Peaslee Tech students build affordable homes from garage doors
Peaslee Tech students are turning garage doors into four affordable homes, a $90,000-a-house experiment headed for North Lawrence and tied to jobs at Amarr.
Garage doors are becoming walls and roofs in a Peaslee Tech housing project that is meant to do more than create a curiosity. Four affordable homes built by students are headed for North Third Street in North Lawrence, where the effort ties together job training, workforce retention and a direct response to the shortage of small, affordable homes.
Peaslee Tech CEO Kevin Kelley showed off the project May 13 and said the garage-door material is durable enough for paneling and roofing. He said the paint is baked on, meaning homeowners should not have to repaint the structure for a long time. The homes are being built by Peaslee students in partnership with Lawrence garage-door manufacturer Amarr and the housing nonprofit Tenants to Homeowners.
The four houses are now on the Peaslee campus, but Kelley said they should move to a permanent site on North Third Street in about a month. A 2026 city housing summary said Peaslee would construct and furnish the homes for no more than $90,000 each. With 252 households on the waitlist for very high-demand zero- to one-bedroom units, the project is aimed at a real need in Lawrence, not a symbolic one.
The homes also extend a partnership Peaslee and Tenants to Homeowners announced in January 2023. At that time, Peaslee said roughly 70 students from carpentry, HVAC, plumbing and electrician programs would take part. The first home in that effort was about 330 square feet in earlier reporting and later was described as roughly 385 square feet when it was delivered to 914 Ward St. in East Lawrence in August 2023. Tenants to Homeowners executive director Rebecca Buford said the larger vision was a “cottage community” of small one- or two-person homes.
The North Lawrence project comes after Peaslee, Amarr and P1 Group also built a 64-square-foot “Rapid Room” prototype emergency shelter in June 2023. Kelley said that concept was inspired by the city’s Pallet Shelter Village on North Michigan Street, showing that the garage-door idea has already moved through more than one stage of testing.
The housing work is unfolding alongside a separate city decision that could help Amarr expand its Lawrence footprint. On May 12, the Lawrence City Commission voted 4-0, with Commissioner Amber Sellers absent, to issue up to $35 million in Industrial Revenue Bonds to help Amarr buy the 440,000-square-foot facility it currently leases at 3800 Greenway Circle. City economic development director Susie Carson said the financing is conduit debt and does not create city liability. The arrangement also caps the company’s property-tax bill increase at 2.25% a year for 10 years, while Amarr says owning the plant is necessary to grow and add up to 75 jobs.
Bernholtz told commissioners, “This is our home.” That message now reaches beyond one factory. It links a 35-year Lawrence manufacturer, a local training center and a nonprofit with a record of helping more than 400 families become homeowners since 1992, all in a neighborhood where every trip crosses the Kansas River and where even a small housing project can carry outsized weight.
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