community Development Corp. persevered.

Again, the project represents a wide partnership of forces, which successfully has put Millsaps and her family in a new home for payments of roughly $580 a month.

The Community Development Corp. bought the property for $12,000.

Contractor Max Spear, who constructed the agency’s first three houses on North Shaver Street, built Millsaps’ home for $85,000. The Community Development Corp. sold the 1,600-square-foot, two-story house to Millsaps for $90,000.

The Blanche and Julian Robertson Foundation gave the agency $7,000 to help offset the difference between its $97,000 investment in the house and property and the sales price.

The city of Salisbury’s Community Development program paid $2,500 in closing costs as a grant to the buyer and loaned Millsaps $7,500 toward her down payment, which she will pay back to the city over 30 years.

Her repayments to the city will start in five years.

Robinson and Associates donated the cost of the appraisal, which Yatawara noted came in at $103,000.

Central Carolina Bank is financing the house at 6 7/8 interest over 30 years.

Architect Karen Alexander again provided a design for the redevelopment agency’s newest home.

The partnership also included the Salisbury Police Department. Police Chief Chris Herring will speak at Thursday’s open house.

“He and I have been talking about trying to get police officers in this neighborhood,” Yatawara says.

Millsaps formerly worked in the Police Department’s District 2, which includes the Park Avenue area. “A lot of people know me here,” Millsaps says. “People come by and say, ‘Millsaps, is this your house?’”

The Park Avenue revitalization efforts also have included a redesigned Cannon Park and Community Development’s rehabilitation of four houses on Cemetery Street.

Of those houses, two have been purchased, one will be sold in September and the fourth is in the middle of renovations.

Yatawara says just parking Millsaps’ patrol car on the street will help deter crime.

Spear says people in the neighborhood were bringing the builders food and refreshment during the project, including cherry cobbler near the Fourth of July. He hasn’t seen that happen in 35 years, Spear says.

One more interesting note about the property and neighborhood: Fire Chief Sam Brady lived in the former house as a kid. The Fire Department used the old house for a training exercise before its demolition and removal.

Contact Mark Wineka at 704-797-4263, or e-mail him at mwineka@salisburypost.com .