Exceptional Tenants The first tenants didn't exactly fit the budget-conscious student model Rae and Hertz dreamed of 25 years ago, but sometimes, there are exceptions worth making - especially when renters are a known quantity. Turns out Rae knows the renters of the upper floors of the home all too well: they're her mother, Joy Borland, 73, and Shaker native Richard Mantel, 74. Borland recalls her daughter sharing her pay-it-forward idea when she first moved to Shaker Heights from Florida in 1995, when Rae and Hertz's first child was born. Borland didn't give it more than a passing thought - after all, she was busy with her new life as a doting grandmother and continuing her work in retrospective media conversion (in layman's terms that means converting library card catalogs to machine-readable media files). She became involved in local theater, acting in independent films, and then, working as a theater instructor at Cuyahoga Community College, which she does today. At the time, Borland lived in a condo at The Barclay on Van Aken Boulevard, eventually sharing the space with Mantel after the couple met i v e years ago. Soon the condo began to feel crowded and by 2014, Borland and Mantel found themselves wanting more space. Rae and Hertz, now a pediatrician, decided that it was time to start shopping for that two-family with Borland and Mantel in mind as tenants. The two-family house on Newell had been empty for a while, but both Rae and Borland could see the house was "the one" as soon as they walked in. Step inside the second story entrance of the home and it's easy to understand why. Even before renovations, the door opened to a large, open living space with a vaulted ceiling and details throughout. Beautiful wrought iron rails still graced the staircase leading to the third loor and the balcony overlooking the living room. All of the trim revealed intricate carving - on the built-in bookshelves, the ireplace mantel, and on the ceiling. 32 SHAKERONLINE.COM | WINTER 2016
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