First published in Square Feet, The Daily Record, Baltimore, December 2002
Master Planned Communities:
How they work and why we live in them
RUSS BARNES
Special to The Daily Record
Fondue pots. The Breck Girl. Mini Coopers. Everything that goes around comes back again - even things that seemed like crackpot ideas in the first place (disco, anyone?).
Mostly out of vogue since the 1970s, planned communities now are being revived - and now boast golf courses, walking and biking trails, horse centers, pleasant walks to shops, open land, front porches and charm - according to David Flanagan, president of Elm Street Development in McLean, Va.
Classic planned communities developments such as Columbia, Kentlands near Gaithersburg, Cobbler's Mill near Germantown, and Reston, Va., are still popular neighborhoods, and many new "master-planned communities" are on the drawing boards or are already being built in Maryland.
Far from being another harebrained trend, "Planned communities really do work," notes Alton Scavo, general manager of Columbia, The Rouse Co.'s classically successful planned community. "They satisfy growing demand for housing. They put less pressure on land and other resources compared to the incremental real estate approach of chasing multiple subdivisions that gobble up land - and which are sometimes laid out in boring patterns of Euclidean geometry."
What makes a planned community different from conventional real estate? A planned community includes three essential items: deliberate "mixed use" of housing, commercial and community buildings; a master plan that especially provides integrated aesthetic principles and well-designed community infrastructure such as sewer, water, walkways, parks, telecommunications and recreational facilities; and grandeur of scale - with a minimum of 1,000 units and sometimes involving as many as 1,600 acres of land.
To attract a range of buyers with varying demographic and "psychographic" preferences, developers such as The Rouse Co. differentiate their planned communities according to amenities or lifestyle appeal. Some developments feature a sport such as golf or tennis, which "attracts a significant, but narrow population segment," says Leonard Bogorad of Robert Charles Lesser and Co., a real estate consulting firm in Bethesda.
Those in the over-55 age group often look for planned communities, so-called active adult communities, which serve that age group exclusively. One such age-specific community being planned for in Queen Anne's County is Leisure World of Maryland, designed to attract empty-nesters looking for a resort atmosphere - a common draw for the age group.
One of the biggest trends by far in planned communities is toward so-called "neo-traditional" design. This approach, represented by Kentlands, is based on re-creating the atmosphere of small towns in the '40s and '50s including modest, detached, single-family homes, front lawns with porches, gazebos, storefront retail districts, walkable spaces and alleyways.
While these specialized theme approaches to can be an important part of marketing a master-planned community, there are other more compelling factors.
"Usable, zoned land is scarce for any real estate development," Flanagan claims. "There is terrific demand for a roof overhead in Maryland. And the demand is growing. Once you build a development, people stand in line to buy a unit," he adds.
Demand for housing is definitely growing. Statistical projections of Maryland's Office of Smart Growth estimate that 1 million new people will seek housing in Maryland within the next 20 years, most of whom will come from out-of-state. That makes for a lot of pressure on Maryland's housing market.
Another market factor related to community design is how mixed use attracts diverse groups of buyers. In a community such as the one planned for Emerson in Howard County or Fairwood in Prince George's County, houses are priced incrementally from about $200,000 to as much as $750,000. Pricing differences alone attract diverse groups of residents ranging from young families to singles to empty-nesters. And community plans ordinarily vary housing types to include apartments, condos, townhouses and single-family homes.
'A lifestyle choice'
Planned communities are not for everyone, according to Rouse's Scavo. "It's definitely a lifestyle choice," he says. Communities such as Columbia and Kentlands become self-governing, which impelled unit owner responsibilities. Landscaping, trim, paint, decorating and parking are regimented in planned communities.
On the other hand, there are significant paybacks: "No lawn mowing, no pool maintenance, no snow shoveling, attractive shops for convenience and a lot of open space to walk," says a resident of Kentlands.
There are other benefits as well. Cost is one of them. The developer's investment in architectural design creates livable space with efficient, minimum land usage. Aggregating and planning infrastructure such as roads, sewer, water, telecommunications over a smaller area of land than generally is needed by conventional real estate developments reduce costs per unit. And the provision of covenants for regular architectural maintenance provides continuity or growth of the units' property values.
A ranking of amenities desired by recent buyers of units in planned communities was published by the Urban Land Institute of Washington, D.C., from a study done by American LIVE Inc.:
High on the list: quiet, low-traffic area; lots of natural, open space; walking and biking paths; community controls over architectural styles and lot sizes; gardens with native plants; convenience-oriented retail stores; outdoor swimming pool; interesting small parks.
Low on the list, but still important: golf courses, teen centers, organized sports programs, distinctive community entrances, community concierges.
The planned community of Columbia incorporates many of these amenities and provides a baseline for comparing new developments.
The city is home to 95,000 residents and includes 23,000 homes. There are more than 5,300 acres of open space, 80 miles of pathways, 23 outdoor and four indoor pools, 53 tennis courts, two golf courses, a horse center, sports park, ice rink, three athletic clubs, 27 schools, 30 child care centers and a mall with 230 stores.
New planned communities such as Emerson and Clarksburg will not be built on the same scale as Columbia, but will be comparable in lifestyle.
Inherent impediments
Assessing the number of planned community developments being built or planned in the state is difficult. Since entitlement of property to be developed for planned communities is regulated by municipality or county in Maryland, neither the state, the federal government, nor any trade group has a central list of all developments under way.
For Elm Street Development's Flanagan, this is the major problem with developing master-planned communities - not how to attract buyers, but how to gain entitlement to the land.
Many developers agree that, as Flanagan describes it, "there is a radical contradiction and a political impediment inherent in the way housing is developed to meet demand." Developers are nearly unanimous in their opinion that, on the one hand, the state of Maryland and the federal government are providing incentives to promote economic development and increasing wealth, which, in turn, prompts an increase in both population and housing demand.
On the other hand, developers say residents who already own property in the counties have a vested interest in low housing growth. And so gaining entitlement to land has become such a tremendous challenge for planned community developers.
"Planned communities are often more intelligent solutions to land use problems," Scavo points out. "But they are big projects. Fairwood in Prince George's has been in the works for 13 years, and the first units are just beginning to be sold. The big projects are also big targets. So it forces developers back to less land-efficient, smaller subdivisions, which are harder to scrutinize. And more land gets used up by half- or three-quarter acre lots," he says.
Neither the counties nor the state disagree entirely with the developers' point of view on this matter. "The builders are sometimes between a rock and a hard place," say John W. Freece with the Maryland Office of Smart Growth, which has published a "scorecard" of criteria for intelligent real estate development.
Charlie Loehr at the Montgomery County Park and Planning Department admits "there is tension within the system." Although Montgomery County has witnessed developments such as Clarksburg, Montgomery Village and Kentlands, Loehr believes that planned communities should be adjacent to other communities to build more synergistic infrastructure.
Whether this "synergy" could work, however, will depend on mixing ideologies just as much as on combining types of housing stock.
Many Americans still harbor the traditional view that people should own the land on which they live. Indeed, in some ways, master-planned communities do go against the grain of the American spirit and an individualistic homesteading passion.
But more and more, Marylanders are demanding the benefits of a master-planned community approach to living. And that approach may help accommodate the 1 million extra people who soon will be making their homes in Maryland.
CAPTION: "There is terrific demand for a roof overhead in Maryland. And the demand is growing. Once you build a development, people stand in line to buy a unit."
David Flanagan, President, Elm Street Development
CAPTION: "No lawn mowing, no pool maintenance, no snow shoveling, attractive shops for convenience and a lot of open space to walk."
A resident of Kentlands
SIDE BAR
Anatomy of a planned community:
· The developer gains title to the land.
· The developer then designs the project and builds the necessary infrastructure.
· Builders purchase plots of land to construct "villages" or retail projects.
· The builders then sell their improved property.
· A management company is formed to execute bylaws and govern public areas.
· Buyers purchase units and pay a management fee.
Copyright © 2002 Russ Barnes