Controlling the costs of TND infrastructure

Editor’s note: This is the second of a two-part series dealing with cutting costs in building a traditional neighborhood development (TND). The first, which appeared in the May/June 1998 issue, dealt with home construction issues. This article focuses on infrastructure and density. Even assuming narrower streets, an interconnected grid and alley system results in more pavement in residential areas, according to traffic expert Walter Kulash. “Traditional neighborhood development and New Urbanism are more expensive [in terms of infrastructure costs], and there is no hiding that fact — efforts to try to prove it isn’t more expensive are futile,” Kulash says. The value of New Urbanism justifies the added expense, he says. “I don’t know why it should even be an issue — the value of a Jaguar is greater than a Geo. It’s an entirely different product and a different level of customer satisfaction.” Despite some claims to the contrary, the evidence suggests that Kulash is right. But that doesn’t mean that new urbanist developers are restricted to selling a high-end product (after all, a lot more Geos are sold than Jaguars). The New Urbanism works better at higher densities than conventional sprawl. Such density results in lower infrastructure costs per unit for the New Urbanism, according to a study by the Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation (this study is presented side by side with a more negative analysis of New Urbanism costs on pages 10 and 11) The density argument presumes that TND homes can compete successfully in the marketplace with larger lot suburban houses. The track record at Kentlands, Northwest Landing, Laguna West, Celebration and East Bay at Sloan Lake (profiled in this issue) and other projects suggests that presumption is valid. The new urbanist approach offers a few direct cost savings — and one of those involves parking. A TND town center allows for sharing of parking lots and provides substantial on-street parking, Kulash points out. When the New Urbanism is built on a larger scale, transportation models suggest that driving will be reduced, according to Richard Bernhardt, planning director for the City of Orlando. “We feel comfortable with a 30 percent reduction in traffic impact fees,” given a new urbanist form of development with a mix of uses on a large enough scale, he says. Since Orlando assesses a $1,250 impact fee per single home, this could save TND developers $300-$400/unit, Bernhardt explains. The above points barely scratch the surface of the complicated subject of infrastructure costs and the New Urbanism. Let’s look at some of the important issues one by one: Density Even with higher infrastructure costs per acre with the New Urbanism, more units per acre means equal or lower infrastructure costs per unit. The key to that equation is that the New Urbanism makes higher density look good, according to Michael McAfee, project manager for Avalon Park, a TND in an early stage of construction. Most single homes in Avalon Park are served by alleys, removing the garage from the street. Home prices in Avalon will be priced competitively with conventional houses. “We believe our 45-foot wide product will compete very successfully with conventional 50-foot lots, and our 60-foot wide product with conventional 70-foot lots,” McAfee says. “That represents a ten percent or more reduction in land and development costs, which goes a long way towards paying for the extra cost of rear lanes.” For example, a competing conventional subdivision offers homes on 50-foot lots for $125,000. Avalon Park plans to sell homes on 45-foot lots with garages on alleys for $128,000. Despite the fact that Avalon Park’s homes are narrower — 35-feet wide instead of 40-feet wide — they will look bigger because the buyer “will see all house” instead of mostly garage. Moreover, the conventional project has a brutal streetscape compared to the neotraditional porches and narrow, tree-lined streets that Avalon will offer. “From a streetscape point of view, there will be a world of difference,” claims McAfee.. Centex Homes has successfully marketed cottages on 35 by 70 foot lots (2,450 square feet) and larger homes on 45 by 100 foot lots (4,500 square feet) in Northwest Landing in Dupont, Washington. Even grouped around neighborhood parks, the gross density is still six to 10 units/acre, much higher than most single family suburbs. Centex, one of several builders in Northwest Landing, is meeting production sales goals of 50 to 75 homes/year. “It turns out that small lots are okay,” says Ken Krueger, vice president of Centex’s Washington State division. “We had objections in the beginning, but as we built out the streetscape, the lot size was no longer an issue.” Krueger adds that infrastructure costs are $14,000 (cottages) to $18,000 (larger lot homes), significantly lower than the typical $20,000 to $30,000 in Washington State. “Per lot development costs in Northwest Landing are actually lower than in many Washington State communities,” he reports. Street network and width New urbanist projects are based on a fine-grained, interconnected network of streets and blocks. Most have alleys and neighborhood greens. The idea is to create human-scale, pedestrian-oriented streets, making them the centerpiece of the public realm again. But connecting up the streets means more pavement. Tony Nelessen, of the town planning firm Nelessen Associates in Princeton, New Jersey, estimates that neotraditional layouts have 12 to 20 percent more roadway. Neotraditional streets generally are narrower than their suburban counterparts. On the other hand, most TNDs have wide sidewalks (five feet instead of four feet), and boulevard planting strips for trees. Therefore, the cost for per linear foot of street may be the same for New Urbanism and conventional suburbs. Nevertheless, developers can minimize costs by building roads no wider than necessary. “Anything greater than 24 feet wide in a residential area should always be questioned,” says Kulash. “Beyond 24 feet you are getting into free-flow traffic lanes, which you don’t want.” Kulash calls residential streets wider than 24 feet “wasted pavement.” In Silver Oaks Village in Zephyrhills, Florida, the streets will be private so that they can be as narrow as possible (18 feet in residential areas). An additional advantage of having streets so narrow is that pedestrians begin to feel comfortable sharing the street with cars. Sidewalks will be built on one side of the street only in Silver Oaks. Alleys Andres Duany, in his Operating System of the New Urbanism, uses diagrams to show that the pavement required for alleys is entirely offset by the elimination of driveways. Robert Turner, one of the most experienced TND developers, agrees with Duany. Others are not so sure, and the savings may depend on the width of the alley. Kulash recommends that alleys be 20 feet wide (to allow adequate space for turning into garages), but that the paved area be only nine feet wide. Over time, vegetation sprouts through compacted gravel on both sides of the pavement, giving the alley a “country lane” feel . Arterial roads Suburbia takes a dendritic form, i.e. pods feeding into arterials or “loop” roads that carry most of the traffic. These primary roads have to be built first, requiring a considerable up-front investment. New urbanist projects, which are based on the interconnected street and block pattern, don’t need interior “loop” roads and have less need for arterials. In the right circumstances, a TND developer can start by building houses on both sides of a single street or around a neighborhood green, and reduce upfront infrastructure costs. That was the strategy employed by Robert Davis in building Seaside, the first TND. That strategy may depend on a neotraditional project locating adjacent to existing urban fabric. In practice, many TNDs are built in the context of surrounding sprawl. These projects often are required to build a major entrance or loop road anyway, before they can begin to create a neighborhood. In such cases, this new urbanist advantage disappears. Off-site road improvements Higher-density, pedestrian-scale neighborhoods generate fewer vehicles miles traveled per household. This has been demonstrated across all income levels in older neighborhoods in Chicago, San Francisco and Los Angeles by John Holtzclaw’s research for the Natural Resources Defense Council and other groups. The City of Orlando has come to a similar conclusion by using conventional traffic analysis on a 28-square-mile area in Southeast Orlando. Theoretically, the reduced vehicle miles should result in lower impact fees for new urbanist projects, but at least two problems must be overcome: 1) More research is needed to determine how much new urbanist development must be built to achieve per household traffic reductions. 2) More municipalities, like Orlando, must be willing to give TND credit for that reduction. Commercial parking This is one area where New Urbanism has an undisputed advantage. Shopping malls are built with parking lots big enough to handle the cars on December 24 — the peak business day. Office parks, movie theaters and restaurants have other peak demand times for parking which have to be entirely accommodated with off-street parking in a stand-alone suburban setting. By mixing these uses, a neotraditional town center allows for shared parking. Parking on both sides of the street further reduces the need for parking lots. Off-street parking spaces can be cut by 50 percent or more, Kulash says (less than two spaces per square foot required for a mixed use town center, compared to four or five per square foot for a conventional suburban project). In some cases — like Seaside, Florida — a vibrant new urbanist town center can get by with little or no off-street parking. Taking advantage of existing infrastructure Small infill projects like Historic Kirkwood in Kirkland, Illinois, and Robert Turner’s Port Royal, South Carolina, project and East Bay in Denver, Colorado, illustrate how New Urbanism built adjacent to old urbanism can save developers money on infrastructure. These projects piggyback on existing neighborhoods — so everything does not have to be built from scratch. They do not have “town centers” per se, and road and amenity costs are kept to a minimum. Yet they provide quality streetscapes in a context of a larger community that is walkable.