My Built Environment: Good, Bad, and Really Ugly

It was first reported yesterday in the Boulder Daily Camera That Mcstain Enterprises has filed for bankruptcy protection. This is on the heals of Village Homes filing for bankruptcy last fall. These are two highly respected Colorado home builders, which both made the top 350 list of giant home builders that I noted in my previous post.

While it is not a surprise, it is truly sad to see Mcstain go under. They were one of the pioneers of green building, particularly on a production scale. The company was operated with a huge dosing of respect and integrity, something that is sorely lacking in many companies these days. The reasons they stated for filing is the poor housing market, and more importantly the gridlocked lending we find ourselves in. In my opinion, the gridlocked lending is making a bad situation worse. Without lending, nothing new is getting built or developed, which is now causing massive layoffs in the architecture and engineering fields. The entire industry has been brought to its knees.

Lets just hope that we can work our way out of this sooner than later, before we are all living under a bridge.

Tonight we obtained Planning Commission approval for the Midori project I have been working on for awhile. The next step is County Commissioners. This project still continues to generate solid interest in the lots and homes, and stands a good chance of being sold out by ground breaking! Here is the current site plan. For more information on this sustainable project, visit www.midoriliving.com

Recently, there was an article in the New York Times about a suburb in Vauban, Germany where cars are basically outlawed. Street parking, driveways, and home garages are forbidden within the community. If you do have a car, you have the option of purchasing a garage space on the outskirts of the community to park it in…at a mighty premium. From what I gather, this community is wildly popular among the eco-friendly and executives alike. This community works where it is, because it happens to be located along a tram line with a direct link to downtown Frieberg, and connections to the commuter rail. Compared to the United States, it is widely known that Germany and the rest of Europe have a very comprehensive and successful public transportation system, that makes living car free for entire communities possible.

Can it work here? In my opinion, it can in limited locations across the country. Indeed, you can find people almost anywhere that don’t have cars, either because they can’t afford one, or choose not to have one, and they get along fairly well. But for an entire community? I say, this won’t happen on a large scale in this country until we start thinking about the common good, with a look at the long term, and start putting some real emphasis on creating a viable public transportation system, that actually goes somewhere. I am not talking about just Fort Collins, but the country as a whole. People have to be mobile, and to go without cars, there needs to be a way to get from point A to point B in a relatively short period of time. We are starting to see signs of life on this front, but we have a long way to go. Of course, this will also require more compact development patterns. Indeed, in Vauban, single family homes are not generally permitted. Basically the community is a TOD project, but taken one step further.

To further this goal and concept, I think we also need to get away from the idea that homes must face paved public streets. Why does a street have to have 30-50 feet of asphalt to function as a public street? Why can’t homes face “green streets”? Instead of asphalt, why not landscaped courtyards? This would also serve as a place to play for kids that is close to home…and allow for smaller lots and denser developments. I have been pushing this concept for years with some success. A current project that I am working on is attempting to do this. I have blogged about Midori before, with more coming soon. The battles I face in trying to do “green streets” is how do we address the homes without a paved street, how to get utilities to them without a front door, and the real issue of fire access. Of course, people also have to get away from the idea that they have to have a garage attached to the home. There are some communities that have been successful at this, including co-housing communities, and many of the communities built by The Cottage Company Interestingly though, many other builders who try to build off the concept of The Cottage Company include attached garages now.

I would love to find an infill piece of ground to create a car free community in Fort Collins. Anybody want to join me on this?

One of my business associates has a rental home he bought a year ago. Last month the tenants unexpectedly moved out, leaving quite a mess. After we got the got the junk cleared out of the house, we decided to fix it up, and rent it out again. This home is part of a larger piece of ground he is looking to develop, and the plan was to demolish this home. Now we are looking to keep it, and rent it out again for awhile, and possibly convert it to a commercial use.

In the interim, my wife has put a tremendous amount of time into cleaning it. We don’t think it was cleaned once in the 10 years or so the tenant was there. Structurally the house is in good condition, but it needs some TLC. The owner tore out the old kitchen floor, and I took on the painting.

In the spirit of sustainability and being green, we are going to attempt a green remodel, on a tight budget. Part of the picture is of course, saving the structure in the first place. For the paint, I selected Olympic paint since it is a low VOC environmentally friendly paint. The floor was purchased off of Craig’s list as a left over piece of sheet flooring.

Over time we will have to replace the wiring, rebuild the back lean too addition that house the kitchen and bath, replace the roofing (structure is fine), replace the heating system, etc. I will keep you posted on the progress. For now, enjoy the picures of us actually working on the place!

I have been working on a small 10 unit development, where our goal has been to create a sustainable community from the ground up. This development called Midori (see the sustainable development post below) has only 10 homes on 5 acres. While this is not an aggressive density by any means, it is all that is allowed per the zoning code. One of the big goals was to reduce our impacts on stormwater management. We were able to do this somewhat, by reducing our amount of hardscaping, and having plenty of open space. However, some of my other ideas were shot down by the reviewing jurisdiction. One of my thoughts was to use permeable pavement in our private driveways. I would be allowed to do it, but would not receive any stormwater credit because of fears that it could become clogged, or that the homeowners may choose to pave over it in the future. These are reasonable concerns, but this line of thinking does not allow any kind of creativity, especially in light of todays views of trying to leave a light footprint on the planet. To add insult to injury, in turns out that when the adjacent roadway was rebuilt a couple of years ago, an outfall pipe for the property was not installed, so now we have to account for double detention on our property. As a result we have gone from a barely noticeable detention area of only a foot or two deep, to a hole in the ground that is 6 feet deep.

At least I was able to achieve one of my goals and minimized the amount of piping, with most of the stormwater being carried in open swales. Oh well, maybe we can still make up for it in the landscaping and the homebuilding.