‘i-house’ is giant leap from trailer park

Susan Connolly, a 60-year-old accountant who works from her conventional Knoxville home, hopes to be one of the first buyers. She's seen the prototype and has been talking to the company.

"I have been interested in green construction and the environment in my own personal life," she said. "It is nice to have a group of people that have thought of everything. Where you don't have to shop around and go to different places ... to find the products you want."

"I think it is smart. It is fresh. It is kind of hip for a new generation of green-thinking homebuyers," said Stacey Epperson, president and CEO of Frontier Housing, a Morehead, Ky.-based regional nonprofit group that supplies site-built homes and manufactured housing, including Clayton products, to low- and moderate-income homebuyers.

"You know a lot of people don't see themselves living in manufactured (housing), but a lot of those people would see themselves living in an 'i-house.' I could live in an 'i-house,'" she said.

"Are we repositioning to go after a new market?" Nicely said. "I would think we are maintaining our value to our existing market and expanding the market to include other buyers that previously wouldn't have considered our housing product."

The company sees the "i-house" as a primary residence — three developers already have inquired about building mini-developments with them — that also could appeal to vacation home buyers.

Brian McKinley, president of Atlantis Homes of Smyrna, Del., a manufactured-home dealer that sells Clayton and other brands, said the "i-house" resembles high-end custom homes he sees along the Delaware-Maryland shore.

It represents a "new direction and an innovative application for what our industry can do," he said.

"I think there is a market," McKinley said. "The challenge is to find that market and then will they visit this home at one of our traditional factory-built home centers. I think they (Clayton) want to find that out, too."

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