Livable Communities
Building Better Communities
Whether it’s making affordable housing a priority, creating a city hallmark, or revitalizing a downtown, cities across the country are tackling the challenges of making their communities more livable.
BY MARIWYN EVANS
A Home You Can Afford: Breckenridge, Colo.
It doesn’t matter how desirable a place is if you can’t afford to live there. And few communities are more desirable than Breckenridge, Colo. Cradled in the Rocky Mountains, the destination ski resort attracts more than 26,000 visitors and part-time residents.
But for the roughly 2,900 year-round residents, the median home price of almost $725,000 makes almost all the community’s housing unattainable. It’s not surprising that when the town undertook a community vision process a few years ago, affordable workforce housing was a top priority.
“You can’t have a viable community if most of the people who form the backbone of the community can’t afford to live there,” says Town Manager Tim Gagin.
The community had a core of homeowners who’d bought 30 years ago when prices were lower. And the Vail ski resort had built housing for 125 of its seasonal workers. But for the teachers, firefighters, restaurant workers, and even the town manager, a new approach to housing was needed.
Enter the Wellington, a master-planned community that places 122 homes on 23 acres. The first challenge was that the county surrounding Breckenridge allowed only four homes per acre. To make the project viable, the city “transferred some of the density from other undeveloped areas of the town,” says Peter Grosshuesch, director of community development. The city also waived infrastructure and other fees for a net noncash contribution of approximately $1 million.
Another problem was where to put this much-need housing in a town with limited buildable land. “Any project ultimately succeeds or fails on the day you buy the land,” says David O’Neil, founder of the Wellington neighborhood. “And to do moderately priced housing in Breckenridge, you definitely had to find land that was challenged.”
It didn’t get more challenged than the site eventually chosen, a former dredge mine strewn with 30-foot-high piles of basketball-sized rocks. Working with the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and the Colorado Department of Public Health, Breckenridge reclaimed the 85-acre site.
After a year of community meetings and design approvals, the Wellington broke ground in the fall of 2000. Today, 90 completed homes range in price from $224,900 for a two-bedroom half of a duplex to $450,000 for the four-bedroom, market-rate Ponderosa model. The buyers of the eight homes sold thus far by Buck Finley, broker with Colorado Premier Resort Properties, have fit the workforce profile.
“Our typical buyers are a nurse working for the county, retail salespeople, and small-business owners,” Finley says. “The prices at Wellington give them a chance to get their feet in the door of homeownership.”
Except for the 20 percent of the homes that are sold at market rates, buyers at Wellington must work at least 30 hours a week in Summit County. Many buyers also can qualify for downpayment assistance from Breckenridge.
To keep Wellington affordable, 80 percent of the homes are perpetually deed restricted to local ownership, and appreciation is capped at the higher of 3 percent a year or the increase in the local median income. Last year, that appreciation was 5.8 percent, says Finley. Another requirement—perhaps an essential one in a community where 80 percent of residences are second homes—is that short-term rentals are prohibited.
“I’ve seen subdivisions that are almost deserted during some periods of the year,” says Finley. “Here, there are neighbors and kids to play with.”
The sense of livability and community also is enhanced by the Wellington’s design. The homes are clustered around a shared commons. Front porches encourage interaction with neighbors, while narrow streets welcome walking. A free shuttle bus provides transit to town.
Sharyn Steiner, new president of the Wellington Homeowners Association and a legal secretary, was drawn to the Wellington both by its sense of community and its affordability. “The first time I saw these homes, I just fell in love,” says Steiner, a county resident since 1975. “The sense of community was just like old-time Breckenridge.”
Affordability Tool: HUD Vouchers
To working families that seem to find that gold ring of homeownership always just out of reach, the extra monthly income provided by vouchers from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development can make a critical difference. The five-year-old program is available through more than 350 housing authorities and has thus far helped 1,500 families become homeowners, says HUD spokesperson Donna White.
Thirty-three of those new buyers are in Montgomery County, Pa. “This is one of the best vehicles we have to help families own their own homes,” says Carol Navon, deputy executive director of management and administration for the Montgomery County Housing Authority.
Caveat: The longer time involved in getting mortgage approval makes it challenging to work with program participants, says Jerry Orbino, a salesperson with Coldwell Banker Heritage, who just helped a mother with her four children buy her first home.
“In a seller’s market like this one, some sellers don’t want to be bothered with the extra complexity of the transaction,” Orbino says. A cap on the amount voucher program participants can pay also makes the deal more difficult. Still, within five months of meeting the family, Orbino, who has been in real estate only a year after a corporate career at AT&T, was able to find them “the perfect home.”
A Vibrant City Center: Chattanooga, Tenn.
Great cities produce great symbols—the Eiffel Tower, the Sydney Opera House, and the Golden Gate Bridge. For Chattanooga, Tenn., that symbol is the winding curve of the Tennessee River that cuts through the heart of the city. Today, a vibrant home to entertainment and housing, the river of two decades ago was polluted, bordered by deteriorating warehouses and shuttered factories, and cut off from the downtown by a four-lane highway. In finding new vitality for the river, Chattanooga has recaptured its own.
“In the mid-1980s when I first started leasing office space, downtown closed up at 5 o’clock. And on the weekends, there wasn’t one red light that wasn’t flashing,” recalls Russ Elliott, CCIM, SIOR, a commercial broker with The Corker Group.
The catalyst that turned the city’s eyes to the river was the publicly and privately funded Tennessee Aquarium, which bordered the river at the edge of downtown. Opened in 1992, the 130,000-square-foot freshwater aquarium became the anchor of the Tennessee Riverpark Master Plan. As the plan evolved, landscaped lakefront walkways provided river access and small restaurants, and an IMAX Theater opened to serve the 1 million tourists and local residents who visit the aquarium each year. The dilapidated bridge across the river at Walnut Street was converted to a bright-blue pedestrian-only pathway for joggers and office workers.
“One of the first priorities of the original plan was to get people living downtown,” says Ken Hays, president of the RiverCity Co., a nonprofit developer that has partnered with the city to revitalize the riverfront. Downtown housing growth started slowly. The first property completed in 1993 was the 41-unit Riverset apartments, developed on land next to the aquarium donated by the Chattanooga Housing Authority.
“Initially, the city didn’t realize that to make downtown housing viable, developers would need tax freezes and other incentives,” says Hays. There also was widespread community uncertainty that downtown living would work, but “now Chattanoogans are believers.”
Today, almost 400 for-sale and 350 rental units are occupied or under construction, according to the Chattanooga Downtown Partnership.
The first for-sale project in the CBD was a conversion of the former Loveman’s department store to a mixed-use space with two floors of offices and 24 luxury condominiums. Thus far, the units, which were first occupied in 2003 and are selling from $200,000 to $800,000, have appealed mostly to out-of-towners and local empty nesters who want to simplify their lives, says Darlene Brown, sales representative at Realty Center GMAC. “They can park their car for the weekend and never have to leave,” she says. “Restaurants and everything are right here.”
The opening of two magnet schools in the downtown is another step toward attracting a more diverse resident mix. Brown herself walks the downtown walk, living with her husband in a penthouse of a commercial building they own in downtown.
And although it’s difficult to draw a direct correlation between occupancy and downtown programs, the revitalization has played a major factor in keeping several corporate headquarters, such as Blue Cross/Blue Shield of Tennessee, in Chattanooga, says Elliot. Office rental rates range from $11 to $18.50 per square foot. Retailers have been the biggest converts to the value of the new downtown, says Jennie Brochman, leasing broker with Herman Walldorf. “At first, many merchants thought that all the business was just tourists, and you really had to sell them on downtown. Now the first question is, ‘How can you get me a location?’” Since 1992 more than 200,000 square feet of retail has been added to downtown and the Northshore; another 100,000 square feet is now being built or renovated, says David DeVaney, CCIM, SIOR, of the Charter Real Estate Group.
“The quality of the Riverfront project not only encouraged the community to return downtown but sent a very important message that the downtown was vital place,” says Ann Coulter, executive vice president of the RiverCity Co. and former director of the Chattanooga-Hamilton County Regional Planning Agency. “The key to our success was the true partnership between the public and private sector,” agrees Hays. “While other communities are still talking about revitalization, we got it done.”
Nor is Chattanooga ready to rest on its achievements. Under the leadership of Mayor Bob Corker, who until his election headed The Corker Group real estate brokerage, the city launched the $120 million 21st Century Waterfront Plan in 2002. This ambitious improvement initiative, which covers more than 129 acres of land on both sides of the river, will be completed in 2005. Plans include a 60,000-square-foot expansion of the Tennessee Aquarium, the $20 million expansion of the Hunter Museum of American Art, and the development of a 40-foot pier with 18,000 square feet of retail. “It’s a bold vision and an aggressive timeline,” Corker says. “Only in a community like ours could such a challenge be met.”
Another part of the 21st Century project is an urban greenway that connects the riverfront with the University of Tennessee, Chattanooga, and the nearby Martin Luther King neighborhood. Thanks to leadership and judicious developer and buyer incentives supplied by the local Lyndhurst Foundation and the Chattanooga Neighborhood Enterprise, this challenged inner-city neighborhood is undergoing a renaissance. More than 75 market-rate homes and condos have been planned for the next year, and 19 have already been sold, says Donna C. Williams, a business development consultant hired by the ML King Tomorrow Initiative and a sales associate with the Holmes Corp. Prices range from $84,000 to $250,000, and all homeowners receive a $10,000-to-$40,000 second mortgage funded by Lyndhurst. The loan is forgiven if the property is owner-occupied for five years.
“This neighborhood has such a rich history as a vital center of African American life,” Williams says. “It’s exciting to see a new, diverse group of downtown homeowners helping existing residents restore it to its place of honor.”
One of the most critical components of the 21st Century project has been the reconfiguration of the four-lane Riverfront Parkway that separates downtown from the river, Hays says. The road will be reduced to one lane in each direction, and a park will be added along the river.
“The river was once the city’s front porch,” says Christian Rushing, senior planning director for the Planning and Design Studio, the city’s planning and visioning organization. “With this renovation, our community will be getting it back.”
City Tool: The National Main Street Center
“Downtown should be the community’s place for celebration,” says Kennedy Smith, director of the National Main Street Center at the National Trust for Historic Preservation. But today, many civic and business functions have drifted to the cities’ outskirts, leaving a deteriorating core. To assist communities large and small in revitalizing their downtowns, national and local Main Street offices offer technical guidance to both local governments and communities. Main Street’s four-point program focuses on design improvements, promotion, economic restructuring, and organization. Many of these activities are already taking place in communities, Smith says. It’s simply a matter of codifying them and aligning current efforts.
Residents of Plymouth, N.H., recognized the town needed help when the post office started talking about moving out of downtown, says Main Street Plymouth Inc. board member Lou Alice Avellino of Coldwell Banker Old Mill Properties. Now in its fifth year of a Main Street initiative, Plymouth has buried utility lines, lobbied town and state government for a tax-increment financing district, and created a downtown jazz concert series, all in the name of livability. “Building owners are renovating their facades, and vacancies are down,” says Plymouth Community Planner June Hammond Rowan. “There’s a whole new sense of pride in the community.”
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