Some people think I’m anti-business or anti-development because I don’t buy into the political agenda of Virginia’s real estate industry. Nothing could be further from the truth. I’m convinced that creative, entrepreneurial developers are Virginia’s best hope for creating more liveable communities. Government can make rules, but they can’t innovate. If anyone is going to figure out how to reconcile the goals of sustainable development with the goal of providing affordable, accessible housing, it has to be developers — because developers, not government, are the ones who actually actually build our communities.
That brings us to one of the more visionary developers in Virginia: John Clark, the driving force behind Haymount, a New Urbanist community along the Rappahannock River just east of Fredericksburg. Clark has dedicated half of his adult life to keeping alive his vision for Haymount. I wrote a cover story about him in 1991 for Virginia Business magazine, when Haymount was little more than a plot of farmland and a dream. After struggling for years with regulatory approvals and market conditions, Clark has finally begun building the project. He expects people to begin taking residence in 2008.
What I find especially encouraging is the fact that local environmentalists, who once opposed the community as a great project in the wrong place, have finally embraced it. Kiran Krishnamurthy at the Times-Dispatch wrote yesterday described how John Tibbett, leader of Friends of the Rappahannock, has learned to live with the 4,000-home community in rural Caroline County. “There was an evolution in our perspective toward Haymount, from being the right development in the wrong place to being a model,” he told Krishnamurthy. “Their goals fit our goals.”
While battling to keep the Haymount project alive, Clark was obsessed with incorporating the latest and greatest environmental thinking into his development. He scoured the marketplace and the literature for every green idea he can find. When Haymount finally gets built, it will become a national showcase for green development. Krishnamurthy lists some of the environmental features that Clark is planning:
Haymount will employ state-of-the-art wastewater treatment and stormwater drainage systems; feature an organic farm, garden and market; cluster the 4,000 homes together to reduce the development’s footprint; preserve two-thirds of the
1,600 acres; possibly include man-made wetlands; and equip each home with two bicycles.Clark also said he plans to set homes back from the waterfront, preserving scenic views and using the development’s … river frontage for a park. Tippett applauds those steps.
“They could have made huge amounts of money doing waterfront lots,” Tippett said, adding he foresees Haymount and Friends of the Rappahannock one day hosting international conferences on eco-friendly development. “We can talk about low-impact development and then walk outside and see it.”
From the conversations I’ve had with Clark over the years, that description is only scratchinig the surface of what he has in mind.
Neal Peirce, a nationally syndicated columnist, wrote last month how path-breaking “green” developments are popping up around the country. Prairie Crossing, a 400-home settlement, is located at the junction of two rail commuter lines 45 miles north of Chicago. Prairie Crossing is recycling old corn and soybean fields into the kind of wildflower-dotted prairie that once reigned in the plains. Habersham, a development in the low country of South Carolina, blends “porch-rich Southern architecture” with “marsh-lined water edges and great live oaks, bedecked with Spanish moss.”
Here’s the beauty of capitalism: If “green” development pays, we’ll get a lot more of it. Government can’t do it. Even environmentalist not-for-profits can’t do it. It takes visionaries like John Clark to figure out how to make it pay off. If you count the time value of holding onto the Haymount property, the early and expensive design work and literally years of Clark’s time, the project may never represent a competitive deployment of capital. You can always tell the pioneers — they’re the ones with the arrows sticking out of their backs. But if Clark can prove successful from here on out, others will learn from his experience and spread his best practices like prairie grass.