Big Builder’s Atlanta Dream Team Seeks Victory at Vickery
Amid the ongoing economic and real estate storms, many new-home communities have a big question to answer.
Will new economic realities take away from the special character designed into a community that came online during real estate’s mad run to its 2006 peak? In other words, can the second half of a place be as special as the first half when the first half took off during the “funny money” days, and the second half needs to scrap it out when greenback dollars and the ways to earn them are scarce?
- Specifically, what do you do with an award-winning New Urbanism community that did spectacularly out of the gate in the halcyon days of yore (2004, 05, 06, and a bit more), but then hit the wall of real estate’s alternative reality?
- How do you sustain that character in a still-innocent and vulnerable place when it’s less than half complete, and prices, absorption levels, and demand have fallen off a cliff–and, alas, the original developer builder has had to cede the property to its banks?
That’s exactly what the Big Builder ‘09 Virtual event Atlanta Dream Team faces as it takes on its land parcel challenge–the “future Phase 8″–of the lauded Vickery community, which hit a wall in late 2007, and which has seen its assets go back to Wachovia by late last year.
The team–a hand-picked Dream Team of planning, design, business, and marketing executives from different organizations competing Atlanta’s market–will focus on what to do with 22 acres of undeveloped land at the Southwest end of Vickery’s 214-acre traditional neighborhood expanse. Their goal as they brainstorm ideas about how to bring value to the land and offer a viable big builder business vision for a distressed parcel?
Here’s the current land plan:
Click image for access to Vickery home page.
Do it so that it keeps the sense of place Pam Sessions and the original design teams infused in Vickery, but also build an affordable product in the “new normal” definition of the word affordable.
The Atlanta team:
- Chuck Fuhr, president, Atlanta Division, Ryland Homes
- Michael Langella, senior vice president, Reynolds Signature Communities
- Bill Evans Jr., co-founder, John Thomas Homes
- Michael Medick, architect
- Jennifer Landers, regional marketing director, Newland Communities
- Steve Palm, principal, SmartNumbers
Among the challenges, Vickery is a total EarthCraft certified community, so the team will have to figure compliance with this certification in its cost planning for the project.
Here’s a brief video in which Big Builder editorial director John McManus discusses the project and the talented team who’re working on generating a Big Builder ‘09 Virtual plan to present the week of Nov. 16-20.
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