Working for Windermere real estate, Jesse brought up an open house in my neighborhood that perked my interest. It's a green townhouse development - 8 homes sharing a site that typically would house 3 single family detached homes. Already there's expectations of a densely packed condo feel that I'm expecting to dread. No one wants to live in a condo, they do because it's what they can afford to buy or they love the amenities or some such yuppy reason. The biggest drawback to a set of condos - especially those in a charming neighborhood in the city - is that it removes you from any street level interaction reducing your feelings of belonging to your community. It's no longer
your home, it's your building, where I live with 50 of my closest strangers.
When I sublet from the apartment tower near Thomas Circle last year, it was shocking how removed the residents were from one another. It was like a business relationship - you don't live on my floor, I don't know you and I don't care to. You see the same people in the elevator or walking down the halls, but there's an overwhelming sense of anonymity to this labyrinth of hallways & rooms. These people just want to left alone.
Thankfully this development was different. It's 8 townhomes each have a separate entrance from the street level. The design accommodates this by winding a pathway of reclaimed bricks (the "urban canyon" as they call it) through the center like a narrow courtyard. All 8 of the entrances pull off this path, rather than some on the street side and others in the center. This reunites the separate units by giving them their own quiet neighborhood block just steps away from the busy streets of capitol hill.
As for the interiors they feature open floorplans, the latest eco-friendly appliances and heating and cooling systems, greywater recycling, radiant heated floors, and even compressed paper and cashew resin
countertops! CASHEW RESIN?
The staging was impressive, they used modern furniture often created through another eco-friendly process, like tabletops made from reclaimed beams of demolition sites. And I was very intrigued by the bathroom vanity:
It's all plywood and cherry veneer! It's not even edge-banded. Not too different from the amateur work I'm actively doing. It is striking & I love that the handles are incorporated into the doors, but I couldn't help thinking how inexpensive the materials were in respect to the enormous pricetag these homes are asking. Then later when I read up on the paper & nut resin countertops in the eco-construction book my sister gave me, I learned that it's the cheapest method available, rivaling that of traditional laminate counters.
So while I was impressed with the overall experience, I was disheartened by the feeling that although the technology is becoming more widely accessible and affordable, developers are finding ways to profit in even bigger ways off eco-friendly construction due to its novelty.
As I would love to live in a home like this, a $660K pricetag (200K more than a comparably sized home in the area) will keep me on this side of the fence for now. On the outside, looking in.
