Olde West, New Urbanism
Does ‘Good Development’ Exist?
By Eugene BuchananIt’s 5 p.m. on a Thursday afternoon on the Arkansas River in downtown Buena Vista, Colorado. A flotilla of kayakers in multi-colored boats spin, float and otherwise frolic in a series of surprisingly real-looking man-made waves and eddies. Built with rocks from nearby quarries and grouted in seamlessly with their surroundings, it’s hard to tell where Mother Nature’s sculpting ends and man’s improvements begin. On shore, passersby stroll a new path paralleling the river, walking dogs, pushing kids in strollers and enjoying views of both the river and 14,000-foot peaks of the Collegiate range.
When finished, the kayakers don’t float down to their cars, load up and shuttle a long ways home. They are home. They take out right there, shoulder their boats and simply walk back to their front porches in a new 41-acre, 315-unit development called South Main, which has invested in the area’s recreation as a vital component of its real estate. In so doing, it’s also ushering in an era of New Urbanism in the Old West.
Getting its start in Seaside, Florida, in 1981, the catchy-named, community-based concept de-emphasizes automobiles with a pedestrian-friendly village featuring homes densely packed together amid offices and retail space, which frees up open space for parks and plazas. It creates a community where people can work, shop and play without the need for fossil-fueled speed. Upon full build-out and sell-through in Buena Vista, the South Main version will eventually increase the town’s population by a whopping 33 percent, from 2,000 to 2,800.
That this is centered around the river owes itself to its developers, Katie, 31, and Jed, 28, Selby, professional-kayakers-turned-community-planners who are forging new waters when it comes to conventional Western development.
“It’s definitely a new approach, especially in such a rural area,” says Jed. “But I think it’s the future. More and more people enjoy living where they don’t have to drive to everything, whether it’s recreation or retail. And it’s good for all ages. Young people like the action of a more urban environment, it’s close to schools for families, and older people find it an easier lifestyle.”
While they’re kayakers at heart and grapple with the stigma of being labeled developers, the Selbys take solace in the fact that they’re enforcing a strict green-building code while building a sustainable community and protecting a natural resource at the same time. Still, they’re also keenly aware that, like ski areas pitching a “green” recreation-based future for the West, their development still creates an environmental footprint. “That’s something we certainly wrestle with,” says Jed. “But at least we’re doing everything we can to minimize our impact and protect the environment. And it’s a lot better than what could have happened here.”
Others feel the same. Showing that the idea holds as much water as the snowmelt-laden Arkansas, the Selbys sold 90 percent of Phase One’s 31 lots the first six weeks they were offered. Its first full-time residents — Katie and her new husband Dustin Urban (a nice name for the movement) — moved into their house at 1000 Wave Street last October. So far six houses have been completed, ground has been broken on 11 more, and construction on another 14 will start this year before Phase One is completed. Enter the Urbanism concept. Six of these 31 buildings will have commercial components, including the one Nora and Preston Larimer plan to run an art gallery out of while living upstairs. New Mexico’s Eddyline Brewery just inked a deal to become the first restaurant on the square.
“We’re getting incredible response,” says Selby. “It’s the first large-scale retail addition to downtown in quite a while. A few retailers have even relocated to Main Street just to be closer to it.”
The Stairway to Sustainability
The Selbys’ odyssey began in 2003 when a time-share developer bid on the parcel, with plans to close public access to the river. As paddlers, they thought this a travesty, especially since it would forever drown plans of expanding Buena Vista’s whitewater park. So they did what they do in kayak competitions whenever someone else throws down. They stepped up to beat the competition. With support from their father, an Arizona doctor, they sold a family parcel in Vail and made a better offer.
Then the fun began. In researching other towns to see what type of development would best fit the area, they stumbled upon New Urbanism, whose Charter “…views disinvestment in central cities, the spread of placeless sprawl, increasing separation by race and income, environmental deterioration, loss of agricultural lands and wilderness, and the erosion of society’s built heritage as one interrelated community building challenge.” As movement co-founder Andres Duany puts it, “…today’s developers are specialists. One builds only shopping centers, another office parks, another houses. Traffic engineers design only the roads, environmental analysts worry only about the open space… but no one looks out for the big picture. The result is a collection of monocultures.”
The Selbys saw an opportunity to give the concept legs in Buena Vista, including the chance to keep the river corridor open to the public. The first order of business: donating 10 acres of open space to the town, including three acres of riverfront to protect the corridor. They then donated an additional $30,000, matched by the city, to build the whitewater park and trails, and applied for and won a state lottery grant of $186,000 for additional funding. Protecting the town’s greatest recreational asset endeared them to the community, and likely helped the project surf through the planning process.
“The town was quite receptive,” says Jed. “I think the river park helped them get excited about it. The community has wanted the downtown area to be revitalized for some time, and it saw this as facilitating that process.
“There was surprisingly little resistance,” he adds. “There are always people who resist change, but most everyone wanted to see the downtown area come to life. People opposed portions of the project, but no one opposed the whole thing.”
It also helped that they took the planning process public from the beginning, getting the community’s input in the development’s plans. They spared no expense in the follow-through, either, hiring Florida’s Dover Kohl & Partners to craft a community packing 315 units onto 200 lots ranging in size between 1,700 and 7,800 square feet. As for the sustainability part, whether they buy custom lots, which range between $100,000 and $200,000, or completed homes, clients have to adhere to strict architectural and green-building codes. Lot buyers can choose from six approved architects, chosen by South Main’s Steve Mouzon, a principal and co-founder of The New Urban Guild, a talent agency for community-minded architects. For properties developed by South Main, the Selbys tapped development engineer and construction manager J.J. Kinsfather of Swift & Associates, one of the nation’s leading New Urban engineering firms.
But it’s the sheer number of units, ranging from 400-square-foot lofts to 5,700-square-foot homes, that are re-shaping the town. “Because of how many there are, we expect it to alter Buena Vista’s demographic significantly,” says Lee Hart, marketing director for the Chaffee County Visitor’s Bureau. “It should add more young singles and families to a demographic that currently skews a bit older and empty nest.”
The project has also already helped spawn another Traditional Neighborhood Design (TND) spin-off in the area. Targeting a second home owner and retiree clientele, the nearby 572-unit Villages at Cottonwood Meadows started as more of a conventional subdivision when its developers first brought their plans to the city. But after seeing the success of South Main, the town came back with another neighborhood concept, complete with a community agriculture component. “South Main was a real catalyst for the Cottonwood proposal,” admits Davis Farrar, a consultant serving as Buena Vista’s town planner for both projects. “It’s somewhat unusual for a small community like Buena Vista to have two TND projects come through so quickly.”
Farrar adds that the main reason for South Main’s support is their willingness to hold chavettes, a French term for involving the public in every facet of the project. “It was an entirely different paradigm from what the town was used to seeing, with narrower streets, higher density and a tying of Main Street to the river,” he says. “I was an advocate from the start, but I’m amazed there weren’t more raised eyebrows.”
No one raised their eyebrows more initially than local realtors, many of whom were wondering about the project’s validity in such a rural mountain town, and how a town of 2,200 could attract 800 new residents. By some estimates, if realtors sell homes at their current pace, it would take 15 years just to empty the supply already on hand. But now the tide is changing. “It’s a beautifully designed project, and is the forerunner in our area,” says broker Jayne Pinto of Salida’s Piñon Real Estate Group. “They set the trend, and right now there are four other projects in Chaffee County that have the same number of units or more.”
As far as flooding the market, Pinto doesn’t feel that’s a problem at all, especially with South Main’s proximity to the river as a recreational resource. “It’s an environmentally sound project that also takes into the account the quality of the area they’re in, which a lot of developers miss,” she says.
A lot of people wouldn’t take that risk, she adds. “Combining a real estate development with the protection of a recreational amenity in a rural mountain community was really gutsy,” she says. “But they put a lot of creative thinking into it and truly believe in our area. The result is a true legacy project whose concept could easily transpose to other communities.”
Not for Everyone
Of course, there are some who are not sold on the New Urbanism concept. In 2003, the Durango, Colorado, city council rejected a planned 800-unit New Urbanism development just north of the city limits in a highly visible flood plain dubbed Animas Valley. “There were heated, packed city council meetings about it,” says Rill Roberts, Editorial Page Editor of The Durango Herald. “A few people were in favor of it, but most were opposed due to the usual issues, namely its scale, location and visibility.”
Apart from its eyesoreness, many simply felt Durango already had a pedestrian-friendly TND downtown area with adjacent residential neighborhoods. Why reinvent the wheel and build another? “I opposed it and wrote about New Urbanism in a disparaging way,” admits Roberts. “I think it was being used as a marketing gimmick. There are aspects of New Urbanism that I find very attractive and that make sense in certain scenarios, but just wrapping that label around something doesn’t make it okay.
“It has the aspect of a cult,” he adds. “There’s a bible, high priests and the whole aspect of buying into the movement’s philosophy.”
He admits, however, that it also has its place, especially in more urban areas or locations like Buena Vista that don’t already have working downtowns. A case in point is the Stapleton development in Denver, which turned an old airport into a thriving, relatively self-sufficient community. Other projects along the Front Range where the concept has worked include Longmont’s Prospect community and Belmar in Lakewood, each of which melds densely packed residential neighborhoods with commercial sectors for true mixed-use living. Places like these have Roberts’ full blessing. “Bulldoze part of south L.A. and put one in and it’d be right as rain,” he maintains. “But applying the concept to rural green fields is another matter.”
Ironically, the Durango city council recently approved a similar 1,200-unit project three miles east of town on land owned by the Southern Ute tribe. Like the Selbys did in Buena Vista, the owners secured the council’s good graces early by donating land — this time for a new hospital instead of a river park. “That went a long way toward greasing the skids,” says Roberts. “Plus, it didn’t involve the iconic piece of property that the other project did.”
The bottom line is that New Urbanism isn’t for everyone, everywhere. But protecting natural resources is. “I don’t think that you can build your way out of social problems, and I don’t believe in the redemptive attributes of architecture,” says Roberts. “Adopting these principles doesn’t turn a bad idea into a good one.”
Banking on Recreation
Real estate aside, developments like the park in Buena Vista have proven a huge boon for local economies. One of the first municipalities in the country to realize this is Golden, Colorado, which set the trend by building a whitewater park downtown on Clear Creek in 1996 for just $165,000. Studies now show that the park contributes as much as $1.4 million to the local economy every year. “It’s a huge draw for the town,” maintains City of Golden Communications Manager Sabrina D’Agosta. “People are becoming more aware of Golden as a destination because of it, which leads to increased sales. Go down there anytime between April and November and it’s obvious it’s generating traffic.”
There are now more than 26 such parks in Colorado alone, including a great one downstream of Buena Vista in Salida. Their neighbor even farther downstream, Cañon City, is now in the process of building a park of its own on the Arkansas. Combine a park’s draw with the benefits of a pedestrian community, and the recipe is ripe for success.
“From a recreational standpoint, the South Main development has had a real positive effect on the area,” says Chaffee County Commissioner and former Arkansas River Trust President Jerry Mallett, adding that the county recently donated $5,000 to upgrade the park. “Any region that protects its natural resources is going to grow economically. It’s certainly happened here in Salida, and it will in Buena Vista as well. Moving water is the most important resource we have, and projects like this are turning it into an action-packed asset.”
Another development taking advantage of proximity to world-class whitewater is across the Mississippi just three miles away from Fayetteville, W.V. There, Atlanta’s Land Resource Co. is developing home sites on 3,700 acres bordering the New River Gorge, one of the most quintessential river runs in the country. While not New Urbanism per se — it’s not bringing a downtown component to the development — the master-planned community is relying heavily on recreation to promote its real estate. It’s even taken out full-page advertisements in the nation’s top paddling magazines to get the word out to potential clients. More importantly, its principals also realize the importance of preserving open space, designating 2,000 acres of the project to be free of any development.
Perhaps no one has capitalized on this concept as much as the city of Ogden, Utah, which is using its location in the Wasatch Mountains to shepherd the local economy. With its proximity to Snow Basin, and plans to build a gondola from downtown to the resort’s summit, it’s already convinced such companies as Descente, Goode, Nidecker Snowboards and Amer — whose portfolio includes Salomon, Atomic and Suunto — to relocate to the region, and it’s swayed Scott and Rossignol to build distribution centers in the city.
“We’re heavily promoting our access to recreation to attract visitors,” says Rich Koski, director of sales for the Ogden/Weber Convention and Visitors Bureau. “Accessibility has played a key role in attracting the companies that have relocated here. It’s an amenity for employees and provides incentives for dealers and reps to visit. It’s a significant factor in current and future growth.”
The city is also banking on its stream banks, using the Ogden and Weber rivers as a draw. The town has two kayak parks already in the works, and a California developer recently acquired property along the Ogden with plans for yet another mixed-use development. Showing the area’s recreational diversification, a bike retailer recently built a rental store and restaurant along the river.
But Ogden is a large city with pockets as deep as its nearby canyons. Projects like South Main aren’t necessarily going to sprout up everywhere, especially in the smaller municipalities that dot the Rockies. “For a small mountain town, Buena Vista is very much on the cutting edge for development like this,” says Farrar. “You don’t see these kind of projects in rural areas very often — the upfront costs are just too high. But if the design works, it pays off in the long run.”
He adds that, with gas prices rising, towns will likely see more and more of this type of development across the West, for the higher level of social interaction they provide, ease of living and, in South Main’s case, emphasis on sustainability and preserving recreational resources. “There are TND advocates and those with other ideas,” he says. “But ultimately, we have to do it. Everything we do is driven by fossil fuel and this is one way to address it. I would hope it’s the future of the West.” MG
MG
