My Built Environment: Good, Bad, and Really Ugly

One of the things I like to do is to visit different locations using Google Earth. I find this to be a fantastic tool to virtually visit areas around the globe that I have never been too. It is rather fascinating to see some of the various development patterns is different cities, towns and countries. With street view, it becomes even more fascinating to actually get on the street and see stuff, do 360 degree views and so on. Doing this for awhile, it finally hit on me, that I should actually blog about my visits, talk about what I see, and share my thoughts. Of course this will be done with very little or no knowledge of local politics, history and what not. I look forward to seeing the comments from my readers as well.

Recently a friend of mine asked me the following question (excerpt):

“I’ve been wondering about somethings, and thought you might have an opinion…..when the economy starts to turn around and we start pulling out of this mess, do you think how we do business as landscape architects and the development business as a whole will be different than it was before? Do you think we as landscape architects will continue to become more of an integral part of projects, team leaders as we were in Colorado? Or is our status shrinking again? Do you see developers developing entire projects for just building the infrastructure and selling paper lots? Or do you see things changing to a completely new way of doing things? Are things still headed toward the muli-discplinary firms?”

The following was my reply:

“Good questions. I do think we are going to be seeing a huge consolidation of firms, and more multi-disciplinary firms. I also see things going far more in the direction of design-build… particularly public projects. We are seeing Fort Collins going that way for all public buildings, and I bet it will head more in that direction for other public facilities as well. I don’t think that is a bad thing, and I have enjoyed the ones I have worked on. I see a big disconnect between us design types, and the way things get built in the field. I have never been convinced that architect/designers/engineers know all about construction when it comes to designing things. On the other hand, as we both know, contractors don’t always have an eye towards design. Of course I am generalizing. There are certainly some craftsman contractors out there with a strong eye for design, and vice verse. I like the idea of being able to get solid budget numbers as we design projects. I think LA’s in particular, do tend to over design projects and add unnecessary costs. But then most civil engineers who think they are designers tend to under design… costs drives design.

I think the best projects is where all team members respect each others discipline and work towards the same goal. I have always tried to do that, and found the projects that are most enjoyable are where that has occurred.

As for the state of development, unfortunately what you are witnessing where engineers and architects rule the world is more the norm than not. What you saw in CA and Denver with the big builders dominating the market is not the rule. In fact, I think that the days of big builders are numbered, at least as large as they have been. I forsee a rise of the smaller builders again, at least for several years. Eventually the big builders will take over again. I do see that builders, esp. big ones, will quit developing their own land and buy finished lots from developers. That has been shifting for several years.

As for what developments will look like I am not really certain. For the short term, I see smaller 10-20 lot developments getting done, as they will be easier to get financed and absorbed by the market, and ones that fill particular niches. On the other hand, economies of scale are hard on these small projects, something I know first hand. Over time larger projects will again come to roost. I do kind of like the model that Lowry and Stapleton have formed, where builders only buy a block of lots here, and a block of lots there, so it is truly mixed.”

While this is kind of long and rambling, I would be interested in knowing what you all think.

One of my business associates has a rental home he bought a year ago. Last month the tenants unexpectedly moved out, leaving quite a mess. After we got the got the junk cleared out of the house, we decided to fix it up, and rent it out again. This home is part of a larger piece of ground he is looking to develop, and the plan was to demolish this home. Now we are looking to keep it, and rent it out again for awhile, and possibly convert it to a commercial use.

In the interim, my wife has put a tremendous amount of time into cleaning it. We don’t think it was cleaned once in the 10 years or so the tenant was there. Structurally the house is in good condition, but it needs some TLC. The owner tore out the old kitchen floor, and I took on the painting.

In the spirit of sustainability and being green, we are going to attempt a green remodel, on a tight budget. Part of the picture is of course, saving the structure in the first place. For the paint, I selected Olympic paint since it is a low VOC environmentally friendly paint. The floor was purchased off of Craig’s list as a left over piece of sheet flooring.

Over time we will have to replace the wiring, rebuild the back lean too addition that house the kitchen and bath, replace the roofing (structure is fine), replace the heating system, etc. I will keep you posted on the progress. For now, enjoy the picures of us actually working on the place!

As a small business owner of Vignette Studios, I am amazed at all the money being thrown into the financial systems, banks, markets, and possibly the auto industry now. All this is supposedly to keep a huge meltdown of the system from happening, with the original theory of helping out main street. Well guess what? The meltdown happened anyway. But I often ask myself, where is my bailout? I have tried hard to keep my debt down, have refused to mortgage my house to the hilt, have always managed to pay my bills even in tight times, and have tried hard to keep people employed. In spite of all this, my industry, which has been slowing down for the past few years, has collapsed the last six months. I am worried that everything I have worked hard for, might all be lost. So why isn’t the feds coming to my aid? Instead of handing out billions upon billions to a few key companies, where I will never see any of that money, and they are still shedding thousands of jobs anyway, which makes the economy worse, and we just continue to spiral down, why not send each small business owner a hundred grand or so? That would keep millions of people employed, keep small business doors open, and keep us from defaulting. I think the feds, if they want to throw out money, need to truly help Main Street.

That being said, I am optimistic that we are closer to the end of this mess than the beginning. My business is directly tied to the residential market, and the residential market will come back first and help to lead the country out of the mess. All markets are local, and many will come back before the national market will. Our market, in Northern Colorado, did not get the massive buildup and runup in prices that California, Nevada, and other places did, therefor we did not fall as bad. All the indicators are out there that we have reached bottom, and will start climbing our way out. All we need is some confidence.

Now back to our regularly scheduled programming.

I have been working on a small 10 unit development, where our goal has been to create a sustainable community from the ground up. This development called Midori (see the sustainable development post below) has only 10 homes on 5 acres. While this is not an aggressive density by any means, it is all that is allowed per the zoning code. One of the big goals was to reduce our impacts on stormwater management. We were able to do this somewhat, by reducing our amount of hardscaping, and having plenty of open space. However, some of my other ideas were shot down by the reviewing jurisdiction. One of my thoughts was to use permeable pavement in our private driveways. I would be allowed to do it, but would not receive any stormwater credit because of fears that it could become clogged, or that the homeowners may choose to pave over it in the future. These are reasonable concerns, but this line of thinking does not allow any kind of creativity, especially in light of todays views of trying to leave a light footprint on the planet. To add insult to injury, in turns out that when the adjacent roadway was rebuilt a couple of years ago, an outfall pipe for the property was not installed, so now we have to account for double detention on our property. As a result we have gone from a barely noticeable detention area of only a foot or two deep, to a hole in the ground that is 6 feet deep.

At least I was able to achieve one of my goals and minimized the amount of piping, with most of the stormwater being carried in open swales. Oh well, maybe we can still make up for it in the landscaping and the homebuilding.