Grow Community on Bainbridge gets ready for the second phase

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June 24, 2014

By JOURNAL STAFF

The first phase has 41 units and is nearly complete, with single-family houses, duplexes and apartments. All the houses have been purchased and all the rental units are leased. This would’ve been an amazing investment opportunity for a real estate investor to add to their portfolio. The potential profit of a project like this would be huge, that’s why it can be difficult to come across projects like this one. However, to ensure you’re ready for the next real estate investment opportunity, it might be worth visiting Roofstock to ensure you understand all aspects of investing in properties.

PHC Construction is seeking subcontractors and suppliers for the second phase of an 8-acre development on Bainbridge Island called Grow Community.

A total of 49 residential units are planned in this phase, including four single-family houses, eight townhouses and three condo buildings with 12 to 13 units apiece, as well as a community building.

Bids and qualifications are being accepted through Wednesday. Contact PHC Construction for more information.

Grow Community is in Winslow town center, about a mile from the ferry terminal, at Wyatt Way Northwest and Grow Avenue Northwest.

The first phase has 41 units and is nearly complete. There are 17 single-family houses, two duplexes and two apartment buildings with 10 units each.

Home sizes range from 1,100 to 1,850 square feet. Prices for the for-sale units go from the low $300,000s to more than $570,000, according to Kitsap County records. Apartment rents range from $975 to $1,975.

All the houses have been purchased and all the rental units have been leased in the first phase, according to a spokesman for Grow Community.

There is a wait list for apartments, the spokesperson said. Some of the current renters are waiting for units in Grow to be built so they can purchase them.

Adding condos to the second phase came from requests from house hunters who want single-level homes that are more accessible, the spokesman said.

The second phase will be built in two parts. The first half has been planned but feedback from new residents will help determine the mix of units in the second half, which will add another 40 units.

The next round of construction is expected to begin in late summer. This will include the basics of every apartment from the front entrance to the bathroom, where companies such as glassshowerdirect.com will be used.

The architect for the second phase is Cutler Anderson Architects of Bainbridge Island. Asani is the developer. Grow Community is owned by an investment group.

Homes in Grow are designed to be solar-ready and very green, with low-flow fixtures, low-VOC materials, and appliances and building envelopes that are energy efficient.

Grow Community is one of nine endorsed One Planet Communities around the world, and the second in the U.S. The British-based One Planet Communities program is focused on creating a network of the world’s greenest neighborhoods, and puts an emphasis on lifestyles as well as green buildings.

Read article here.

Copyright ©2014 Seattle Daily Journal and djc.com.

Introducing the Grove & the Park

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Grow Community’s first neighborhood, the Village, set a new standard for comfortable, sustainable urban living with its cluster of beautifully designed, energy-efficient single-family homes. Now come the Grove and the Park, two new neighborhoods of high-quality, sustainable homes surrounding lush public greens and a shared community center. The garden spaces, healthy transportation options and low-carbon designs of the Village are here too — along with those solar-ready roofs — this time in a new mix of designs including townhomes and single-level homes.

Very soon we will begin pre-selling homes in the Grove and are opening a sales office at 180 Olympic Drive SE on Bainbridge Island – just a 2 minute walk from the ferry terminal. We invite you to come and learn about this beautiful new phase of Grow Community.

We hope you’ll join us for our Grand Opening weekend – July 12 & 13th, 12-5pm.

Click here to see map

grandopening-banner

Auburn University’s School of Real Estate Development tours Grow

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Friday, June 20th we had a visit from students within Auburn University’s School of Real Estate Development.

The program primarily has working professionals in the building, development, and real estate industries in a 2 year masters program.

For their Northwest trip they were focused on sustainable development, which gave us an opportunity to discuss different certification programs, response from the market, risks within this market, and how their region has reacted to the idea of more efficient, sustainably developed residential communities.  It seems it continues to be a hard sell in the Southeast with little support in incentives and educational programs.

The group was very excited and inspired by what we are doing.

Trees for Global Benefits visiting Grow

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Pauline, the Director of Trees for Global Benefits was visiting at Grow this last week.  This program sells carbon offsets to provide funds supports farmers in Uganda, providing funds to help them plant trees and manage their land.  Carbon offsets are sold to help fund the program which creates sustainable livelihoods for families in Uganda.  The revenue from the carbon offsets and from well-managed agricultural land helps them to get loans, to pay for school fees, to buy food for their children.  Grow supports Trees for Global Benefits on an ongoing basis.

For more information about Trees for Global Benefits see this video

Or go to their website: http://www.planvivo.org/projects/registeredprojects/trees-for-global-benefits-uganda/

Building for Wellness: The Business Case – Urban Land Institute

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DOES WELLNESS MAKE BUSINESS SENSE AS A DEVELOPMENT OBJECTIVE?
How have developers pursued this objective? What has the market response been? And how have developers measured their success?

Grow Community is featured in this publication by Urban Land Institute as a case study on building for wellness.

Building for Wellness provides answers directly from developers who have completed projects with wellness intentions. In 13 sets of interviews, developers explain their motivation, their intended wellness and health outcomes, the development process and operations as related to their health intentions, and the key issue in this publication—the metrics of market performance.

Click here to read the publication.

Setting New Standards of Efficiency

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Two members of the Grow team, Dylan Sievertson (PHC) and Greg Lotakis (Asani), recently joined other builders within NEEA’s (Northwest Energy Efficiency Alliance) Phase 1 of the Next Step Homes Program to discuss the future of our residential built environment. For the past year NEEA has been monitoring 12 pre-selected homes (including the Everett at Grow) from builders across the Northwest with the goal to determine new methods and specifications for high performing homes. Each of these high performing homes focused on energy efficiency, better indoor air quality, and (for some) the pursuit of Net Zero energy use.

The half day roundtable was used to share data, lessons learned, and open dialogue amongst the group of builders. The Everett was featured as a top performer and much was learned about the systems that were incorporated to make this home a leading example in home efficiency.

NEEA is getting set to begin Phase 2 of the program and Grow will again likely have another home monitored.

Click here to learn more about the Next Step Homes Program and Grows involvement.

Historic Honoring Ceremony of Government Way

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On Thursday, March 20th our community came together under a sunny spring day to celebrate, remember, and share stories of some of those that came before us in the area that has become Grow Community Bainbridge. Community Organizers Karen Vargas and Kathryn Keve did a tremendous job working to bring people together to appropriately honor the history of our ‘place’ at Grow. We had a tremendous turn out of the greater community, military, and past and present residents at Grow/Government Way complete with an emotional ‘decommissioning’ and presentation of the flag for the military housing along Government Way.

Our hope and dream is to honor our past history by developing a new community that is intentional about its future and impact on this world.

Click photos below to view our slideshow from the event.  Photography by David Cohen.

Patriotism abounds at decommissioning ceremony for former military housing – Kitsap Sun

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March 26th, 2014 
by Ethan Fowler

Tom Vargas said giving a proper closure to a subdivision that served as government housing was one of the best things about participating last Thursday in the decommissioning of a Bainbridge street formerly known as Government Way from 1957 to 2007.

Tom, and his wife Karen, lived on the street for 10 years starting in 1994. Tom donated an American flag that was used on the USS Alabama submarine at Bangor. The flag was used during Thursday’s ceremony to conclude the event.

Karen, along with Kathryn Keve and others, worked hard to collect the names of former residents, other stories and historical facts that were tied to the 16-house street. Karen retired from the Army.

Tom served on the USS Alabama with frequent Government Way visitor Brian Moss, who died in the Sept. 11, 2001, terroristic attacks while working at the Pentagon. The two friends enjoyed barbecuing together.

“It’s pretty cool,” Tom said after the decommissioning ceremony. “A lot of stuff gets closed and not a big deal is made and you come back a year later and it’s gone. This gives me closure because this was the majority of where I lived during my (military) career.”

Bainbridge Mayor Anne Blair said the ceremony was “nicely done all the way around.”

“Home is where our stories begin and this was a day of stories and it will continue to be,” Blair said.

Installation Notes: Welcome To The Net-Zero Neighborhood – Solar Power World

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March 11, 2014: By Andrew Merecicky

Residents of Bainbridge Island, Wash., led by Asani Development Initiatives, are re-imagining what a residential community could be. Even more impressive than its community gardens and car share program, the Grow Community is on track to be the largest planned solar-ready neighborhood in Washington State.

The housing development is designed to be a net-zero energy community, and is one of seven such endorsed projects by the One Planet Living program. Asani has also partnered with two Washington-based companies, BlueFrog Solar and A&R Solar, to develop an installation-ready solar package around which each home in the Grow Community is specifically designed.

The solar systems are intended to provide 100% of the energy demand of each house. The roofs of each structure were carefully designed to support the required number of solar panels. The installation package available to homebuyers features the Washington-based itek Energy‘s PV panels and APS America‘s microinverters.

Model homes on Grow Avenue NW. September 26, 2012. Credit: Anthony Rich 

“The variety of rooflines that make a project like Grow so visually interesting can be a challenge for solar systems, which rely on PV arrays being optimally oriented toward the sun,” says Kelly Samson CEO of APS America. “Unlike regular ‘string’ inverters, APS microinverters maximize output and allow monitoring of individual panels, optimizing the productivity of the whole array at all points in the sun’s daily arc across the sky.”

The project will be completed in three phases. The first phase, which is presently nearing completion, will contain 18 single-family homes, six town houses and 20 multi-family rental units. Two more neighborhoods, referred to as “neighborhood 2.0″ and “3.0″ respectively, are still in the design stages. Homeowners have the standing option to install a solar system or not, providing customers with flexibile options regarding installation timing and financing.

“The project is being constructed in three phases to reduce risk and to allow the development team to apply lessons learned in each phase to the subsequent phase,” says Marja Preston, president of Asani Development. “We were confident that the solar community would work as we had a long interest list prior to placing the homes on the market. All of the homes were presold before construction began, an indication that there is strong interest, not only in solar homes, but in solar homes in a connected, walkable community.”

The first solar modules installed on Grow model homes. July 13, 2012.
Credit: Jonathan Davis

Phase II, containing neighborhood 2.0 and 3.0, will involve building 88 more homes. Housing options will consist of a mix of two-story town houses, single-level houses and apartments in three-story buildings. Additionally, residential parking will be underground to maximize the community’s green space. The second phase is also going to include the community center building and a childcare facility in its construction. Every structure in the community is built solar-ready.

The ultimate goal of the project was to design a repeatable model for a net-zero energy housing development, a task which, Preston says, was accomplished.

“The biggest challenge for our team was to design a net-zero energy single-family home that could be built and sold for a reasonable price. The goal for the project was to demonstrate a profitable and therefore replicable net-zero energy residential real estate development. We absolutely met that challenge,” Preston says .

Bainbridge is an ideal location for such an innovative project, because tax rebates in Washington make possible an affordably-priced solar option. This is one of the reasons Preston sees a promising future for Grow and similar green community development in Washington.

“The fact that almost all the homebuyers have chosen the solar option is an indication that the strategy for adding solar that we created with BlueFrog and A&R has been successful and is entirely replicable in other housing developments in the state.”

Installation Notes:

Panel type: 240 and 270W itek Energy
Microinverters: YC200, YC500 APS America
Racking and Mounting: SunModo Racking Systems
Monitoring: APS Energy Communication Unit/Energy Monitoring and Analysis
Output: 2.9 kW to 8.9 kW per housing unit.
Installation Crew: A&R Solar
Installation Dates: June 2012 – ongoing project

Read article here: http://www.solarpowerworldonline.com/2014/03/installation-notes-welcome-net-zero-neighborhood/

Historic Honoring Ceremony – Thursday, March 20th

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On Thursday (March 20th) at 12.30pm a local Bainbridge community group will be joining the Grow team to honor those that lived or grew up along Government Way (John Adams) on what is now the Grow Community property.  The ceremony will be held on the current basketball court (behind house 370) on John Adams and then move to the American Legion Hall.

The ceremony will last 30 to 45 minutes and include short stories from each of the following:
Grow Family – Jon Quitsland
Japanese Community – Kay Nakao
Military Community – TBD
Grow Community’s Future – Greg Lotakis

The ceremony was initiated between the Grow Team and a Bainbridge community group lead by Karen Vargas, out of a desire to honor the early Japanese Community in this area of the island as well as those families and Military Veterans that made the Government Way housing their home, and to capture the stories of those that spent time in this place.

An early historical record/study was commissioned (Quitsland report) during the planning process for the Grow project to inform us about the history of the area.  While the report touches only the tip of the iceberg, much of the history is rich with food production and community – two of the major themes for our new development.  The Grow Family homesteaded in the area and on the property we are developing.  What was once a strawberry field will again be home to fruit trees and garden beds.  The next 5 acre phase of the project alone will have 3 acres of open space that will be mixed with fields, orchards, and light forest groves.

The history of this site teaches us that the area was rich with community connection. The beauty in our recent work with Karen and others is the richness of the place in community and the stories we plan to tell andpreserve.  The military families and the Japanese community who touched this land each provide a glimpse into the past.  Our intent is that the Grow neighborhood will honor the past by creating a renewed connection to community through the land.  In our opinion, too often new development disregards these connections to each other, therebylimiting  opportunities to create a sense of place.

We are working toward a way to share the stories once the Grow neighborhood is complete.   We are currently considering telling the story in a variety of formats within our new community center and through interpretive signage throughout the property.

Some other worthy notes include:

1/  All play equipment will be collected by BI Parks Department for future reuse
2/  Small items from the homes/site will be saved by the community group focused on historical honoring
3/  Reusable items in the homes will be salvaged and repurposed
4/  Remaining structures will be used for training by Fire & Police
5/  All demolition debris will be recycled where applicable
6/  House numbers will go with those that grew up in the homes
7/  Stories will be collected and kept with appropriate entity (City or Museum)

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