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Sunday, November 15, 2026Nov 15

Chattanooga’s Core Homes tapped to build 2023 St. Jude Dream Home

Staff photo by Olivia Ross  / JR McGaha, owner of Core Homes, poses for a portrait on August 2, 2022 at the River Breeze subdivision. Core Homes has been selected to build the St. Jude Dream Home.
Staff photo by Olivia Ross / JR McGaha, owner of Core Homes, poses for a portrait on August 2, 2022 at the River Breeze subdivision. Core Homes has been selected to build the St. Jude Dream Home.

For some, a side hustle is driving for Uber or cutting yards.

For JR McGaha, it was building homes.

“My wife and I got married in 1990,” he said. “We hired a builder for our first home, and I was really intrigued by the whole process.”

McGaha said he got his contractor’s license in 2003. For the next 15 years, he said, he averaged building “a home to a home-and-a-half” per year, all while holding down a full-time information-technology job at Kenco Logistics.

McGaha said that in 2018, he finally decided to leave Kenco and launch Core Homes.