Miranda Pederson/Daily NewsCity officials and representatives of St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital, along with Sweets Design Build, break ground Tuesday for the seventh annual St. Jude Dream Home at 151 Oak Ridge Way.

The day might have been better suited for a snowball fight, but a little more than a dozen people braved the cold and broke ground Tuesday morning for the seventh annual St. Jude Dream Home.

People with shovels flung snowy clumps of muddy soil at the site of the newest dream home in the area, which will be in The Oaks subdivision at 151 Oak Ridge Way.

When the home is completed for the Sept. 18 televised giveaway, it will measure 2,950 square feet and contain four bedrooms, 21/2 bathrooms, tile showers, a large bonus room, an oversized two-car garage and a large kitchen with a walk-in pantry and butler’s pantry.

Between now and the drawing, organizers involved in the Dream Home Giveaway hope the community will turn out in great numbers to help raise money for St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital.

“I think the economy has come around to where people will be able to buy tickets and the people in southcentral Kentucky will do what they always do and help support the kids who benefit from St. Jude,” said James “Doc” Kaelin, chairman of the local Dream Home campaign.

Organizers hope to sell 7,500 tickets this year and raise at least $750,000 through the local campaign. Last year, the campaign netted $672,100 for St. Jude.

Proceeds from each year’s giveaway benefit the children’s hospital in Memphis, Tenn., where researchers attempt to find cures for cancer and other catastrophic children’s diseases.

St. Jude is the only pediatric cancer research center where families never have to pay for treatment not covered by insurance. Children are treated there regardless of the family’s ability to pay.

Sweets Design Build is acting as construction coordinator for the house, as it has done in previous years.

For the past three years, the dream home has been built in the September Lakes subdivision in Alvaton, a newer neighborhood with several undeveloped lots.

The Oaks, by contrast, was started eight years ago and only two lots, including the Dream Home site, are unfinished.

Lynn Davenport, developer of The Oaks, said he has worked with Sweets Design Build on many of the other homes in the subdivision. The Dream Home site this year was made available through a partial donation, Davenport said.

“We hope neighbors will want to be involved,” Davenport said of the fundraising effort.

Darrel Sweets of Sweets Design Build said he is in the process of lining up donated labor and time from area subcontractors, landscapers and other laborers for the dream home.

“We’re looking to get as much involvement as possible,” Sweets said.

Tickets for the prize drawing will be sold starting June 3 for $100. Fourteen other prizes will be given away, including $4,800 worth of gas and groceries from Houchens Industries to the winner of the Early Bird Drawing for those who reserve their tickets by July 22.