Habitat for Humanity opts for TND in Greensboro

The nation’s largest nonprofit builder — known for a barebones approach — is moving forward with an ambitious and diverse neighborhood.

What will apparently be the first complete new urban neighborhood developed by Habitat for Humanity was designed in a recent charrette in Greensboro, North Carolina.
The 32-acre traditional neighborhood development (TND) consists of 196 units in a wide variety of housing types along with a civic and commercial center (see plan at right). Many types of formal and informal open space, including a stream corridor that is to be preserved, are part of the plan. The development, called Flemingfield, will mix affordable Habitat for Humanity houses with market-rate units.
    The City of Greensboro is putting about a million dollars into the design and development of Flemingfield. Using this funding as leverage, the city encouraged Habitat for Humanity of Greater Greensboro to hire new urbanist designers, which it did — in Civitech and Allison Ramsey Architects.
    New urbanists have worked many times in the past with Habitat — the largest nonprofit affordable housing builder in the US, with 1,800 local chapters. Probably the first was when Elizabeth Plater-Zyberk helped to design Jordan Commons, a 40-acre project in Princeton, Florida, following Hurricane Andrew. Jordan Commons consists of single houses, a community center, and several greens in what Xavier Iglesias of Duany Plater-Zyberk & Company calls a “Nolenesque” layout. With one housing type and no shops or businesses, Jordan Commons is not a complete neighborhood, but it is within walking distance of commercial development, Iglesias says.
    New urbanists also have worked with Habitat in building small parts of new urban neighborhoods — such as the Holiday Neighborhood in Boulder, Colorado — and in many infill locations. Leyland Alliance is codeveloping a 24-unit infill project in Newburgh, New York, with Habitat. In 2006, Ray Gindroz of Urban Design Associates wrote a nationwide pattern book for Habitat in conjunction with the Institute of Classical Architecture & Classical America.
    Flemingfield is the most ambitious new urban development plan yet spearheaded by the nonprofit builder. In addition to the developer and the planning team, the charrette included public officials, representatives of local agencies and organizations, and builders, according to Tony Sease, principal of Civitech, based in Durham, North Carolina. For neighborhood design precedent, the planners looked at neighborhoods in the city and the surrounding Piedmont region. For architectural precedent, Allison Ramsey adapted designs had earlier been created for Habitat for Humanity houses in Beaufort, South Carolina, where the firm is based.
    Flemingfield has many interesting aspects, most of them driven by current needs of agencies and organizations in the city, Sease says. Highlights of the neighborhood include:

Central green
Configured as a square with buildings on three sides (see plan above), the green gently slopes downward to the northeastern corner, where a small stage serves as the focus of this natural amphitheater — a venue for performances, movies, lectures, and other events. Grouped around the green are live-work buildings, flats, townhouses, single-family houses, and civic buildings.

Community center
Fronting the green is a collection of buildings containing civic uses, designed as an ensemble with a shared plaza in the rear for supervised play. A meeting hall/activities center faces the green and includes classrooms, a computer lab, offices, a kitchen, and a large meeting hall. A library is next to the hall, wrapping the corner across from a small parkside pavilion where the square opens up to the creekside greenway. Next to the library is a day care center.

Incubator kiosks
Sharing an entrance green are several small, simply constructed single-room buildings ideal for small business start-ups. The structures, measuring approximately 12 feet by 16 feet, could also serve long-term as offices for real-estate, insurance, or other specialized services. The kiosks have a new urban pedigree — they are based on similar buildings in New Town at St. Charles, Missouri, which were in turn based on Classical kiosks in the central green at Seaside.

Open space
Parks and green spaces are easily accessible throughout the plan. The two most prominent are the central green and the creekside greenway. The greenway includes a large playing field to the north and allows for potential regional connectivity to existing trail systems via the stream corridors leading to the east and the west.

Housing types
The plan includes 125 single family units in numerous floor plans, from two to four bedrooms. There are also 42 townhouses and 11 live-work units planned for the center. Also, 18 “mansion” units are planned in four buildings, consisting of stacked flats, two or three on each floor. The plan also calls for a potential 34 extra units if small adjacent parcels are acquired, adding to the site. The architects worked closely with Habitat and the other builders during the charrette to work out construction- and affordability-related issues, says Greg Huddy of Allison Ramsey.
    Because Allison Ramsey had previously produced designs for Habitat, the firm was familiar with the program requirements for square footage and layout. In historic Beaufort, Habitat for Humanity had to conform to an architectural code, which resulted in the builder “learning from being pushed out of its comfort zone.” Most of the changes in construction techniques require education but do not add significantly to cost, Huddy says. Allison Ramsey also has a wide range of house plans designed for market rate builders, some of them quite modest in size. For-profit builders have reused some of the Habitat designs from Beaufort, he adds.
    Potential friction points between Habitat and new urbanist designers include windows, roof pitches, materials, and porches. For windows, Huddy says, Allison Ramsey prefers upgraded quality, but he acknowledges that Habitat may want to use windows of lesser quality, especially when they have been donated. Roof pitches are an issue, he says, because Habitat prefers not to use anything steeper than a very shallow 6:12. Volunteers don’t like to stand on steep roofs, he says. However, Habitat can use contractors for specific parts of houses, like roofs, he says.
In the realm of materials, the architects are recommending fiber-cement siding. Trim may be a composite material. Allison Ramsey draws the line at vinyl, although some Habitat for Humanity chapters would insist on using it, Huddy says. In Greensboro, Huddy does not think vinyl will be used because of the proximity of market-rate units that will use fiber-cement. “You don’t want Habitat houses to stand out, so they can’t have radically different materials and forms,” he says.
Some of the houses will have full porches, and others modest ones. “We told them that it’s important to have porches on the street because they allow for interaction and provide security through eyes on the street,” Huddy says. “They bought into all that and knew it would add a little cost, but they were open to bending some rules to get a better neighborhood.”
The first-phase engineering is proceeding, although Habitat has not yet filed for planning approval. The city has a traditional neighborhood ordinance that allows for narrower streets and other elements appropriate for such development, Sease says. The political support for TND stems from successful infill projects, notably Willow Oaks and Southside, both designed by DPZ. Willow Oaks is a HOPE VI public housing redevelopment, and Southside is a market-rate redevelopment in an economically depressed part of town. Public officials “very much believe that the end results of Southside and Willow Oaks are some of the best-quality development in the city right now,” says Dan Curry, deputy director of Greensboro’s Department of Housing and Community Development.