Park 8Ninety is a 127-acre business park in Missouri City, Texas, just southwest of Houston. Ultimately, 1.8 million square feet of warehouse and flex space is planned, beginning with a speculatively built first phase of 439,704 square feet in three buildings with high ceilings and wide column spacing. Existing tenants include distributors and manufacturers, many serving nearby hospitals or the building trades..
The infill site has excellent highway access but had been overlooked because it was entangled by multiple utility easements that made drainage difficult. The municipality of Missouri City worked with developer Trammell Crow to implement an off-site stormwater detention strategy that raised the site’s elevation and created a new recreational lake at an adjacent city park.
Bridgeland is an 11,400-acre master-planned community northwest of Houston, Texas, which will be home to 65,000 residents when complete in 2037. Like the Woodlands, its predecessor, the Bridgeland site plan centers on scenic lakes that improve water quality, irrigate during droughts, and draw residents to common areas for recreation. These lakes form a stormwater system that exceeds local design requirements, and which has managed storm events much larger than those anticipated.
The master-planned community Rancho Sahuarita, located near Tucson, Arizona, and developed and owned by Sharpe & Associates, was designed with healthy living at the forefront.
The lake’s clubhouse provides residents with numerous opportunities for physical activity, including a 6,000-square-foot fitness center, dance and aerobic studios, splash park, and lap pool. The clubhouse also features an outdoor “adventure park” with tennis and basketball courts, a mini golf green, and a children’s playground. Homeowners association dues cover more than 50 different fitness classes offered in the clubhouse, including tennis, basketball, ballet, karate, and yoga.
An extensive network of recreational amenities, such as a ten-acre lake with an adjacent park and walkable promenade, encourage physical activity. The development maintains two large parks complete with pools, as well as smaller parks throughout the grounds with volleyball courts and play equipment for children. Forty miles of paved walking paths and bicycle trails, including a kid-friendly safari trail with life-size bronze animals, connect residents throughout the community.
Rancho Sahuarita has partnered with Carondelet Health Network to maintain an on-site primary and urgent care facility, as well as to offer programming that encourages physical activity and a healthy lifestyle, like a children’s summer camp and a health and wellness lecture series.
Mueller is a 700-acre redevelopment of a former airport into a health-focused master-planned community just three miles from downtown Austin, Texas. By 2020, Mueller is projected to have over 5,700 single family and multifamily units, a quarter of which will be affordable for low-income families. The Catellus Development Corporation worked with master planners ROMA Design and McCann Adams Studio to promote community health and wellness, to increase pedestrian activity, to improve air quality, and to utilize low-emission building materials.
Mueller’s various facilities and amenities are designed around the principles of social interaction, open space preservation, and active lifestyles. Tree-lined sidewalks and protected bicycle lanes provide shade and connect to a comprehensive trail system, retail, and recreational parks to encourage walking and bicycling. To promote physical fitness, Mueller provides sports facilities, playgrounds, a stretching area, and outdoor showers. A six-acre orchard and community garden provides residents with a seasonal harvest. Residents have initiated over 40 different clubs and interest groups and over 70,000 people attend large scale community events annually. The developer has facilitated social interaction these interactions through a block party at move-in and through physical design, including front porches, stoops, gardens, and alleyways in residential areas.
A 1,045-acre neotraditional planned community centered on a 100-acre town center and a 73-acre lake. The plan calls for 3,370 residential units–of which 300 are completed–as well as retail and employment uses, including a recently completed Apple Computer facility. The development has a pedestrian- friendly environment, including attractive streetscapes, an accessible lake- front, and a planned mixed-use town center featuring shops, a village green, and a community center.
Developed by Transcontinental Properties, Inc., Lake Las Vegas Resort is a resort community located ten miles (16 kilometers) southeast of Las Vegas, Nevada, that is centered around a 320-acre (129.5-hectare) manmade lake. In addition to the lake and other open space, this 3,592-acre (1,454-hectare) project features two luxury hotels, several golf courses, a town center with shops, restaurants, and a casino, and an array of housing types–ranging from single-family homes, townhouses, and condominium units to fractional-ownership flats–that total 8,900 residences. Conscious of its impact on the environment, the community uses lake water to irrigate the golf courses and common-area plantings and encourages the use of nonautomobile transportation.
Lakeside is a lake-oriented, 350-unit residential development located in Buena Park, an incorporated Orange County, California, city. The 70-acre site originally was planned for development as an industrial site but faced opposition from nearby residents. Development as a residential community presented the developer with several obstacles Including the site’s location within a floodplain and its proximity to a municipal airport and to an existing industrial site. Using the fill created by constructing a lake, the developer was able to raise the site out of the floodplain while creating a valuable community amenity. Use of the on-site fill resulted in significant cost savings. The community offers a range of price points and amenities Including a boat dock and opportunity for fishing. The developer worked closely with neighbors and the local government to mitigate concerns resulting from the site’s deficiencies.
Wyndham is a 1,271-acre, master-planned community located in the prestigious west end of Henrico County, a suburb of Richmond, Virginia, featuring a private country club with an 18-hole golf course designed by Curtis Strange that includes a 22-acre lake. The community offers parks equipped with a soccer field, volleyball and basketball courts, playgrounds, and a 3-mile nature trail that follows the Chickahominy River. The 3,000-square-foot Wyndham Swim and Racquet Club is the social center of the community, serving individual private neighborhoods. At completion, approximately 2,400 units, including multifamily housing, condominiums, townhouses, and single-family homes will be constructed. The commercial component of the community includes convenience retail, office, office service, and larger retail sites for future development.
Red Hawk at Wingfield Springs is a 1,660-acre (671-hectare), master-planned golf course community located in the Spanish Springs Valley between the Sierra Nevada and Pah Pah mountain ranges, seven miles (11 kilometers) northeast of Reno, Nevada. The $120 million project, developed by Loeb Enterprises, LLC, features two Audubon International’ “certified championship golf courses and 2,000 homes. Red Hawk is built on the former ranch of one of Nevada’s most infamous mining and banking tycoons, George Wingfield. The character of an Old West ranch is maintained throughout the community, with one of Wingfield’s houses integrated into the Village Center complex that features a 15,000-square-foot (1,393-square-meter) clubhouse with a pro shop and a restaurant (with meeting and banquet facilities), a golf academy and fitting center with a driving range, and a swim and fitness center. When conceived in 1993, Red Hawk at Wingfield Springs was one of the first master-planned developments in Sparks, Nevada. Due to pent-up demand for a golf course community, the project sold 250 of its nearly 400 custom home sites within the first two years of development.
A 15-acre subdivision of detached homes in suburban Tampa that uses environmentally sensitive development techniques to preserve a wooded environment for the 39 homes that have been built. Lakes and a nature preserve are also located within the project. Utility corridors have been kept to a minimum to reduce disruption of trees and other native vegetation on the site.
