Introduction
Land Preservation with the Right Builder
The Pendergrast family reached out to Greg Ramsey at Village Habitat Design (VHD), to help them plan a vision for the land that would enable protection of the majority of the land in perpetuity and restore a small urban farm component in order to avoid the usual mass graded suburban styled subdivision.
VHD came to their attention as a conservation community planning firm with several decades of experience in the planning and design of conservation communities such as East Lake Commons in Dekalb County. East Lake Commons is a 20 acre 67 unit infill development that preserved approximately 60% of the woodlands and open land and initiated a 5 acre urban farm that has provided fresh produce to the homeowners for over 20 years, as well as mentored a number of urban farms in the Atlanta area.
When the Pendergrasts reached out to VHD, it was with the hope that a different development vision could be established to allow sustainable growth while optimizing the preservation and restoration of the land and reinforcing a strong sense of community in the neighborhood.
VHD developed a conservation vision for the 8.7 acres built around the idea of clustering 20 units into a small village on 2.2 acres while preserving the remaining 6.5 acres to protect the majority of the trees, a 1 acre meadow for urban gardens and increasing the stream buffer exponentially. Over 70% of the land would be preserved of which 60% is made up of buildable area and the remainder unbuildable.