Grow Community in the News: Mother Nature Network
Grow Community: Evergreen Homes
By Matt Hickman
After going on summer hiatus last month, I’m back with a noteworthy edition “Evergreen homes” — a monthly series of posts in which I break out the geographical bias and spotlight green residential building projects from my home state of Washington — that spotlights a sustainable community that’s well, grown, since I last wrote about it.
I first featured Grow Community — an enclave of net-zero energy residences located in Seattle’s bucolic bedroom community of Bainbridge Island — in July of 2011 after touring an unrelated modular show home designed by the project architect, Jonathan Davis of Davis Studio Architecture + Design, creators of pieceHomes, at the Dwell on Design conference in L.A.
At the time, all I had to share about the 8-acre “pedestrian-oriented, energy-efficient, multigenerational neighborhood” were early renderings and a few key highlights (Community composting facilities! P-Patches! Kayak storage! Minimal parking spaces!). Perhaps one of the more intriguing aspects of Grow — geared to be the largest solar-ready planned community in Washington, by the way — is the fact that it’s the first residential project in the U.S. to be endorsed by One Planet Living‘s Communities program, a rigorous, 10-tier certification program developed by U.K. nonprofit BioRegional Development Group and WWF International that focuses on the greenness of neighborhoods instead of individual homes.
