Email this page
Print this page
FeedThe Long Climb to Black Mountain Ranch
(page 3 of 3)
MAAS IS AN ENTHUSIASTIC ADVOCATE of eco-friendly, “green” building practices. “With the technology that’s now available,” he says, “it only makes good sense, and it provides shortand long-term cost savings.” When residential construction begins in June, 90 percent of the development’s construction waste will be recycled, 40 percent more than the city requires.Maas’ company has drawn up seven pages of green guidelines for Del Sur builders. Among the requirements: 20 percent of the homes must incorporate solar energy; only energy-efficient appliances may be installed; homes must incorporate natural-ventilation systems; and nontoxic materials must be used. Builders must install weatherbased irrigation controllers, a new technology that uses satellite-provided data to automatically match watering times to the weather and the needs of individual plants.
“The builders are all complaining,” Maas says, “so this indicates to me that we’re doing a good job on the environment front.”
The days of the large, master-planned subdivision in San Diego are numbered, says Russ Valone, president of MarketPointe Realty Advisors. In the current political environment, he says, developers often are hard-pressed to make economic sense of it.
“With these large-scale projects, so much gets left in open space,” Valone says. “Some say that’s great planning, and others say that with limited land, we need more density.” Residential building caps “only let you produce more expensive housing when maybe more density would allow more affordable housing.”
As Del Sur prepares to open to buyers, Maas looks back on his 17-year planning adventure with mixed emotions.
“It’s been frustrating, nerve-racking and expensive, and I’ve had to deal with some real challenges,” he says. “I’ve learned that in this town you have to be persistent and resilient, and you have to listen to the community, to make people feel invested.
“San Diego can be very forgiving and gracious, providing you do listen and are patient. Where it’s not forgiving is when you’re dictatorial. Then you’re just dead.”
Not Your Father’s Suburbia
Written by Margie Farnsworth FOR SOME HOME DEVELOPERS, smart suburban growth translates into clusters of small villages, interconnected with wide pedestrian paths and surrounded by open-space preserves. Just such a concept is building up in the South Bay’s Otay Ranch, a 23,000-acre sprawl that represents one of the largest landplanning efforts in California.
Since the property was first purchased for development in 1989, more than 60 percent of the land has been designated as open space, including one of the largest land preserves in the country, the 11,375-acre Otay Ranch Nature Preserve.
About 26,000 homes in 13 villages eventually will be built on the land by several developers. One of them, the Otay Ranch Company, originally bought and got planning approved for the entire area. The company sold off large chunks of the land in the mid-1990s to other developers but retained 5,300 acres to build as five villages.
The first to be completed is Heritage, within the city limits of Chula Vista, a 1-mile-square village just east of Interstate 805 and south of Olympic Parkway that’s home to about 9,000 residents. Its design is the reverse of traditional suburban planning, where retail spaces are anchored on the corners of main thoroughfares, and parcels for parks and schools are isolated from homes.
“With that type of layout, you still have to jump into a car to get anywhere,” says Kim Kilkenny, executive vice president of the Otay Ranch Company. “We’ve broken that mold. We’ve taken all of the community’s activity centers—retail, an elementary school, a large park, transit center, multiple-family housing—and put them in the village core, the middle of the community.”
The design, he says, is akin to “social engineering by physical planning” and aims to introduce an old-fashioned sense of neighborhood to the suburban landscape. Walking and bike riding become convenient in the village design. A network of “paseos” (60-foot-wide pedestrian pathways) and “pop-through cul-desacs” (footpaths that lead to streets and paseos) links single-family homes on the outer edges of the community to the village core.
Streets within the village have been designed to slow down traffic. They are 4 feet narrower than standard suburban streets, and roundabouts —traffic circles—have been built.
The village concept has been well received, says Kilkenny. About half of Heritage’s 3,000 homes are in the village core, and the community’s overall density is 7.8 housing units per acre, about twice what is typical in suburban areas in the county.
All of the village’s retail space— about 40,000 square feet—has been leased, Kilkenny says. And while national chains haven’t been drawn to the off-the-main-drag location, several of the businesses are owned by residents of Heritage.
Home prices in Heritage range from about $300,000 to $800,000. The development is sold out.
