Shipping Containers Make Affordable Housing in McKinney

Habitat for Humanity – North Collin County is taking a very unique approach to solving the affordable housing problem: creating a housing development built entirely from old storage (shipping) containers.

A STORAGE CONTAINER COMMUNITY: COTTON GROVES, MCKINNEY
In the fall of 2017, when Kimberly Kimmons, Land Acquisition Director and Celeste Cox, executive director of Habitat for Humanity – North Collin County approached JD Lee, at the time a Director at Blackard Advisors, about a three acre strip of land in McKinney, he saw an opportunity to do something different.

“I saw an opportunity to blend emerging trends of using shipping containers, along with the idea of creating affordable housing, mixed with some (not all) of the aspects of NeoRetroism,” says JD Lee.

Too small of a project for Blackard Global, JD personally took on the project under his own company, JDL Group, and enlisted Kevin Dingman as lead architect, Brent Hillier, a Canadian developer and other leading minds in the container space industry to help make the Habitat for Humanity – North Collin County’s vision a reality.

Once a cotton field, the Cotton Groves development will be a 35-unit townhome community that includes a clubhouse amenity center and a park, located at the corner of Bumpas Street and Fitzhugh Street, on the eastside of McKinney, Texas.

“Slaves who once worked the land could never have dreamed of owning a home on it,” says JD Lee. “But today, people with ancestral ties to those who were slaves can now own a piece of this land and a home. Along with two rows of trees that form a grove-like border on the north and south property lines, it was only fitting to name it Cotton Groves.”