Small Friends raffles off minicar to help fund schoolhouse
COMMUNITY
BY PETER B. BRACE INDEPENDENT WRITER
Imagine a car 106 inches long that weighs 1,808 pounds, has enough room for two people, gets 33 miles per gallon in the city, 41 on the highway and costs $13,900.

That car, the Smart Fortwo Passion Coupe, the first of its kind to come to Nantucket, will be raffled off this spring by Small Friends of Nantucket to help the preschool pay for its new green schoolhouse.

Essentially a two-seater with just enough room for driver and passenger to sit side-by-side, Smart Fortwo cars are built for savings at the pump and keeping the planet green.

"Good things come in small packages, and the Smart Fortwo is no exception. Each model's revolutionary design conveys innovation, functionality and joy of life," reads Smart Fortwo's Web site sales pitch.

For Small Friends, the car is the perfect vehicle to help raise the $3.5 million needed for the new building, a maintenance fund, scholarship fund and a continuing education fund for teachers.

"We wanted something that was going to be new and fun and green - absolutely, we needed something green with the school in mind," said Gabrielle Gould, director of development for Small Friends Building Dreams. "Who wouldn't want one of these little cars? The wait list is huge. They're adorable!"

Small Friends will sell 800 tickets for $100 each, and around 150 of them have already sold. Tickets are available now at Annye's Whole Foods and Nantucket Looms, and tickets will also be sold from a table on Main Street on the Saturday of Daffodil Weekend. Ticket buyers can also call Gould at 508- 901-1180. Gould said Small Friends is hoping to hold the drawing at its summer barbecue on July 6, but if that does not work, it will happen at the ribbon-cutting ceremony for the new schoolhouse in September.

That schoolhouse, designed by LEED-certified Architect Steven Blashfield of Chip Webster & Associates, is being built to the gold level of the U.S. Green Building Council's Leadership in Energy & Environmental Design, a green building certification rating system.

The council applies either a silver, gold or platinum LEED certification based on the level of energy efficiency and environmental friendliness achieved through certain aspects of construction. These benchmarks include: building materials, water efficiency, recycling of construction waste and debris, indoor environmental quality and building site sustainability. The Small Friends building will have, among other earth-friendly accoutrements, water conservation and energy efficiency systems, and will also make use of natural light and ventilation.

With East Falmouth builder J.K. Scanlon at the ready, Small Friends broke ground on the new 6,638- square-foot building last Sept. 28, with the expectation that the green schoolhouse will be open and ready for classes for the start of the 2008/2009 school year.

Currently, the building's walls and roof are up and interior work is proceeding, said Gould, who added that Marine Home Center is donating all the interior

trim for the building. I