Site Plans Preserve Natural Settings, Raise Density
Developers may not be able to get the densities they want in fast-growing parts of the country where land is at a premium and local regulation discourages building the housing the community needs, but builders who are promoting sustainability and conservation in their site planning are reporting significant progress. The approach is also providing an advantage in marketing and selling new homes, according to participants at NAHB’s Green Building Conference, which was held in Atlanta in March. “Site planning is where you can really make the difference,” said Marty Mitchell, vice president for land acquisition and development for Mitchell & Best Homebuilders, which is located in the Washington, D.C. metropolitan area. Working closely with Montgomery County, Md., to preserve the natural characteristics of the countryside, Mitchell said he was able to build 44 units on 101 acres in his Bancroft community in Sandy Spring, leaving 70% of the property as open space. The project was built at an overall density of 4.4 units per acre and used “Rural Neighborhood Cluster” zoning, in sharp contrast to the more typical two-acre lots that “are chewing up the land” in the rural outskirts of the Washington market. The Bancroft site had previously been used, and abused, by a tenant farmer, Mitchell said. In its reclamation, “we preserved forested areas as much as 600-feet wide and protected streams running through the property.” Although the development’s large homes were close together, open spaces in front and back of them provided an offset that customers said they enjoyed. Community streets, accessible from two access points, were built 18-feet wide on 22-foot easements; turnaround areas were minimized. Farmland was protected along the entrance road, and a meandering bike path helped cut down on pavement required along the roadway. “You have to be in constant contact with the excavator in efforts to protect trees,” Mitchell cautioned. On a forested, sloping 5-1/2-acre location inside the Washington Beltway, Mitchell was able to build eight homes in his Endicott Hill infill project, locating them around pockets where few trees grew to leave the forest intact. Stone walls were used extensively to protect the trees. The attention to tree preservation did not go unnoticed by buyers at Endicott Hill. “Every home owner said, ‘I bought for the trees,’” Mitchell said. Despite the success of the two projects, Mitchell said that the densities allowed on each were still insufficient to meet the needs of the area’s growing population, and they added unnecessarily to development costs. Both projects were winners of last year’s Building With Trees Awards of Excellence by the National Arbor Day Foundation in cooperation with NAHB. Green Branding Pursuing Traditional Neighborhood Development and various approaches to green building can help builders establish a good working relationship with municipalities, said Jackie Benson, managing director of Benson Miles TND, the Atlanta division of Milesbrand. Conservation communities are “up and coming,” she added. One example is a community built around a 90-acre farm. On the consumer side, Benson, who worked with the Greater Atlanta Home Builders Association and Southface to develop the EarthCraft House program, said that builders can brand themselves as green by focusing more on the benefits than the features themselves. “It’s really about the performance of the house,” she said, and she advised green builders to ask their customers to compare their homes with those of other builders. Other advantages of green building, she said, are that it sets new standards for quality that are quantifiable; it establishes core values for employees and reduces turnover; and there are fewer callbacks and more customer satisfaction. | 
