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Representatives from Oakwood Homes and St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital celebrate the groundbreaking of the St. Jude Dream Home Showplace in Saratoga Springs on Thursday, Aug. 11, 2022.

Ashtyn Asay, Daily Herald

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Russ Laney, director of Dream Home construction for St. Jude, speaks at the groundbreaking ceremony for the St. Jude Dream Home Showplace in Saratoga Springs on Thursday, Aug. 11, 2022.

Ashtyn Asay, Daily Herald

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Representatives from Oakwood Homes and St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital celebrate the groundbreaking of the St. Jude Dream Home Showplace in Saratoga Springs on Thursday, Aug. 11, 2022.

Ashtyn Asay, Daily Herald

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Ryan Smith, division president of Oakwood Homes, speaks at the groundbreaking ceremony for the St. Jude Dream Home Showplace in Saratoga Springs on Thursday, Aug. 11, 2022.

Ashtyn Asay, Daily Herald

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Representatives from Oakwood Homes and St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital celebrate the groundbreaking of the St. Jude Dream Home Showplace in Saratoga Springs on Thursday, Aug. 11, 2022.

Ashtyn Asay, Daily Herald

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Proceeds from the sale of a home being built in Saratoga Springs will help fund a very special cause.

St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital and Oakwood Homes held a groundbreaking ceremony for Utah’s first St. Jude Dream Home Showplace Thursday in the Wander subdivision in Saratoga Springs.

The Dream Home Showplace that will be built by Oakwood Homes will be an estimated 3,714 square feet and feature six bedrooms, three and a half bathrooms, a three-car garage, a basement activity center and kitchenette, an upgraded spa bath in the primary bathroom and a pet spa in the laundry room.

The net proceeds from the sale of the house will benefit St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital, the only National Cancer Institute-designated Comprehensive Cancer Center devoted solely to children. Through donations and fundraising programs, St. Jude provides treatment, travel, housing and food to patients and their families regardless of their ability to pay.

Many state, city and county government officials attended the groundbreaking, as well as dozens of Oakwood employees and trade partners.

“We gather on this home site of dirt and there’s nothing here right now, it’s level. There’s nothing but ideas, there’s nothing but plans for the future, much like it was for cancer 60 years ago,” said Russ Laney, director of Dream Home construction for St. Jude. “There was an idea, there was a hope and there was a platform where there were no survival rates, but there was a dream and a hope and a projection forward to make a difference, and that’s why we do these groundbreakings.”

While the survival rate for childhood acute lymphoblastic leukemia, or ALL, the most common type of childhood cancer, is relatively high, Laney expressed hope that the funds raised by the sale of the Dream Home Showplace could fund the research to make children’s odds of survival even better.

“Maybe this home that’s right here in Utah, the very first St. Jude Dream Home Showplace, maybe the money that’s raised from it will be the one that will move us from 94% to 95% with ALL,” he said. “And on forward until that’s a completely curable disease. … Let this house be that reminder, and let this house be that symbol.”

Construction will now commence on the St. Jude Dream Home Showplace, and the completed house will be unveiled at the Utah Valley Parade of Homes in 2023.

St. Jude Dream Home Showplace is an extension of the St. Jude Dream Home Giveaway, one of the largest fundraising programs for St. Jude through which participants purchase tickets in order to be entered into a drawing to win a new home. For more information on the Dream Home Showplace, visit https://www.stjude.org/give/showplace/utah.html#information.

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