Denver project sells quickly

The New Urbanism is having a significant impact on production home building in North America, but much of that impact is superficial — phony marketing of “community” and attempts to create a traditional “look” with architectural clutter, for example. However, one encouraging example of the New Urbanism’s influence is East Bay at Sloan Lake by Village Homes in Denver, Colorado. It is a dense, infill project of good-looking, reasonably priced single homes near downtown. Sales opened in mid-1995 at $130,000 to $149,000 — escalating about $10,000/home by the time the project was finished due to demand. A total of 111 homes on 13 acres sold out at a pace of three/week, making it one of the hottest subdivisions in the Denver market. The new urbanist aspects of the project include a grid of streets connected directly to the surrounding city blocks and garages accessed by rear lanes (see plan). Homes are built relatively close to the street (10 foot setbacks with porches allowed to encroach) on narrow lots (40 feet wide by 65 feet deep), and streets are relatively narrow by Denver standards (32 feet curb to curb with 60 foot right of way). Four home styles were offered from 1,150 square feet to 1,776 square feet (see photo for examples). The project has no mix of housing types or uses, but it is integrated into a city, so a varied urban environment is within walking distance. Designed by Arlo Braun & Associates, a Denver architecture and planning firm, East Bay received high praise from Tony Nelessen, a leading new urbanist architect, who called it the best neotraditional production housing that he has seen. East Bay was a gamble on the part of Village Homes, a sizable builder in the Denver market. The project was different in terms of the size of lots, style of homes and the inner city location. Its success has prompted the builder to repeat the formula with an 85-home project at Denver’s Lowry Air Force Base redevelopment site.