New Spring Time Pictures

I have added more springtime pictures to my album that I listed in the previous post.

Spring Garden 2008

Spring has finally sprung, and with all the recent rains, everything is really green and beginning to bloom! With the dry winter, the Iris have been simply fabulous this year! Our Hawthorne tree actually bloomed this year. All the color, makes our red house really stand out! I actually built our compost bins this year, 4 bins total measuring 4 feet x 4 feet square, by 3 feet tall. One of the bins is for table scraps and I have planted red worms in that one. As the worms multiply, I will add some to the other bins to aid in the composting.

Unfortunately, the dry winters have also cost us a lot of die back, and even some lost plants. The most notable one is our green grape. This weekend I am going to try to take it out and plant a new one. All of the red grapes survived, but we will miss the green grapes. Those were great to eat! See the link below for some pictures from our yard.

Spring Garden 2008

What I Have Been Up To

Sorry to everyone for being out of it for awhile. We have been pretty busy lately with a lot of submittals, and I have been having to write a lot of design guidelines, zoning codes and such, so I havn't been inspired to write in my blog too!

Tomorrow I leave for Vegas for the International Council of Shopping Centers conference. I am going primarily for one of my clients. It should be an interesting experience. I am also looking forward to getting lots of fodder for my Fugly awards, and checking out the local development scene. I know that they are really hurting right now...but they have had an excellent ride for a couple of decades now. There are some really good projects going on there though that I want to check out. I will keep you all updated.

New Computer

Well, I finally did it. After thinking about it for a couple of years, I finally broke down and got a Macbook. I love it! The Mac OS is far superior to Windows, it runs faster, is easier to work with...and it all works together! Fantastic! Of course, I do have to use windows programs, such as CAD, so I have set this system up for a dual boot, with virtual machine software. In other words, I can run both the Mac and Windows at the same time, more or less seamlessly. There are some nuances I am still getting used to, but it is pretty smooth.

Rigden Farm Cottages

For the past 6 months or so, we have been hard at work developing a new concept for Habitat for Humanity here in Fort Collins. They had purchased a few adjoining multi-family lots that allowed a total of 8 units. However, with there experience at building the last multi-family building (see previous blogs), they did not wish to build any more. So working together we came up with an innovative concept that clusters 8 single family cottage homes on the 3 multi-family lots. Three of the units face a street, but the others are clustered around a central greenbelt.

In all, we developed three plans for Habitat. Plan C, the ranch plan, is designed for ADA accessibility, has a 2 car attached garage. The other two plans, A & B are story and half designs with a main floor bedroom and two bedrooms and a bath upstairs. All plans are designed for an optional basement that would could accommodate additional bedrooms if family size dictates. These two plans have a detached one-car garage that is accessed from an alley type private drive.

We are hoping that this concept will become a new model for higher density construction that provides some of the economies of scale as a town home design, but with being single family construction allows flexibility in family selection, funding, and sponsor assignment.

Fugglies March 2008

I found this during one of my wandering adventures the other day. Now I admit this isn't particularly ugly, but just plain stupid. In this development I found several blocks of homes that had an alley running behind them. That is all fine and good. Trouble is, most of the homes were built with front load garages, and not alley load garages. In this particular development, this is a waste of resources since the front load homes require a fairly substantial setback. This leaves the homes with a very small backyard. The few rear load homes that were built, had shorter front setbacks, and bigger backyards. The second problem is, this was just a waste of land and resources to build the alley, that won't get used for its intended purpose. Sometimes, I wonder what developers/builders and homebuyers are thinking.

LEED for New Development

Here we go! We now have a residential project where the client wants to follow the LEED ND checklist as much as possible in the hopes that the development may become LEED certified when the LEED ND checklist comes online in 2009. We are just starting the project, so I am not certain yet what all we will be doing. It is a smaller development, only 28 homes, but that size should be good for testing this. Over the next few days we will develop concept plans and review the LEED ND checklist in more detail and see what we can and cannot do. As part of this process, we will also be evaluating the market feasibility of LEED ND.

Another component of this that we will be studying is which green home building tool that will be implemented along with the development. This might be following the built green program, energy star, and LEED for New Homes. Whether a specific program will be implemented, or wheaher that gets left up to each builder will be decided at a later date.

Real Estate Forcast 2008

Tonight I attended the Group Inc's real estate forecast presentation for 2008. For those of you not in Northern Colorado, The Group is the largest real estate firm in Northern Colorado. The main thing I got out of it, which is what I have been thinking, and have been hearing from many people, is that our local market has "bottomed out" for lack of a better term. Things are going to start improving. It won't be booming by any means, but it will be more balanced. The latter half of the year looks to be better than the first half, and that will carry over into 2009. For the next year, they are predicting that sales will be slightly over 2007, which was down a little from 2006, which in turn really dropped from 2005. That points to a bottom of the market. It is funny though how things are in perspective. For Fort Collins, they are predicting about 3,700 home sales. For everyone concerned that is a down market for around here. Interestingly, that is only 300 sales less than the peak back in 2004, and is similar to the sales pace in 1998. I remember 1998 being a pretty good year. It is amazing how it is all relative.

They also stated that in some neighborhoods, price points, etc. there is actually a shortage of homes available, which can happen in any market, good or bad.

Now for what I wish they would have done. I wish they would have spent some time talking about the various market segments, where is the activity? I wish they would have spent some time talking about what buyers are looking for, where they are coming from...what product is selling. Is the only thing selling homes Granite Kitchen counter tops, or are buyers looking for something else.

Now, for my predictions. Overall, I feel the market will continue to improve, though at a sustainable pace, not a torrid pace. I think the markets will be there for infill product, niche product, and amenity based communities. I think people are going to demand more from good design and architecture. They will want their homes to be unique and individual, a reflection of who they are...even from production builders. The street scape will become more important, with a variety of architectural styles, colors and materials. The look alike homes of the past decade will become a thing of the past. I predict buyers will become more interested in mixed use and mixed income neighborhoods...intermixing products within blocks, and not so segregated as they have been in the past. Buyers are going to continue to look for homes and neighborhoods that are designed within the context of the green movement, and that are energy efficient.

Well, that is all for now. I would be interested to hear what your thoughts are!

Computer Woes Part 2

You would not believe it, but on Thursday, my back up laptop went down for the count. At first I thought it was the power cord as I have had issues in the past. But it turns out it was the internal power system. I am seeing if that is fixable, or even worth fixing.

So I went and bought a new hard drive for my main laptop, got it all setup again, only to find that I was having the exact same problem with the same program as I had before. Arrgghhh. I did some online research, and discovered that it was a software problem, and there was a fix available. So I was able to get it fixed, and moved on with life. Now the question is, why did it quit working in the first place? I had been using the same settings and hardware configurations for some time. Why would it work one night, and not the next morning?

Technology...you love it and hate it at the same time. On the bright side, during all the rebuild I discovered that my laptop has bluetooth capability. Now if only I can get my Blackberry connected by bluetooth, life will be good.

Licensure

Today I finally received notice that my licensure application was approved. I am now Landscape Architect #290 in the State of Colorado. This is a follow up to my earlier ranting about the State government misplacing my application!

Computer Woes

It must be Murphy's law, the best laid plans of mice and men. Yesterday I had a big deadline trying to get 3 home plans out the door to structural engineers. I had my whole day planned out, with no meetings scheduled. The day started at 5:30 am when my daughter came in crying with an ear infection. Since my wife was a teach parent at the preschool with my son that day, I was the one who had to take our daughter to the doctor. So I got on my computer to work on my deadline, and I couldn't get into CAD. After trying several times, I came to the conclusion that my hard drive was failing. I realized this, because this has happened to everyone one of our laptops. So instead of working on my deadline, I spent the day backing everything up (which I do anyway), and getting my back up computer up and running again. Fortunately, I didn't lose anything, and I did manage to get everything out, though a few hours late!

Home Building Green vs LEED

Recently a friend of mine and I were discussing what I was going to do with my LEED accreditation and discussing LEED in general. I actually have thought about this, and what I would like to do is specialize in LEED for New Developments, as well as New Home Construction. This will be in addition to what we do for commercial projects, but I want to specialize in the residential end.

With new development, particularly residential neighborhoods, there are very few standards for green development, other than doing what is right to minimize the impacts of development and creating them to be more sustainable than the current development patterns. In this respect, I think LEED-ND will be very beneficial and I want to be in the forefront of this. Convincing developers to go this route will not be easy, and it will also require municipalities, utility providers, and contractors to all think differently. One of the first projects I want to test with this will be own development. Right now, LEED-ND is in the pilot process, and will not be brought online until early 2009, so we will follow the pilot guidelines and hopefully become certified as we go to construction.

LEED for homes is an entirely different matter. There are many green building standards for residential construction. Locally, we have the Built Green program administered by the Metro Denver HBA, Energystar, the upcoming ANSI national standards, and some others. All are good programs with varying degrees of market acceptance. When I was building several years ago, I followed the Built Green program, and even listed some of the homes. At the time, that program was unknown in Fort Collins and it had little market viability.

Both the Built Green and Energy Star programs focus more on the building, mostly favoring energy and water consumption. I think where LEED might be different is that it looks at a more comprehensive picture from site development all the way through indoor air quality. It is also designed to dovetail with LEED-ND. With our development, we will also require the builders to follow some kind of green standard. Whether we want to dictate which standard, or allow flexibility we will have to decide. Of the measures that we will have to evaluate will be market acceptance of the various standards, and the cost of implementing those standards. LEED in particular can be quite expensive. Just the fees paid to USGBC and to have a third party rater involved can run from $3-7,000 per home depending upon the level of certification (taken from Green Builder magazine, July 2007). This is pretty steep for the typical home where every dollar counts for affordability and buyers compare prices per square foot more than features. That being said, there could be some economy of scale achieved if a builder has stock plans that are repeated several times, or uses the same materials and specs from home to home. This would in theory reduce the paperwork that is incurred. I don't know if this is possible, but will look into it further. If USGBC wants LEED to be a viable standard for home building, they will have to address the cost issues.

LEED Exam

Hey I passed! The actual test was nothing like all the practice ones I took. I can't say it was easier or harder, just different. Anyway, no more testing for awhile...

Today is the Day

Today is the day of the big LEED test. I think I am ready, I have been studying and cramming for the last two weeks, and my head is full.

Frustrations with Licensing

Most of you probably know that Colorado finally passes a licensure law this year for Landscape Architects. Colorado was one of only two states in the nation that did not license Landscape Architects. Anyway, the law was passed this year in June, and it state that everyone had to be licensed by January 1 in order to call themselves Landscape Architects. Problem is, the licensure applications wern't made available until late October. At first I didn't think much about it, but when they became available I thought it would be fun to get license #1, or at lest in the top 10. So I hauled butt, got my application together, got my references, got my transcripts, paid the fee, fedexed it to the state, and had it back into them in 4 days.

Then nothing....for over 6 weeks.

I saw online that several other professionals had become licensed, but nothing on mine.
So this week I started calling people. First I called the phone number on the web page. Of course, that doesn't allow you to talk to a real person. Then I called the director of the whole thing, since I had his card. He had someone else call me back, and who left a message. She gave me the email address of the person to contact. So I emailed her Wednesday morning...and never heard back. Finally, yesterday I was able to get hold of the program director directly, explained everything. I could tell he was not pleased. 5 minutes later I finally get a call back from the person who was handling my application. Since mine was the first one she had gotten, she had questions on it (more from the general process), so she set it aside...then forgot about it.

So it was only because I raised a fuss, that my application is being approved at all. Fortunately, there are no issues with my application, and it will be approved, but why did I bother to rush to get it in, only to be penalized for it. Arrggghhhh.

LEED Exam

I have been spending all of my spare time the last couple of weeks studying to take the exam to become a LEED accredited professional. For those of you who don't know, LEED stands for Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design. Currently, this is all the rage for public and commercial buildings. In very simplified terms, it is a way to design buildings, and the site around them more sustainibly that traditional practices. All kinds of things are looked at such as energy consumption, daylighting, off-gassing, material selections, landscaping etc. Projects have to earn a certain number of points to achieve various certification levels. Of course, the higher the certification level, the more "green" the building is. This all has positive merits of course, and is the way things should just be done. It should be the standard, rather than an option.

Anyway, this is no easy test to study for. This is a complicated program, and the test itself is not open book. I don't think I have studied so hard since I took my licensing exam way back when. The test is this Friday, so I will let you know how I do. Fortunately, you do get the results right away.

Rendevouz

I thought I would take a few minutes to update everyone on the progress of my development project. My partner and I have have been spending a lot of time over the course of the last few days looking at layout options, sorting out how much property we are actually purchasing, and looking at performas. The idea we are shooting for is to do something a little different than the norm. We don't want to plop a street through the middle of the property, and place lots lots on both sides, instead we want to create a community. We want to have the homes face outdoor spaces that are created by the homes themselves. We want the garages accessed by alleys, with the fronts of the homes facing greenbelts. Our inspriation are the projects created by The Cottage Company. I have included a picture here from one of their projects.

Last week, before Thanksgiving we had a meeting with the county. This will be an interesting project, as it will be entitled in the county, but since it is within the growth management area, we have to follow city rules. We are also under the guidance of the northwest sub-area plan. In general, I think the county is supportive of our idea, but it will take some variances as the county hasn't seen a project quite like this. I have taken there comments in mind and have continued refining our concept plan to keep the spirit of what we want to do, but make it a little easier to entitle. The biggest comment we had was for the need for a public street access for the project. I wasn't totally surprised by this, but was hoping we could get away without a public street.

I will keep you all informed of the progress.

It just occurred to me, that I have never shown the final product for the Rigden Farm townhomes. To the left are several pictures taken at the dedication last spring. The landscape was not finished yet, but the units were a hit with everyone in attendance. The carriage units also sold fairly quickly. Next spring or summer I will take pictures of the final product with the landscaping all green!

Award Time!

On Friday night, at an awards ceremony at the local Marriot Hotel, Fort Collins Habitat for Humanity received two awards for its entry in the parade of homes this past fall. They received Best Floor Plan and Best Exterior Design and Landscaping in the under $300k category. This is a home that was designed by myself at Vignette Studios. This home has 3 bedrooms, 2 bathrooms, a living and dining great room and open kitchen all packed into 1,250 square feet. This home was designed with a 2 car garage, which was required by the nighborhood covenants (pretty common here), as well as stone wainscotting. Because this particular home was on a corner lot, and was in the parade of homes, we did splurge on a wrap around porch, though we do include front porches on all habitat homes.


This is another plan in a long line of homes I have designed for Habitat where I have strived to show that affordable homes don't have to skimp on design or style. Below is a picture of another home I have designed for them, a 1,500 square foot 4 bedroom 2-story home. Since Habitat Homes don't come with Air Conditioning, sometimes homeowners install window sized coolers.

New Project

Some of you know that my business partner and myself have trying to find a piece of property to develop for the past year. We took a run at a great piece of property earlier this spring that would have been a very ambitious project. Ultimately we didn't get the property, which was probably a good thing. Shortly afterwards, we found a great 5 acre piece of ground in North Fort Collins. It is located within the northwest subarea plan of both the county and the City of Fort Collins.

By zoning, we can only get 9-10 units on this property, including the existing home. I am excited about this project as it will allow us to do some experimentation with a development style this town has not yet seen. We also want to be as green as possible with this development, while still being fiscally responsible. Some of our ideas are a community wide geothermal system, or photoveltic system. We shall see. I will keep the readers abreast of the process as well as some of our ideas.