Forget Country Clubs, Give Us Organic Farms
October 15, 2009 | David Ginter
The new community will be a conduit for education on sustainability, provide bulk pricing on energy efficient products for members, and possibly even offer group health insurance.
Forget the Country Club, give us an organic farm instead. That’s the idea behind a Colorado community. Hoping to attract high-end home buyers seeking a green lifestyle, Lee Alpert & Company are developing 3,500 acres near Castle Pines, Colorado that will come complete with an organic farm and a focus on community-based principles. Principles like including integrated sustainability, rural character, and the preservation of open spaces.
With up to 2,500 residences, the development, called The Canyons, hosts a number of sustainability goals but featuring the organic farm seems to be the biggest draw. The idea is to create an agricultural development that has enough area to grow food for all the residents. Lee Alpert & Co. are working with project architect Jeff Berkus and sustainability experts from the Rocky Mountain Institute.
Project priorities are the farm buildings’ net energy use, exploring direct and passive design measures to significantly reduce energy use, and then looking at onsite renewables. “Passive” design measures would include things like better architectural for the builders, weighing in on water, energy, and transportation issues. The goal is to design houses to be efficient enough to require no natural gas while saving on infrastructure costs. One way to do this is by orientating the houses to take advantage of passive solar gains. The homes’ design is based on a Japanese model that can be flipped according to the solar orientation the homeowner wants.
The farm and the village marketplace will be community gathering spots. The marketplace will include a mix of shops, restaurants, cafes, services, galleries, studios style lofts and condos, and possibly a boutique hotel and offices, all oriented around a main public square.
Built in buffers will protect open space and wildlife corridors. The idea is to make each of these buffers of land walkable by including 37 miles of walkable and bikeable trails throughout The Canyons. Current plans also include an alternative transportation hub on site.
In addition to significantly reducing the water use per house, the The Canyons will be a pilot for a rainwater catchment project with plans to use non-potable water for irrigation. Average area residents use approximately 245 gallons per day per home, but if reduction estimates are correct, not only will water and money be saved for homeowners, less material will be used for piping water thus saving money for water companies.
The Farm, including a farm restaurant and farm stand, should be up and running in a couple of years. A professional farmer will tend the farm, but residents can be involved through volunteer opportunities, and The Canyons will offer formal internships for people who want to learn organic farming. Residents will be able take classes to learn canning and other farming and food production-related skills. The new community will be a conduit for education on sustainability, provide bulk pricing on energy efficient products for members, and possibly even offer group health insurance. However, it will still be at least 10 years before the residential portion is complete.
With typical building projects 80-90% of their life-cycle economic and ecological costs have already been made inevitable at the onset of design. So it’s the aggressive goals from the outset that makes this project pretty stellar. It rises above most other ‘green’ residential development efforts and can provide an example of sustainable design for all.
