BY ROGER SMITH
MOUNTAIN CITIZEN

DEBORD — A Kentucky homebuilding company is expanding to Martin County, with plans to open a factory in the Eastern Kentucky Business Park in Debord. Frontier Housing signed a lease Tuesday for the county’s 55,000-square-foot speculative building on Honey Branch, formerly occupied by Boxvana.

Martin County Judge/Executive Lon Lafferty was on hand to welcome Frontier Housing President and Chief Executive Officer Tom Manning-Beavin to the facility in Debord.

“We’re excited to have them here today,” Lafferty said. “We understand this is going to provide us somewhere in the range of 20 to 25 very high-paying jobs with benefits—medical benefits, retirement benefits. This is what we’ve been looking for for such a long time—manufacturing and light manufacturing. We know that we have a well-seasoned workforce here, and I think you’ll find a lot of great workers and people who will be with you for many years.”

Lafferty acknowledged Deputy Judge/Executive Carolea Mills.

“I want to thank her for the fine work that she has done in working with you all,” he said. “We couldn’t be prouder of the efforts of our economic development director and deputy judge.”

He also tipped his hat to James Ayers, chairman of the Economic Development Authority, the EDA board members, and the Martin County Fiscal Court.

Mills expressed her enthusiasm: “This is a project that we believe in wholeheartedly.”

She recalled meeting the Frontier Housing team when they built a free home in the county a few years ago.

“Eastern Kentucky has a shortage of housing, especially with all the tragedies,” Mills said. “By having Frontier Housing do this initiative, we are able to provide housing and create jobs, and that’s been the No. 1 thing for Martin County. We’re going to create jobs. This building needed to be used, and we wanted to put someone in it who creates a good product and employs our people. We’re so grateful.”

Manning-Beavin praised the facility and shared Frontier’s vision.

“It’s a beautiful facility,” he said. “We look forward to filling it—employing Eastern Kentuckians with good jobs to build quality homes for Eastern Kentucky. That’s exactly what we want to do.”

The company anticipates hiring 20 to 25 employees within the first 12 months of taking occupancy. It expects to grow that number to nearly 40 within two years.

The Morehead-based nonprofit is launching local DreamBuild projects—a modular housing initiative that reduces construction time and costs, making homeownership more accessible to low- and moderate-income families.

Speaking at a Martin County Economic Development Authority meeting May 28, Manning-Beavin shared Frontier’s history and mission.

“We’ve been around since 1974,” he said. “So we’re 51 years old at this point. We have a history of doing housing development. In our history, we’ve built 850 new homes and rehabbed over 430. Along the way, we’ve also developed some rental housing. We own 44 units of scattered-site rental housing and 70 units of multifamily rental housing.

“Our goal is to serve people in communities, with a particular aim at helping homebuyers who are low-income and renters who are low-income—primarily because that’s where the subsidy is. There are special resources that nonprofits can access. We look to access those in order to be a conduit to help homebuyers become homeowners and renters to live in quality rental housing. Those are our goals.”

Using the design and logistics expertise of two Texas-based nonprofits—Come Dream, Come Build and buildingcommunityWORKSHOP—Frontier will produce modular homes assembled from 12-by-14-foot sections, or “boxes,” and place them on permanent foundations.

Each home begins with a “wet block,” which includes essential facilities like the kitchen, bathroom and laundry. Homeowners can then customize their living space by adding additional boxes to suit their needs, allowing for flexibility and scalability.

These modular homes are built to meet Kentucky residential building codes, ensuring they qualify for conventional financing.

“This is modular housing as opposed to manufactured housing,” Manning-Beavin clarified.

He said the company already has “several orders.” In February, Frontier received funding from the Kentucky Housing Corporation to build 25 duplexes in Maysville—50 units total—requiring the production of 152 modular boxes.

Frontier also received a $1.6 million award to build eight homes in the Skyview community in Perry County. Another major prospect is Chestnut Ridge in Knott County, where the plan is to build 56 homes initially.

“We believe it fits really well with what we want to accomplish with the DreamBuild,” said Manning-Beavin.