At the Grow Community we believe that our built environments are crucial to the health of our minds and bodies. This section is devoted to how we’ve tried to design the healthiest community for ourselves and our kids.

6 Reasons to Live at Grow Community

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Grow Community offers a simpler, more intentional lifestyle where you can be mindful of your impact on the environment while focusing on what matters to you most. The nearby shops, restaurants and other amenities of Winslow town center offer convenient “5-minute living.” And with inviting gardens, parks and green spaces, Grow Community makes connections happen: neighbor to neighbor, you to the planet.

1.The Environment

Enjoy the quiet company of woodland trees and an orchard right outside your doors in the Grove; stroll the sprawling central green that gives the Park neighborhood its name. Altogether, sixty percent of these neighborhoods are dedicated to peaceful, inviting natural spaces. Parking is underground, reducing impervious surfaces and putting cars out of sight (where they belong).

 

2.One Planet Living

Our neighborhoods are designed to One Planet principles: ultra-energy-efficient homes, goals for zero emissions and waste, sustainable materials, locally grown food, resource conservation, wildlife habitat and edible landscaping, culture, happiness and health. Add them up and you have a new way to live, focused on a positive future for yourself and your world.

 

3.Solar Power 

Grow Community is the largest solar community in Washington, with every single-family home and duplex powered by photovoltaics, and rooftop solar on many townhomes and condominiums. Solar arrays are offered as a buyer’s option on every home including multifamily. And going solar has never been simpler. With today’s strong financial incentives, your solar array will keep your power bill low and even put money in your pocket, just for doing your part for a cleaner planet.

 

4.5-Minute Lifestyle

Everything your family needs for a healthy, happy lifestyle is within easy distance of Grow Community. Local merchants and grocers, the library, fine cafes and coffee shops, theaters and museums, parks, health clinics and schools … you can reach it all without ever getting behind the wheel.  We call it the “5-minute lifestyle,” and it’s just one of the features that makes Grow such an attractive choice for homebuyers seeking a simpler way of living.

 

5.Community Connections

Harvest your tomatoes and take the extras next door. Read a book under a tree and see who stops to say, “Oh, you’ll love the ending!” Or just take a quiet stroll down a neighborhood path and bump into someone new. Grow Community is designed to promote serendipity, the unexpected meeting, the little connections from which lifelong friendships spring. Grow a community together, and get as involved as much (or as little) as you want.

6.For All Ages

The neighborhoods at Grow have intergenerational living at their heart – because a true community should be as welcoming to a 73-year-old as it is to a 3-year-old. In the Grove and the Park neighborhoods, 60 percent of the homes offer single-level living with elevator access to front entries, while the community spaces invite interaction and sharing between generations year-round. And accessibility extends beyond the neighborhood. You’re just a few minutes from downtown amenities like shops, restaurants and theaters – even ice cream.

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We still have room for you in our FINAL HOMES…

Great opportunities to purchase and rent our FINAL HOMES are available in the Grove & Park neighborhoods. Beautifully designed, ultra-efficient 2 bedroom solar ready homes set a new standard for healthy, sustainable living.

Only three 2-bedroom homes remain to purchase in the Tsuga and just 6 in the Sage building.

We also have two homes that have become available to rent in our Juniper building.

Please contact our sales & leasing team for more details and to set up an appointment to tour our available homes: 206.452.6755 [email protected]

How far we have grown.

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With just three buildings to go, and construction paused for the winter, let’s pause ourselves to appreciate how far Grow Community has come.

This photo puts it all in perspective – three distinctive neighborhoods, tasteful, energy-efficient homes clustered around shared green spaces, a new community center, and row upon row (upon row!) of solar panels, soaking up the sun to help power Washington’s largest planned solar community.

What a great community to be a part of! And what a great vantage to take it all in.

Photo courtesy of Kelvin Hughes

New solar array powers community center

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Grow Community boosted its standing as Washington state’s largest planned solar community this week with another new photovoltaic array – this time, for the new community center.

A 17-module, 5.1-kilowatt array went up atop the bike shelter behind the community building, centerpiece of the Park neighborhood.

The south-facing array takes advantage of excellent solar exposure through the day, turning the bike shelter roof into productive solar garden to help power activities at the community center.

The system also supports the local solar industry, using certified Made In Washington solar panels by iTek Energy of Bellingham.

Installation is by A&R Solar of Seattle, who’ve completed many of the residential arrays found throughout Grow’s three solar-powered neighborhoods.

Grow Community Earns Built Green Project of the Year

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And the plaudits keep rolling in: Grow Community earned the Built Green Project of the Year award at the annual Built Green Conference in Seattle recently.

The prestigious award honors excellence in environmentally friendly residential construction in the Puget Sound region, as judged by peers in the construction industry.

“The award was unexpected, and we are deeply honored to earn it considering the unbelievable work our peers have accomplished in 2017,” says Greg Lotakis, Grow’s project manager. “Builders across our region are really pushing the envelope for sustainability, using the Built Green standards as their benchmark to serve both homebuyers and the long-term interests of the planet.”

The Grow team thanked the Built Green program, the Grow design and construction teams, and our residents – all of whom have believed in possibility and made Grow Community a reality.

The Built Green program is sponsored by the Master Builders Association of King and Snohomish Counties, in partnership with other Washington agencies to set standards of excellence that make a significant impact on housing, health and the environment and are readily “do-able” today.

For more information on the program see www.builtgreen.net.

Grow memories cross the generations

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Jerry Grow left a quieter, simpler Bainbridge Island in as a youngster in 1955.

But his memories conjure images that would be familiar to generations of islanders before and since: attending services at the Congregational Church downtown, marching in the Fourth of July parade, learning to fish from a boat his great-uncle Fred kept on Eagle Harbor.

The latter experiences have proved useful into Grow’s later years, giving him “sea legs” for his travels in retirement.

“My great-uncle would take great delight in running the boat back and forth across the wake behind the ferries, to see if he could get me seasick,” Jerry recalls. “I thank him for that now, because I do a lot of cruising and I never have any problem with seasickness.”

A direct descendent of bonafied island pioneer family, Grow returned to Bainbridge in July as an honored guest at the “Sharing Our History” reception in Grow Community’s new neighborhood hall.

The evening reunited former residents of the old Government Way housing, dignitaries from the American Legion and island’s Japanese American community, and local historians for reminiscence and reflection.

 

Visitors shared their memories of the berry fields and orchards that once rolled down the hillside toward the harbor, the vibrant scene at the Japanese community hall nearby, and the many families, faces and touchstones of bygone Bainbridge.

While Grow Community’s new neighborhood hall is still under construction, the evening was a chance to unveil colorful display boards that trace area history – from millennia of Native American habitation, through pioneer settlement, to post-war military housing, and into the present – that will be on permanent display inside.

Among the honored guests was Jerry Grow, whose great-grandfather Ambrose homesteaded north of Eagle Harbor in the 1880s. Along with fellow pioneer Riley Hoskinson, Ambrose Grow is credited as one of the founders of the town of Winslow and donated land for the first school.

Jerry Grow’s parents still held 20 acres on the northwest corner of today’s Wyatt Way and Grow Avenue into the 1950s, while his grandfather Walter owned the southeast corner where Grow Community is now being built. His great-uncle Fred resided farther down by the harbor.

The family moved off the island in 1955 when Jerry was 8. He enlisted in the Air Force in 1965, trained in electronics school and went on to maintain fighter jets.

After leaving the service, he parlayed his training into a career in the nascent computer industry repairing big IBM mainframes. As computers got smaller, he went back to school for certification as a network engineer, and worked for many years for the City of Seattle.

He and his family lived up on the Sammamish plateau, another community that was about to be touched by dramatic change.

“At the time we bought, it was still unincorporated King County,” he says. “Then everybody decided it was the place to be, and it really exploded up there.”

Grow retired to Long Beach on the Washington coast in 2005.

He has only been back to Bainbridge a handful of times through the years – once when his father was grand marshal of a centennial parade, again in the 1980s to show his own son the island community their Grow ancestors helped found.

The occasional visits marked a changing island – the loss of the family farmhouse and barn from the old Grow property, the incremental appearance of new homes and neighborhoods as the town his ancestors helped found stretched ever north and west.

He only learned of Grow Community this past February, quite by chance, when he met a couple from Bainbridge while on a cruise to Hawaii. He researched the new planned-solar community on the web and contacted developers Asani out of curiosity, leading to his recent visit.

“We’re so grateful Jerry reached out to us,” says Greg Lotakis, Grow Community project manager. “We’re committed to honoring the history of the land and those who’ve lived here through so many generations. Being able to bring Jerry here to share his stories adds to that continuity, helps connect more fully and vividly with the past.”

While others in the Grow clan could not attend the Sharing Our History event, Jerry Grow has kept them apprised that not only does a Bainbridge street still bear their name, but now a whole neighborhood.

“They’re pleased, and quite surprised,” he said.

Homecoming and history sharing in Grow’s new community center

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Old friends and new turned out as Grow Community celebrated our history at a community potluck yesterday evening. Venue was Grow’s new community center – only half finished, but still a great setting for this homecoming that crossed the generations.

Honored guest was Jerry Grow, great-grandson of island pioneer Ambrose Grow, who came up from Long Beach for the occasion. Former residents of the old Government Way military housing project also shared their stories, as did veterans from the Colin Hyde Post of the American Legion with neighborhood ties. What a great evening it was!

Thank you to everyone who came to enjoy an evening of fellowship and honor our neighborhood history.

 

A real sense of “neighborliness” in a community designed to foster closeness, connection and cooperation.

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Amelia Parker had been following the work of Bioregional and its One Planet Living initiative for years, since the development of London’s famous BedZED zero-carbon community in 2002.

When she learned that there was another One Planet Community just a few miles away on Bainbridge Island – she was living in Bellevue at the time – she decided to visit and see environmentally friendly development firsthand.

She and her spouse found Grow Community. After speaking with residents, they made their move – to the Juniper building in the new Grove neighborhood.

It’s a real turn toward sustainability from her last home, a 1912 Craftsman bungalow. It was beautiful and twice the size of her current home, she says, but trying to modernize and maintain it was exhausting and expensive. Then there were the utility bills, which were through the roof. Despite making sure she was using cheap light companies, Amelia found that her bills were stacking up. Being such an old house, heating in particular was ver expensive.

“It’s lovely to be in a place where things simply work,” Amelia says of Grow Community, ” and if they don’t, maintenance is on it quickly, where good design minimizes utility bills – large, well-insulated windows make the space feel expansive and reduces the need for lighting – and makes caring for the space simple, so that time can be spent on other things.”

At Grow, she has found a simpler lifestyle, one that de-emphasizes the need for a car, with easy connections to local shops and merchants, and even travel hubs like the ferry system and regional rail.

“For the most part, I can walk to anything I need, including the ferry terminal,” she says. “My car is coming up on 193,000 miles, and I drive so little that I’m in no hurry to replace it. My spouse occasionally needs to travel to Vancouver for business meetings: before, he would have to drive to Everett to catch a train. Now he takes the ferry across and walks to King Street Station. Not having to deal with traffic does a great deal for our mental health!”

She also finds a real sense of “neighborliness” in a community designed to foster closeness, connection and cooperation.

“Last weekend I was out at the observatory with my next-door neighbors, after a thank-you dinner for looking after their cat while they were on holiday,” she says. “We will text one another: ‘I’m going to Silverdale, do you need anything?’ ‘I’ve got too much lettuce: can I bring you some?'”

She adds: “Seeing people from the yoga studio means stopping and chatting in the aisles of the grocery store. I lived in my previous home for 13 years and really didn’t have that sort of relationship with my neighbours; I’ve been here almost 18 months, and it’s very different.”

Does she recommend Grow Community?

“Yes, absolutely.”

 

Sharing our History + Celebrating our New Community Center

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Grow celebrates the progress on our new Community Center with daylong events on Thursday, July 20.

We will be hosting lunch for the construction team, followed by an evening potluck and sharing of the Grow Community site history through many generations. Special guests will share family and neighborhood stories, including a visiting descendent of the pioneer Grow family.  This event will focus on history – no tours of the center or its features will take place, but see our schedule of upcoming events for future opportunities.

11.30am-1pm – Construction Worker Lunch
1pm-5pm – Feel free to walk by and see progress
6pm to 8pm – History Sharing and Potluck

LOCATION: 395 Ambrose Street, in the Park at Grow Community

 

UPCOMING EVENTS:

August (DATE TBD) – Neighborhood meeting on Community Center operations: This discussion will focus on answering questions about the center, understanding its availability, use and operating budget, and hopefully celebrating the certificate of occupancy!

September 14th – Community meeting on Emergency Preparedness. Grow residents are invited to a potluck dinner and discussion of community emergency preparedness. Guest speaker will be Scott James, author of “Prepared Neighborhoods” and Bainbridge Island resident

October (DATE TBD) – Community Harvest & Solar for the Community Center Celebration. Join us for a celebration of the harvest season, pumpkin carving, cider pressing, and official commissioning of the Community Center’s rooftop solar array!

Urban Land group visits Grow

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The prestigious Urban Land Institute held its Spring Conference in Seattle in early May, and Grow Community was both hot topic and host.

Grow welcomed thought-leaders in spheres ranging from development to investment, planning and design, as they came to Bainbridge Island for site visits throughout the conference.

Grow has been part of the ULI conversation since the project began, our community being a case study for creating healthy places, promoting intergenerational living, and integrating sustainability at scale.

Discussion threads running through the week included:

Creating a legacy. Pooran Desai, founder of the organizations BioRegional, which established the One Planet Living Principles, described effort at Grow as a legacy – both for the region, and in changing the conversation around the way we develop future communities. While the project has had many twists and turns, its consistency around creating a place for all ages to be comfortable and live in a more sustainable way is a profound achievement.

Intergenerational living. Visitors from the ULI appreciated Grow’s commitment to developing a community with many varied home types, to give people at every stage of life a comfortable place to live. It marks a change from development patterns often seen in the United States, where we tend to segregate generations, versus other communities around the world that embrace keeping mixed generations together.

Sustainability. Many of the ULI visitors came from places where a push for sustainability is just beginning, compared to the Seattle region where it is becoming the norm. Visitors were impressed by the range of areas where Grow challenged the norm: energy, materials, solar, and open space. Built Green standards allowed us to use a local certification program and consider our efforts from a neighborhood level, integrating our sustainability goals through One Planet Living. Grow gave visitors a model they can follow and incorporate into their own communities.

The Grow Community development team and investors thank residents for continuing to allow for guests like ULI to visit. These visits and conversations plant the seeds for other communities to come. They also provide the inspiration for others to take on the challenges of sustainable growth and living – allowing others to take what we have learned here, and spread the best of what we have for our One Planet.

Grow sponsors new ‘terrestrial’ podcast on KUOW

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Grow Community is all about making smart choices for the Earth – how we build and how we live.  Now we’re proud to sponsor the new podcast “terrestrial” on local radio station KUOW, exploring “the choices we make in a world we have changed.” Host Ashley Ahearn travels the country — from ranches in Oregon to churches in Colorado — to bring listeners stories about people making personal choices in the face of environmental change.

Subscribe to “terrestrial” through Apple podcasts, or listen online at here.