Henderson will try experiment with new urbanism for homes

By Brian Wargo (contact)

Tuesday, Jan. 3, 2006 | 7:25 a.m.

The Las Vegas Valley is about to become home to a master-planned community reminiscent of a time before World War II.

Grading is scheduled to start in Henderson this month on Inspirada, a community offering dense, pedestrian-friendly neighborhoods interconnected with narrow streets, village squares, parks and open space.

The venture will be one of the nation's largest "new urbanism" communities, spread across nearly 2,000 acres and featuring 11,500 residences.

Focus Property Group, the master developer for a partnership of seven home builders, bought the site in a June 2004 federal auction for $557 million, double the appraised value. The site is west of Sun City Anthem and south of Henderson Executive Airport.

Construction is expected to begin by summer, and the first homes should be ready for occupancy by the end of 2006 or early 2007, said Larry Bross, executive vice president of development for Focus.

The development will feature seven villages of 200 to 250 acres. Each will contain at least four mini-neighborhoods, known as pods, of 20 to 60 acres. Each pod will be built around parks and village squares.

At the core of the master plan is a 300-acre Town Center, expected to include a resort casino, retail, possibly high-rise office buildings and as many as 3,000 dwellings, including mid-rise, condos, apartments and town homes. No deal is in place a with any casino operator, Bross said.

The development will have no gated communities and few walls. Instead, it will aspire to an open feel with trails and bike paths meandering throughout. It will include three community parks with athletic fields and 10 neighborhood parks. A total of 322 acres will be for recreational use.

"New urbanism has caught on fire throughout the nation, and this project in Henderson will be a major draw on the West Coast," Bross said.

The concept, made popular in Florida in the late 1980s, is catching on nationally as buyers seek a sense of small town community as an alternative to typical suburban sprawl, said Steve Filmanowicz, spokesman for the Congress For the New Urbanism, a national organization devoted to helping cities and developers further the new urbanism concept.

New urbanism may turn planning and zoning conventions upside down. A conventional suburban development, for example, cannot have as many varied uses near each other, Filmanowicz said. Residential areas must be separated from places people shop and work, where children attend school and play soccer. New urbanism communities aspire to invite people out of their cars and give them the handy access to shopping, schools and other elements of small towns of the past.

"There is a real yearning for this," Filmanowicz said. "They want it to feel like a town with a Main Street."

Not everyone prefers this type of intimate lifestyle, but home buyers will now have it as a choice, Henderson officials said. A national survey found that about 30 percent of buyers prefer a new urbanism development, according to Filmanowicz's organization.

The houses will vary in size, prices and architecture. Styles will include carriage homes above detached or semi-detached garages; estate homes on large lots; mansion homes that combine up to six residences within a single structure; village homes with alley-access; garage garden homes that face each other across a courtyard; and live/work units featuring office and retail space on the first floor and living quarters on the second.

Home prices could range from $300,000 to $700,000 Bross said.

Henderson Councilwoman Amanda Cyphers said she is excited about having the new urbanism alternative available to buyers.

"This is not Henderson as we have known it,"she said, noting that this style of dense development results, in part, from steep prices for land.

Bristol Ellington, Henderson's community development director, said he believes "planning professionals from across the country are going to be coming here to see this project."

Inspirada's developer will be responsible for constructing parks, trails, open space and recreational amenities. It will also build a fire station and provide space for a temporary community policing center until a police station is built. The developer will donate land for that structure as well as for four elementary schools and a middle school.

The land is divided among the homebuilders, of which KB Home has the biggest percentage at 48.8 percent. Focus has 15.5 percent; followed by Toll Brothers, 10.5 percent; Pardee Homes, 9.9 percent; Woodside 8.1 percent; Kimball Hill Homes, 6.6 percent; Meritage Homes, 3.5 percent, and Beazer Homes, 2.5 percent.