Dear CACE Colleagues,
In the aftermath of Hurricane Harvey, many of you have asked how you can help. It has taken us a few days to come to terms with what Harvey’s impact means for our chapter and we are in need of your help. As many of you know, we were within just a couple of weeks of completing construction on our new office space. The office was in a floodplain and our architects designed state of the art flood mitigation that we were hoping would be a model for the region. Alas, Harvey hit us too soon and those flood mitigation measures weren’t complete. Harvey devastated that space with 4 feet of water and flooded our current office as well. Now we are starting over.
Typical building insurance does not cover flooding and you can’t get flood insurance for a construction site. Our contractor’s risk policy does include a flood clause and may pay for a portion of the rebuild expense, but it also has a $100,000 deductible. We have set up a GoFundMe page in an attempt to help defray some of these expenses. We hope that you and your chapters will consider contributing and that you might publish this to your members. I’ve also received numerous offers of help from AIA members around the country. Below is a link to our gofundme campaign page with more information and some photos. Ironically, over the last two years, AIA Houston and Architecture Center Houston has been leading the conversation regarding flood mitigation in the region. We have a long way to go now as that conversation just got all the more serious.
While our office was devastated and it will be a long time before things are back to normal here, my home made it through with no damage and none of my staff sustained any damage to their homes either. So things are bad, but could be worse. Thank you all for your generous offers of help. Let me know if you have any questions.
https://www.gofundme.com/rebuild-architecture-center-houston
Rusty Bienvenue
Executive Director
AIA HOUSTON
315 CAPITOL, SUITE 120
HOUSTON, TEXAS 77002
T 713.520.0155
F 713.520.5134