Grow a paragon of the ‘New Urbanism,’ Professional Builder magazine says

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screen-shot-2015-08-03-at-12-19-37-pm-857x1024Public engagement, eco-friendly designs, affordable options, and diversity of home styles and offerings are hallmarks of the New Urbanism, the most significant planning movement of recent times.

Grow Community is a paragon of this forward-thinking ethos, Professional Builder magazine says in its new issue.

In the article “The Seaside Effect” (a nod to the first New Urbanist community, Seaside, built in Florida in 1980), Pro Builder fetes Grow for such enlightened features as shared pea-patch gardens, energy-efficient construction and rooftop solar power.

Proximity to Winslow town center – just a 5-minute walk from the heart of the neighborhood – allowed project designers and now residents to move beyond the demands of an automobile-centric lifestyle, toward healthier and more sustainable alternatives.

“We didn’t need to provide anything other than a residential fabric,” Jonathan Davis, Grow’s phase 1 architect, tells the magazine.

Read more about how Grow Community measures up to New Urbanist principles in Professional Builder’s July 2015 edition here – see pages 30-35.

No summertime blues at Grow phase 2

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Framing for the Juniper building is kicking into high gear as the Grow Community skyline goes skyward. We’re getting set to pour the topping concrete for the Woodland Homes foundations, and soon the Tsuga will have a floor from which we’ll start building up.

The warm temperatures outside won’t last, but thanks to canny construction, our buildings will be snug all year-round. The Salal has its weatherproof jacket (the brown-hued Prosoco “Cat-5” water-and-air barrier) nearly all applied, to ensure protection for the building and residents alike.

Top-quality windows are more than halfway installed, and the interior rough-in of systems is takings shape. The Elan townhomes are following close behind the Salal.

Most exciting of all is our prep work for our next round of landscaping, which will make Grow phase 2, the Grove, look as if we will drop a beautiful portion of a young Grand Forest right into the heart of the neighborhood.

Cap that off with some early preparations for the rooftop solar component, and it’s been one hot summer.

Watch Grow Community continue to take shape each time you pass by the site, and we’ll see you in September.

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See Grow on HouseSmarts TV

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Grow Community will be featured on HouseSmarts, the “reality show for real homeowners,” Aug. 1 on KONG-TV in the Seattle area.

The HouseSmarts crew and contractor/host Lou Manfredini (NBC’s Today Show, WGN Radio) visited Grow for a day this past spring and really liked what they saw.

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The popular 30-minute weekly home improvement program “answers the questions homeowners really want to know,” the producers say. “Nobody adds on a room in one weekend, or lets their neighbors decorate their living room. HouseSmarts follows the progress of real people and lessons learned.”

HouseSmarts’ Grow Community segment airs at 10 a.m. Aug. 1.

For information see www.housesmartstv.com, and you can find the KONG-TV programming guide here.

 

New outlines on the Winslow skyline are the shape of progress.

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Construction on Grow Community’s new phase, the Grove, is moving onward – and upward. The Salal building’s third floor has taken shape, with roof work starting very soon. Next door at the Elan, the second floor is under way.

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Concrete work continues elsewhere on the site, the Juniper building is all but complete while the walls, footings and pouring of the Woodland Homes and Tsuga are now well underway.

With the hot, dry weather of summer upon us, crews will be watering down the site periodically to minimize dust – definitely a challenge, so we ask our residents’ and neighbors’ forbearance.

For all the activity around the site, our crews are running up an impressive safety record – 15,000 hours (and counting) without an injury. Great job, construction team!

Happy Earth Day from Grow Community

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We don’t inherit the earth from our ancestors, the Native American proverb goes, we borrow it from our children.

The wellbeing of our planet and the quality of life that we’ll leave to future generations is what Grow Community is all about.

grow-village-kids1Every facet of our design, planning and construction asks a simple question: How can we build a healthier, more sustainable community?

The success of our first neighborhood, the Village, says we’re finding the right answers. Now, as work progresses on our next two phases, the Grove and the Park, word is really getting around.

Over this past year, we were honored to present the community at the Northwest Eco-Building Guild Green Building Slam event.  The Urban Land Institute made Grow a prominent waypoint on its roadmap to healthy neighborhoods, the excellent “Building Healthy Places Toolkit.” And we were featured in the new eco-focused publication Conscious Company.

As we reached 100 percent solar participation among our single-family homes in the Village, Solar Builder magazine named Grow one of the nation’s top residential solar installations, and we were named 2014 Home of the Year by Green Builder Magazine.

Perhaps the best accolade of all came from the National Association of Home Builders, who gave Grow its very highest honors – the prestigious Platinum Award and Best In Green Award in the 2014 Best In American Living contest.

We think we’re really on to something – a new model for healthy, sustainable urban living, one that offers the template for new neighborhoods and multi-generational living around the country and the globe.

We’re thinking ahead, and we’re thinking big. At Grow Community, we know we borrow the earth from our children – and we want to return it to them, with interest.

From all of us at Grow Community, Happy Earth Day!
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Grow featured in NW design magazine

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screen-shot-2015-04-08-at-10-03-30-amGrow Community and first-phase architect Jonathan Davis are featured in the new edition of Gray magazine.

In an article titled “Community Builders,” the magazine touts Grow for fostering “next-level neighborliness” through innovative layout and design.

It all starts with an unsung organizing element: the meandering path that winds around through the site, promoting serendipitous meetings between neighbors as they move about among Grow’s “micro-hoods” and shared gardens.

“The idea is that coming and going from your house, you’ll bump into a neighbor sitting on the porch or out front gardening, and you’ll build personal relationships,” Davis says. “We oriented things to encourage interaction between residents.”

Gray bills itself “The Design Magazine for the Pacific Northwest.” The May 2015 edition is on finer newsstands now, or you can find the story at www.graymag.com page 40.

March Construction Update: Garage is on good footing(s)

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Work on Grow Community’s Phase 2 underground parking garage continues apace. Crews are now installing rebar and cables for the post tension slab for the Salal building, forming up walls and columns for the garage of the Elan townhomes, and crafting footings for the Juniper.  In utility news, a water line that will serve the new buildings is being routed up from the local main. It looks like foul weather is (mostly) behind us, so be sure to watch the dramatic progress each time you go past the work site.

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