Building Trendy in the 'Burbs

Looking for ways to combat suburban sprawl, developers are bringing to market creative, high-density communities in mature suburban locations across the United States. From townhomes to mixed-use apartments to "Big House" designs, new developments are offering residents a rich variety of stylish housing options outside of city limits. Here are case studies of three recent projects that stand out for their designs and innovative use of land? resulting in apartment communities whose appeal rivals that of any single-family home.

City Embraces "Double Density" Due to Striking Design

When it comes to the density a suburban city will allow, a daring design can make all the difference in the world. Case in point: Waterford Place, the $125 million mixed-use development that Shea Properties opened in late 2003 in the City of Dublin, an East Bay suburb of San Francisco.

The development, which blends 390 apartments and 125,000 square feet of grocery-anchored retail space, sits on land that was originally entitled for a 16-acre shopping center. But after some extensive studies, Shea, based in Aliso Viejo, Calif., concluded the area would not really support such a large, retail-only project.

So Shea suggested to the city that half the land be set aside for a multi-housing community with 30 units per acre. "We knew we were really pushing it because we had just worked with the city two years earlier, and the highest density they had allowed was right around 22 units per acre," said Don Gause, senior vice president of Shea Properties' residential development division.

The City of Dublin, however, agreed to the 30. But then Shea pushed the envelope once more: It illustrated that the development could be built as a four-story project with a density of 49 units per acre? more than double what the city had previously permitted.

To the surprise of many, the city took the developer up on the offer. "The project itself is the densest we have in our community. It was the first big project with that many apartments in one location here. So it was something new for us, and we took a chance on [Shea]," said Janet Lockhart, Dublin's mayor.

This audacious agreement, however, rested upon one stringent condition: That Shea provide the city with an exceptionally well-designed community and, more importantly, hidden parking. "Our first major concern was that they not stick an apartment building out there with a sea of cars surrounding it," said Lockhart.

As a result, Shea, along with the Architects Orange design firm, opted to create a "donut" community, where a parking structure is placed at the center of a property and apartments are wrapped around it.

"This was the first time this had been tried on the West Coast? putting the parking structure on the inside and building the apartments around the outside, and it has worked out really well for us," said Lockhart. "The look of the project is very different than your standard apartment building, and the density is not an issue from the outside because it looks so great without all the cars around it."

While winning over the city was a major victory, there were still obstacles to be overcome. The site, for example, set some substantial planning challenges, including that the land was about a half an acre short of what was really required.

The shopping center required a little over 8 acres, as did the residential component in order to max out the 390 units proposed for the property. "And this is a 16-acre site," said Gause. "So what we needed to do was overlap the shopping center with the residential and that is where the mixed-use element really came into play."

Although mixed-use developments can often prove tricky, Gause explained that Shea's multi-faceted business model gave it a big edge and allowed for a seamless development process: The company develops and manages commercial and residential properties, with two separate divisions handling each real estate type.

"A key point to this project was the ability of our Shea Properties' commercial division and the multifamily development group to work together," said Gause.

The alliance made it easy to work through issues concerning security (e.g. the residential group will manage all transitional entryways as full time porters are on staff in that portion of the development), as well as sound control/quality of life (e.g. restaurant spaces located beneath residences needed to be vented to the roof, and restaurant equipment located on any roofs needed to be treated acoustically so that no noise could be heard in the apartments below).

In addition to the two business units working together, so did the architects. Architects Orange (based in Orange, Calif.), the lead designer on the residential side, collaborated with the designer of The Shops at Waterford, SGPA Architecture and Planning of San Diego, to design both the retail and residential components with a Mediterranean influence: bold earth tones, deep-set storefront openings, strong use of projected moldings, bracketed overhangs and cornices, a variety of plaster finishes and textures and two-piece clay tile roofing.

And while Shea acquired the site back when the now slumping high-tech industry was still soaring, Waterford is still proving to be a success, with the apartments there currently 95 percent occupied.

"When we acquired the property, there were a tremendous amount of jobs going into the East Dublin area," said Gause. "A lot of the tech jobs have gone away, but with the City of Dublin focused on using land here intensely, with moderately mid-rise buildings for corporate headquarters, we know that in the long run this is a great bedroom community."

And the city, too, is hugely satisfied with the project that has become a model that other area municipalities are eager to imitate.

"Waterford has been a real added advantage to our community, and it has shown that building a multi-use project with housing and shopping so close together is really beneficial," said Lockhart. "We have had a lot of our neighboring cities come over and look at the project, and they are very interested in putting something similar in their own communities.

"In the end, Shea took a chance in bringing this project to us, and we took a chance on the density and a totally different development style than we were used to," Lockhart said. "But I think we all won."

From Parking Lot to Parking-Court Townhomes

In the upscale, North Dallas suburb of Prestonwood, the parking lot of a former shopping center is gaining new life as a 207-unit townhome community? designed in a style that the Big D has never seen, according to the project's developers and architects.

Developed by ZOM Texas Inc., the Estancia Townhomes are bringing some Southern California flair to the Metroplex area. "The initial idea was more of a townhouse development similar to what you would see in Washington, D.C. or New York, more the brownstone type. After discussions with ZOM, we found they were interested in pursuing something much more unique that would really stand out," said Ronald E. Harwick, vice president and founding partner of James Harwick & Partners LP, the architects of Estancia Townhomes.

Inspiration for the community came in the form of the 1930s-era, bungalow-style, courtyard housing of the type popularized in Southern California, for which motor courts were a key element. "We did a lot of research relating to the style and the feel of this product, reading books and magazine articles on Southern California parking courts and [discovering] how it was done years ago," said Harwick.

The result: a pure townhome product with direct-access, two-car garages, recessed courtyards, an internal community street and bungalow-style architecture of stucco and Spanish accents.

The site was previously the parking-lot portion of a 90-acre shopping mall that is undergoing a conversion to a high-tech network services and Web hosting facility with low parking requirements? thus allowing room for alternative redevelopment to occur on the left-over parking space.

The lure of a mature suburban location, and the fact that a limited availability of land seemed to call for infill solutions to the area's housing needs, drove ZOM to acquire the 15-acre parking lot back in 2002. What's more, the previous owners had already zoned the parcel for multifamily despite its being used as a parking lot, granting ZOM a headstart in providing the area with a quality rental development.

"What motivated us was that this was a quality location, incomes were good in the area, and shopping and entertainment venues were nearby," said Kevin Wisdom, executive vice president of ZOM Texas Inc. "There was an opportunity to provide a differentiated community with a strong architectural image on the exterior and finish levels a step above the competitors on the interior."

To help in pinning down just what the market in Prestonwood could handle, Wisdom turned to Foley & Puls Inc., a firm that provides strategic residential market research to developers, investors, asset management companies, property managers and lenders on the underlying details that affect the performance of a multifamily project. According to Michael Puls, founder of Foley & Puls, the firm broke down the market to determine what unit types and sizes were performing better and then analyzed income levels to determine whether area household incomes could support the proposed price structure of the property, which is now under construction, but has already begun leasing.

"By looking at those factors, we come up with a unit mix that has a higher likelihood of success based on the market," said Puls. "In the Prestonwood case, the mix was somewhat dictated by the site and the product concept of two-car garage townhomes. But we compared the project to other North Dallas properties and the rent structure that Kevin wanted to get was being attained in the marketplace."

On the design front, the narrow, elongated site proved a challenge in trying to achieve the 14- to 15-unit per acre density ZOM was aiming for, but Harwick found a way around the obstacle. "Density and unit-size challenges were overcome by using a very efficient building module; we tried to keep the amount of unit types to a minimum," Harwick explained.

The property features individually plotted townhomes that are part of larger, four- to six-unit buildings. "By doing that, it became a much more efficient plan, and we were able to squeeze it all on one site," Harwick said.

One of Puls' recommendations included that ZOM look at a two-story site plan rather than a three-story one. Although a three-story approach would obviously allow for more density, Puls predicted that the older demographic prevalent throughout Prestonwood would be more likely to accept the two-story walk-up.

In something of a compromise on this question, the townhomes are predominantly two stories with a third-story loft element found in some. In another nod to the lifestyle preferences of the likely residents, the architects designed many of the two- to four-bedroom floorplans, which average 1,680 square feet, with a first-floor master bedroom to accommodate those empty nesters who want the convenience of basically living on just the ground floor with guest rooms above.

To add diversity to the townhomes exterior , architects embellished elevations with elements such as a window in some kitchens or a bay projection on some buildings. "The idea was to make it more distinct for the individuals so every townhome wouldn't be the same," Harwick said.

The individually plotted townhomes also allow ZOM to easily convert the community to a for-sale product whenever practical? a time Puls opined might be now, considering the success of higher priced townhomes in the area. "It appears to us there is a good probability to convert the property to for-sale townhomes, and I am suggesting that it might be that time right this second," Puls said.

Creeks, Contours and Competing with Single Family

Whoever said multifamily can't compete head-to-head with single-family homes? In the Cincinnati suburb of Montgomery, Ohio, Apartment Investment and Management Co. (AIMCO) is proving it can.

After a tornado tore through a community owned and operated by AIMCO here in 2002, redevelopment of the site was inevitable. "When I looked at the site after the tornado went through and realized we couldn't fix what was there, the idea was to tear it down and build new," said Joe DeTuno, executive vice president of redevelopment for AIMCO. "And realizing that we were in the middle of a very high-end community, I wanted to put in a higher-end product there as well."

DeTuno set out to match the quality of the buildings to be erected by AIMCO to that of the neighborhood's single-family homes, which average about $500,000. Having just completed a community in Chandler, Ariz. using Humphreys & Partners LP's Big House design, DeTuno concluded that was the best route to go.

"The idea was to create a neighborhood, not just an apartment complex with a sea of parking and no relationship to anything," DeTuno said. "So what we did was adapt the Big House concept to fit this neighborhood."

The 290-unit Glenbridge Manors, comprised of 10- and 13-unit buildings scattered across nearly 26 acres, is Cincinnati's first Big House community. This, according to Mark Humphreys, CEO of Humphreys & Partners, has given AIMCO a real competitive advantage.

"This property is different from any other product out there," Humphreys said. "When a prospective renter-by-choice? a person who can definitely qualify for a home, but just doesn't want to buy one? goes out and looks at other apartment projects in the market, there will be few that have attached one- and two-car garages, island kitchens, 11-foot-deep walk-in closets and all the amenities that you would find in a single-family home."

While the developers wanted a community that could compete with single-family homes, they also wanted one with a fair degree of density. But one of the biggest challenges they had to overcome on the planning and designing front was the topography of the site, which has a lot of contours and a creek running through it.

To maximize density, the decision was made to use a two-three-split design. In other words, buildings along the creek were built to three stories on the creek side and two stories on the front of the building? providing four additional units per building at those locations. As a result, the project was able to hit 11 units per acre? less than ideal, but enough to satisfy AIMCO.

Initially, the surrounding community did express concern about what would be replacing the destroyed community. But the upscale design plans quickly won their support.

"Once we showed the community the design, they realized that this was a benefit to them rather than a detriment," DeTuno said. They recognized, according to DeTuno, that Glenbridge Manors was clearly a high-quality, class A community of predominantly two-story buildings: much more desirable than what was situated on the site before, a nearly 40-year old complex of four- to six-story, brick walk-ups.

At a construction price of $61 per square foot, the community cost little more than an average apartment property, according to Humphreys. "The Big House design is very economical to build because it is designed somewhat like a breezeway, where units are back to back and all the plumbing stacks," he said. "The difference is that in a breezeway, you have to build an eight-foot wide, 60-foot long breezeway for the stairs twice on each building. We don't have that here."

The Big House takes that common area and divides it between all the units, allowing apartments in Glenbridge Manors to average from 629 square feet for a one-bedroom to 1,518 square feet for a three- bedroom unit. In fact, the only aspect of the development that proved costly was the garages. "Each garage in a Big House such as this costs about $4,000 or $5,000," Humphreys said.

Moreover, Humphreys is confident that Glenbridge Manors is doing well with the female demographic? which he specifically designed the community to appeal to.

"We targeted the design to women, who we believe are the primary decision-makers on where families are going to live? at least if men are smart," he quipped. "Women generally are more cognizant of what makes for a better floorplan and an acceptable home. So we designed for them."

And the community is doing quite well on the leasing front. After opening in late 2003, the units? priced from $685 to $1,580? are receiving ample attention from prospective residents, 60 to 70 percent of whom are homebuyer qualified.

"This project underscores the invalidity of the myth that you can't compete against single-family homes. So many developers are building old style apartments and complaining they are losing their tenants to homes? well there's no wonder," said Humphreys. "I don't believe that Glenbridge Manors is an apartment; we provided a home."

This story is an exclusive from Multi-Housing News.