Staying Power
We revisit two inventive '90s subdivisions. Have their design innovations held up?
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Saturday, January 3, 2009
When I write about a show house or the furnished model in a new-home community, I always try to imagine what it would be like to live there.
Some things seem obvious but might be missed by a buyer in the throes of a purchase decision -- for example, "Despite the to-die-for kitchen, the stove and sink are so far apart that the owners will have to don roller skates every time they fix a meal" or "The houses are so close together that the owners' first purchase will be window shades."
Other reactions are more subjective -- say, "A family that enjoys gourmet cooking will find the kitchen storage inadequate" or "Five eating areas is overkill."
Afterward, I wonder whether I was right. Did the projects I really liked live up to their promise? Did their owners like them as much as I did?
I recently revisited two of my all-time favorites. Both built in 1993-94, they are Heather Knoll, a townhouse project in Reston built by the William L. Berry firm, and Coscan in the Cascades, a single-family project built by Brookfield (then known as Coscan) in Loudoun County.
The two stand out from what was being built at the time and also from what builders have constructed more recently. They do not offer the same old, same old floor plans. The hand of an able designer is evident in the way the spaces of everyday life have been arranged.
Although the two projects are very different, they share similarities. The houses are all about 2,100 square feet. They were designed by the same architect, Bill Devereaux of Devereaux & Associates in McLean.
Both were launched in a down market and sold well. Despite this, Brookfield reproduced the Cascades project just one other time, with some modifications. The floor plans used at Heather Knoll were never built again.
Nonetheless, the second time around, I still liked both projects enormously and found residents equally enthusiastic.
"It's a fantastic house -- almost every square inch is usable," Mickey Alford-Lane said, reflecting the sentiments of many neighbors in Heather Knoll.
One homeowner is so happy there that he's declared to his neighbors that he wants to be buried in the back yard.
