Panhandle paragons

An eight mile stretch of Florida’s Panhandle is acquiring a concentration of high-quality, high-end, New Urbanism. The prototype new urbanist town of Seaside — 90 percent complete — continues to slowly develop its town center and remaining residential lots. Bordering on Seaside and rapidly under development is WaterColor, a larger scale new town by Arvida, one of Florida’s major developers. Eight miles down the road is Rosemary Beach, with its sophisticated, St. Augustine/Caribbean look. All three projects have high quality architecture, differ from each other in character, and are outstanding financial successes, the latter driven in part by red hot real estate markets on the Panhandle — a prime beach destination for Atlantans. All three are resorts geared to the upper middle class and the wealthy. However, Seaside, Rosemary Beach, and WaterColor will together attract many thousands of day trippers who will come for both urbanism (although they may not think of it as such) and free public access to some of the best beaches in the US. Rosemary Beach is more urban and dense overall than Seaside, and has a more subdued architectural style. The project currently has 140 homes completed, and as many under construction. Leucadia National, the developer, has garnered $49 million in sales of 340 lots, according to Alex Dunser, project manager. More than 100 lots are still to be sold, including most of the high-value, mixed-use town center parcels, and a remaining beachfront phase. The latter was intentionally held to the end to achieve maximum value. Leucadia has put $43 million into the project, Dunser says, including the land, parks, operating expenses, and most of the infrastructure. Rosemary Beach will be complete in a few years, and visitors will see a place that is radically different from Seaside, although both projects had the same master planner, Duany Plater-Zyberk & Company. The architecture, which is of very high quality, is fully on view. There is little landscaping on private parcels. On public parcels, the landscaping is formal and low to the ground. For that reason, Rosemary Beach used pavement that is pervious to water. The beach and the dunes are the only true natural places in the development. Privacy is provided in the form of highly enclosed interior courtyards. Rosemary Beach, at 105 acres, is about 30 percent larger than Seaside. Most of the major buildings in WaterColor’s town center are under construction, although not occupied. As in Disney’s Celebration, the town center is being built first. Most of the town center buildings appear to be fairly large, two- or three-story structures with multifamily residential and ground floor commercial. The design is of high quality, but conservative. WaterColor, designed by Cooper Robertson & Partners, may be the most financially successful of all the projects. In the first few months, $27 million in sales contracts were written. At 460 acres, WaterColor is 2.5 times as large as Seaside and Rosemary Beach combined. Seaside is still the biggest draw, and may always be because of its thriving, diverse town center, which continues to evolve. Four new, temporary, commercial buildings have been added in recent years. These $500,000, 3,600-square-foot buildings with two-story porches contain retail and office uses now, but will eventually be moved and converted for use by the growing Seaside Neighborhood School, a public charter school. In addition, plans are in the works for eight new downtown buildings, two designed by Leon Krier and six by Daniel Solomon. While Seaside’s town center is livelier and looking better than ever, the residential streetscapes are getting hard to see. The natural landscaping is obscuring the architecture, as the trees and shrubs in front of homes grow to the height of the buildings. On the positive side, Seaside’s landscaping introduces nature into the town and makes it feel considerably less dense (despite its density estimated at 10 units/acre, taking into account accessory buildings and the buildings used for commercial space). Seaside still has six residential lots to sell, and another 24 will be created out of the current public works area, according to Beth Folta, vice president of real estate for Seaside Development Company.