Hello everyone, There have been a number of comments from neighbors about the length of the house tour and the length of the volunteer shifts. I'm writing to clarify the decisions that the committee made, so that no one thinks that we arbitrarily lengthened the tour. We want the volunteer experience to be enjoyable for everyone! In 2001 and 2003, the house tour was held from 11am to 5pm and approximately 45 volunteers were needed to cover the entire day. (There were 11-12 houses on the tour) This year, we knew when we began planning that we would need to make additional accomodations to have the King Estate on the tour. We are thrilled to be able to have such a gorgeous house and meticulous restoration work available to showcase to the rest of the city. And we want our homeowners, volunteers and visitors to have the best experience possible. We extended the tour by two hours in the hope that the additional time would spread out the crowds and make the tour more enjoyable for our visitors. We wanted to avoid a throng of people waiting outside of the King Estate if possible. And we chose to hold the tour on a Saturday this year, so everyone will have Sunday to "recover" from the longer tour. Visitors will be led in small groups through the King Estate, and we will have two volunteers per room (each shift) and several more outside. The rest of the houses on the tour will have 2-4 volunteers per house (each shift) and we will have a couple of people at St. Andrews for ticket collection, etc. All of this means that we need 45 volunteers *per shift* this year - twice as many as in past years. And several people have asked if we could have three 2.5-hour volunteer shifts, instead of the two 4-hour long volunteer shifts. We are not opposed to this idea, but it would require that we get three times the number of volunteers than were gathered in years past. Currently, there are about 60 volunteers on our list, so we are still 30 people short of what we need to cover two shifts. If everyone who has already signed up could sign up a friend (or two), we could have volunteer shifts that are only 2 1/2 hours long. Quite honestly, the house tour committee has a lot left to do to get ready for the tour, and we don't have the manpower to recruit 75 more volunteers in the next month. We still need to train the volunteers who will be at the King Estate, so there are some positions which can't be filled at the last minute. The committee would like to thank everyone who has volunteered so far, all of the local businesses who are advertising in the program and everyone in the neighborhood who has been supportive of the House Tour (especially those in the community club). We are looking forward to a great neighborhood event on October 1st! Anyone who still wishes to volunteer can email their name and phone number to housetour@highlandparkpa.com. Thank you, Amy Maceyko, Brigette Nadler, Peter Hughes Highland Park House Tour Committee Chairs