Prospect New Town
Encyclopedia
New urbanism
New Urbanism is an urban design movement, which promotes walkable neighborhoods that contain a range of housing and job types. It arose in the United States in the early 1980s, and has gradually continued to reform many aspects of real estate development, urban planning, and municipal land-use...
housing development located on the southern edge of the city of Longmont
Longmont, Colorado
Longmont is a Home Rule Municipality in Boulder and Weld counties in the U.S. state of Colorado. Longmont is located in Northern Colorado. Longmont is the 13th most populous city in the State of Colorado. The word "Longmont" comes from Longs Peak, a prominent mountain named for explorer Stephen H....
in Boulder County
Boulder County, Colorado
Boulder County is the sixth most populous of the 64 counties of the state of Colorado of the United States. The county seat is Boulder. The most populous municipality in the county and the county seat is the City of Boulder...
, Colorado
Colorado
Colorado is a U.S. state that encompasses much of the Rocky Mountains as well as the northeastern portion of the Colorado Plateau and the western edge of the Great Plains...
in the United States
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
. The first full-scale new urbanist
New urbanism
New Urbanism is an urban design movement, which promotes walkable neighborhoods that contain a range of housing and job types. It arose in the United States in the early 1980s, and has gradually continued to reform many aspects of real estate development, urban planning, and municipal land-use...
new development in Colorado, it was developed starting in the mid 1990s by Kiki Wallace and designed by the firm of Duany Plater Zyberk & Company
Duany Plater Zyberk & Company
Duany Plater-Zyberk & Company is a Miami, Florida-based architecture and town planning firm founded in 1980 by the husband-and-wife team of Andrés Duany and Elizabeth Plater-Zyberk. It is one of the dominant firms specializing in new urbanist town planning in the United States and other countries,...
, who also designed the new urbanist communities of Seaside
Seaside, Florida
Seaside is an unincorporated master-planned community on the Florida panhandle in Walton County, between Panama City Beach and Destin. The town has become the topic of slide lectures in architectural schools and in housing-industry magazines, and is visited by design professionals from all over the...
, Florida
Florida
Florida is a state in the southeastern United States, located on the nation's Atlantic and Gulf coasts. It is bordered to the west by the Gulf of Mexico, to the north by Alabama and Georgia and to the east by the Atlantic Ocean. With a population of 18,801,310 as measured by the 2010 census, it...
and Kentlands
Kentlands, Gaithersburg, Maryland
Located in the city of Gaithersburg, Maryland in the United States, Kentlands was one of the first attempts to develop a community using Traditional Neighborhood Design planning techniques that are now generally referred to under the rubric of the New Urbanism...
in Gaithersburg
Gaithersburg, Maryland
Gaithersburg is a city in Montgomery County, Maryland, United States. The city had a population of 59,933 at the 2010 census, making it the fourth largest incorporated city in the state, behind Baltimore, Frederick, and Rockville...
, Maryland
Maryland
Maryland is a U.S. state located in the Mid Atlantic region of the United States, bordering Virginia, West Virginia, and the District of Columbia to its south and west; Pennsylvania to its north; and Delaware to its east...
. As of 2005, the project is in its third phase of development. It is intended to have a population of approximately 2,000 people in 585 units on 340 lots.
Description
Tree farm
A tree farm is a privately owned forest managed for timber production. The term tree farm is also used to refer to plantations and to tree nurseries.-American Tree Farm System:...
formerly owned by Wallace's family. It sits along the west side of U.S. Highway 287 just south of Pike Road. The development incorporates a broad mix of traditional and modern designs, mixed together to create an eclectic feel. Although planned by DPZ, the individual units are designed by a variety of architects, who are encouraged to experiment with styles. It includes a heterogeneous mix of businesses, detached homes, row houses, live/work lofts, and apartments. The original farmhouse and other structures have been integrated into the development, in part to retain continuity with the former use of the property. Some of the new structures resembles traditional housing styles from early in the 20th century, while others are very eclectic and ultramodern.
Keeping to new urbanist principles espoused by Andres Duany
Andrés Duany
Andrés Duany is an American architect and urban planner.Duany was born in New York City but grew up in Cuba until 1960. He attended The Choate School and received his undergraduate degree in architecture and urban planning from Princeton University...
and Elizabeth Plater-Zyberk
Elizabeth Plater-Zyberk
Elizabeth Plater-Zyberk is an American architect and urban planner of Polish aristocratic roots based in Miami, Florida...
(the partners of DPZ) and others, the plan of the community forgoes traditional suburban features such as large front lawns, uniform featureless fronts dominated by large garage doors, and segregation of housing from businesses. Instead, the development is designed with small yards and higher density, to create a traditional neighborhood look and feel. It is also designed to be pedestrian
Pedestrian
A pedestrian is a person traveling on foot, whether walking or running. In some communities, those traveling using roller skates or skateboards are also considered to be pedestrians. In modern times, the term mostly refers to someone walking on a road or footpath, but this was not the case...
friendly, not only in the amenities such as sidewalk
Sidewalk
A sidewalk, or pavement, footpath, footway, and sometimes platform, is a path along the side of a road. A sidewalk may accommodate moderate changes in grade and is normally separated from the vehicular section by a curb...
s, but in promoting the desirability of walking short distances within the complex. Houses and lots in the project are typically smaller than in U.S. suburban developments. The typical house in the project has an area 5,100 square feet (470 m²) of living space on a 7,000 square foot (650 m²) lot.http://www.prospectnewtown.com/ProspectStory/Articles/Village.asp. Prices for houses in the project initially ranged from 150,000–500,000 USD, but have trended quickly upward because of the high demand and the overall growth of real estate prices in the area.
The development includes a town center interwoven into the center of the residential area, with businesses ranging from restaurants to professional offices http://www.prospectnewtown.com/TourProspect/CommercialList.asp. The streets are oriented to maximize the view of the mountains, and a traditional town center that would be no more than five minutes on foot from any place in the neighborhood. It would include not only houses but also stores and offices that themselves would have living spaces upstairs, in the manner of many older traditional two-story commercial properties.
Due to the bright colors and eclectic architecture of the buildings, many area residents refer to Prospect as "Toon Town".
History
Wallace, who reportedly disliked suburbiaSubUrbia
subUrbia is a play by Eric Bogosian chronicling the nighttime activities of a group of aimless 20-somethings still living in their suburban Boston hometown and their reunion with a former high school classmate who has become a successful musician...
, had previously bought the tree farm from his family and had wondered how to develop it in a tasteful way when he read an article in the Wall Street Journal about Duany and the New Urbanist movement. Wallace, together with Duany and Longmont developer Dale Bruns, began planning the unique development in the middle 1990s. The development was to serve as a test case for traditional neighborhoods in the planning stages along the Colorado Front Range
Colorado Front Range
The Colorado Front Range is a colloquial geographic term for the most populous region of the state of Colorado in the United States. The area is located just east of the foothills of the Front Range, aligned in a north-south configuration on the western edge of the Great Plains, where they meet the...
.
The parcel of land offered a full view of the nearby mountains, including Longs Peak
Longs Peak
Longs Peak is one of the 53 mountains with summits over 14,000 feet in Colorado. It can be prominently seen from Longmont, Colorado, as well as from the rest of the Colorado Front Range. It is named after Major Stephen Long, who explored the area in the 1820s...
. The development, at first called the "Wallace Addition" and the "Burlington Village", was to be financed at 37 million dollars. The partners also hired the Rocky Mountain Institute
Rocky Mountain Institute
Rocky Mountain Institute is an organization in the United States dedicated to research, publication, consulting, and lecturing in the general field of sustainability, with a special focus on profitable innovations for energy and resource efficiency. RMI was established in 1982 and has grown into a...
, based in Snowmass, Colorado
Snowmass, Colorado
Snowmass is an unincorporated town and a U.S. Post Office located in Pitkin County, Colorado, United States. It is situated in the valley of the Roaring Fork River, near the mouth of Snowmass Creek along State Highway 82 between Aspen and Basalt...
, as consultants for the use of ecologically
Ecology
Ecology is the scientific study of the relations that living organisms have with respect to each other and their natural environment. Variables of interest to ecologists include the composition, distribution, amount , number, and changing states of organisms within and among ecosystems...
-friendly building materials and planning. The design calls for the eventual construction of nine small parks integrated throughout the houses and businesses. Some of the units will have apartment
Apartment
An apartment or flat is a self-contained housing unit that occupies only part of a building...
s above garages, a traditional feature that will allow renters to live in the neighborhood and will allow homeowners to reduce mortgage
Mortgage loan
A mortgage loan is a loan secured by real property through the use of a mortgage note which evidences the existence of the loan and the encumbrance of that realty through the granting of a mortgage which secures the loan...
payments. Other traditional features included in the project are the use of rear lanes
Alley
An alley or alleyway is a narrow lane found in urban areas, often for pedestrians only, which usually runs between or behind buildings. In older cities and towns in Europe, alleys are often what is left of a medieval street network, or a right of way or ancient footpath in an urban setting...
, a feature that was once prevalent in the grid plan
Grid plan
The grid plan, grid street plan or gridiron plan is a type of city plan in which streets run at right angles to each other, forming a grid...
s of most U.S. towns but which has been banished from suburbia. Duany has long espoused the use of rear lanes as leading to a better integration of automobile and foot traffic in a neighborhood.
As was the case with many New Urbanist projects in the United States, the proposal violated numerous local zoning
Zoning
Zoning is a device of land use planning used by local governments in most developed countries. The word is derived from the practice of designating permitted uses of land based on mapped zones which separate one set of land uses from another...
ordinances and met with much initial resistance from local planning
Urban planning
Urban planning incorporates areas such as economics, design, ecology, sociology, geography, law, political science, and statistics to guide and ensure the orderly development of settlements and communities....
authorities and other agencies. In particular, the project's density did not have the required open space; the local fire and police departments objected to the narrowness of streets; and the Colorado Department of Transportation
Colorado Department of Transportation
The Colorado Department of Transportation is the agency of state government responsible for transportation in the State of Colorado of the United States. CDOT is responsible for maintaining 9,144 mile highway system, including 3,429 bridges with over 28 billion vehicle miles of travel per year...
objected that the project had too many curb cuts. Wallace, Bruns, and Duany struggled throughout 1994 to convince the local and state authorities to allow the project. The struggle is reflected in Wallace's choice of street names in the project: the main thoroughfare off U.S. 287 is called "Tenacity Drive." The struggle of the three men paid off, however, and in the following year, many initial doubters came to embrace the project. In October 1995 the Longmont Planning Board
Urban planning
Urban planning incorporates areas such as economics, design, ecology, sociology, geography, law, political science, and statistics to guide and ensure the orderly development of settlements and communities....
granted the appropriate variances and unanimously approved the project, on the grounds that "this is what people want."http://www.prospectnewtown.com/ProspectStory/Articles/Revisionist.asp. The project was strongly backed by Longmont mayor Leona Stoecker.
The first building phase was to include 65 lots. By the time of the approval of the planning board in 1995, Wallace had already pre-sold 35 of the lots. The initial success and enthusiasm prompted interest from other such developers. A developer from Colorado Springs
Colorado Springs, Colorado
Colorado Springs is a Home Rule Municipality that is the county seat and most populous city of El Paso County, Colorado, United States. Colorado Springs is located in South-Central Colorado, in the southern portion of the state. It is situated on Fountain Creek and is located south of the Colorado...
began planning a similar development nearby. The nearby city of Broomfield
Broomfield, Colorado
The City and County of Broomfield is a prominent suburb and tier of the Denver metropolitan area in the State of Colorado of the United States. Broomfield has a consolidated city and county government which operates under Article XX, Sections 10-13 of the Constitution of the State of Colorado. The...
likewise contacted California
California
California is a state located on the West Coast of the United States. It is by far the most populous U.S. state, and the third-largest by land area...
planner Peter Calthorpe
Peter Calthorpe
Peter Calthorpe is a San Francisco-based architect, urban designer and urban planner. He is a founding member of the Congress for New Urbanism, a Chicago-based advocacy group formed in 1992 that promotes sustainable building practices.-Biography:...
, who espouses many New Urbanist ideas, to begin designing a master plan for their community.
In 1996 the development won the Governor’s
Governor of Colorado
The Governor of Colorado is the head of the executive branch of Colorado's government and the commander-in-chief of the state's military forces. The governor has a duty to enforce state laws, and the power to either approve or veto bills passed by the Colorado General Assembly, to convene the...
Smart Growth
Smart growth
Smart growth is an urban planning and transportation theory that concentrates growth in compact walkable urban centers to avoid sprawl and advocates compact, transit-oriented, walkable, bicycle-friendly land use, including neighborhood schools, complete streets, and mixed-use development with a...
Award. The development has been the subject of numerous articles in the local and national press http://www.prospectnewtown.com/ProspectStory/Articles.asp in recent years.