Charleston Homes broke ground Monday on a new house in Elkhorn's Indian Ridge neighborhood: Nebraska's first St. Jude Dream Home Showplace, a project built specifically to raise money for childhood cancer research. The company and its trade partners are donating their time and materials to the build, with net proceeds from the eventual sale earmarked for St. Jude Children's Research Hospital.
The groundbreaking marks the start of what organizers describe as a first-of-its-kind home for the Omaha area, built to help fight childhood cancer, according to KETV. The stated goal of the project is to direct net proceeds from the home's sale to St. Jude Children's Research Hospital, the station reports. The owner of Charleston Homes called it an honor to be the first builder to put up a St. Jude Dream Home anywhere in the state.
How the Dream Home Model Works
St. Jude's national Dream Home program relies on exactly this kind of arrangement: a local builder constructs a Showplace house using donated labor and materials from community trade partners, vendors and national sponsors, according to St. Jude. Once construction wraps, the house is sold, and the hospital says net proceeds from that sale are donated back to St. Jude Children's Research Hospital. The Elkhorn project is part of a much larger national push — the organization notes it hosts more than 40 home giveaways across the country this year alone, often inviting the public to reserve a $100 ticket for a chance to win a house and other prizes.
Nebraska's version of the program is structured as a direct sale rather than a ticketed giveaway, per the goal described to KETV. Elsewhere in the country, the giveaway model is very much alive: the first-ever St. Jude Dream Home in Oxford, Mississippi, built by Samuels Construction in the Highlands subdivision, is a roughly 2,700-square-foot, four-bedroom, four-bathroom house valued at about $795,000, with $100 tickets sold for a shot at winning it, according to a report from Action News 5. Whether the Elkhorn home will follow a similar giveaway format, or simply go up for sale, has not been detailed publicly.
What Happens When the House Sells
Regardless of how a Showplace house changes hands, the underlying contract is straightforward: St. Jude says the sales agreement is a traditional new-house purchase contract between the buyer and the builder. The Elkhorn home is scheduled to open to the public during the Spring Parade of Homes on April 17, 2027, giving future buyers and curious neighbors a chance to walk through it before any sale is finalized.
The fundraising push ties into St. Jude's broader mission in the region. The hospital says it is working to drive the overall survival rate for childhood cancer up to 90 percent, a goal it frames as central to its work across the Mid-America area that includes Nebraska. For now, the Indian Ridge lot in Elkhorn stands as the physical starting point of that effort in the state — a house built by donated hands, destined to be sold for a cause well beyond its walls.
