Saturday, April 29, 2006
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Monday, August 01, 2005
By Christian LivermoreTBR Staff
PORT WENTWORTH - Only a few small parcels of land remain unclaimed by developers in the Rice Hope planned unit development in Port Wentworth, according to the Realtor who is shepherding the development. Two of the three residential pods in the development have been sold and all 60 acres of commercial are under contract and should close shortly, says Rhett Mouchet of Melaver & Mouchet.
The entire 60-acre multi-family tract is also under contract to a national developer and is expected to close in August, Mouchet said. The developer plans to do multi-family units in the garden apartments style, which feature one- or two-level instead of higher density town homes.
The 60 acres of commercial space are also all under contract, including some big-box, and should close shortly, Mouchet said. He declined to name specific tenants.
Only a few small outparcels of one to five acres each adjacent to the multi-family site around the development's main entrance remain available, Mouchet said.
Mouchet credited the family-friendly design of Rice Hope with the quick sale of the components.
"The community spirit they're promoting, along with the traffic count on Highway 21 is just unbelievable," Mouchet said. "All that, coupled with the exposure along the highway, is what's made the marketing of the development so successful."
BLS Development Inc is developing one of the three residential pods. The second is being developed by Sivica Communities Inc, an Atlanta company that is the master developer of the 1,340-acre Rice Hope.
Irene Hall, vice president of marketing for Sivica Communities, said the recent rains have hampered progress a bit, but Sivica hopes to start building the first houses sometime in October if the weather cooperates. The first houses should be available for move-in by the end of January.
The elements of the retail component "haven't been nailed down yet," Hall said, but may include everything from cafes to movie theaters to grocery store to dry cleaners. The idea behind the master plan is to create a completely self-sustaining community in which residents can shop, go out to dinner and have their basic business needs met without leaving Rice Hope.
The master plan for Rice Hope borrows heavily from the tenets of "New Urbanism," a land-use strategy that places a priority on pedestrian streetscapes, close-in buildings, streetside parking and a mix of housing types. The idea is to encourage a neighborhood environment. Interior streets, for example, link to each other rather than emptying into a main thoroughfare that provides access to other streets. Other features include close-in front porches, walkways, squares and parks, and narrow streets.
Sivica's Hall said use of the New Urbanism in Rice Hope's design creates a "truly live/work/play environment," with the retail in the town center connected to the residential by sidewalks.
"You can literally hop on a bike at home and be able to get to the grocery store, to home, wherever," Hall said.
Nearby will be an amenities center of 20-plus acres that will include a pool covering two acres and waterfalls. The development will also have more than 300 acres of protected woods and wetlands, a 27-acre lake and a series of lagoons.
"We intend to create an almost Disneyesque amenities center," Sivica President Dave Odom said in a previous interview.
Parks will be situated in each of the six neighborhoods of Rice Hope - Mulberry Park, Musgrove, Whitney Park, Lakeside, Black Creek North and Black Creek South. Tree-lined sidewalks and walking trails will connect the neighborhoods.
The entire community will be wireless, Hall said. Home prices will include an entire communications and electronics package of telephone service, electricity, and high-speed Internet.
"It makes it more convenient for the homeowner," Hall said. "And they're not having to spend any more money to do it that way."
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Rice Hope development would add up to 4,500 homes in the next 10-15 years, bulking up the city's shrinking population.
By Charles CochranSavannah Morning Newsccochran@savannahnow.com912-652-0396
A lot has to go right, including a Port Wentworth City Council zoning vote in a meeting that starts at 7:30 p.m. Thursday. But if things fall into place, Sivica Communities could build the first houses in Rice Hope as early as this spring. Some highlights:
Port Wentworth may get its new downtown after all – a place called Rice Hope. An Atlanta developer wants to build as many as 4,500 houses and apartments over the next 10-15 years on a 1,300-acre tract of piney woods nestled in the northeastern quadrant of Ga. 21 and Interstate 95 bordering Effingham County.
The project would also leave room for a brand-new commercial district along Ga. 21.
More than that, it would mean a new lease on life for a city with just 1,300 homes and businesses and a head-count of 3,276 in the 2000 Census. Those population numbers represent an 18.34 percent decline over the previous decade due largely to ports expansion that displaced neighborhoods.
The Port Wentworth City Council approved the concept Thursday.
It faces one more zoning vote this Thursday.
Although the city's population has been shrinking, it sits in the heart of Chatham County's fast-growing westside, firmly astride the main transportation corridor into neighboring Effingham County.
Rice Hope could be built out in 10-15 years if the three-county Savannah Metropolitan Statistical Area simply grows as fast as it did over the past decade, said developer Dave Odom, president of the Roswell-based Sivica Communities.
But Odom believes the rate will actually accelerate.
"The Savannah MSA (comprised of Chatham, Effingham and Bryan counties) has so much to offer. You have a world-class port that is growing like crazy. You've got a transportation network that's hard to beat (with interlinking rail, roads and air service)," Odom said.
On top of that, there's the Savannah area's coastal environment.
"Growth has been documented as gravitating toward the coast all along the Eastern Seaboard," Odom said.
Rice Hope will be crafted in accordance with Port Wentworth's sometimes-controversial Master Plan Overlay District, a blueprint based on the principles of New Urbanism. New Urbanism has drawn attention nationally for its "neo-traditional" approach — one that emphasizes old-style neighborhoods in which homes sit near streets and sidewalks and aren't clustered according to value.
Former Mayor John Hinely resists the opportunity to say "I told you so" as far as the master plan is concerned.
Hinely, who was voted out of office in 2001 after pushing the plan through council — and with it, the city's first property tax in 20 years – says Rice Hope is exactly the sort of project he and others had in mind.
"All along, my goal was for Port Wentworth to grow and not die on the vine. If this truly comes to pass, it will be something we have looked forward to for a number of years," said Hinely, who sold his house and moved his family to Pooler last year when Port Wentworth's master plan district seemed dead in the water.
"I'm excited for Port Wentworth if this happens," Hinely said. "The master plan helps those who locate within that area to know what's going to be happening next door to them. It gives them security and peace of mind — and it would be great if they stick to it."
When Odom looks out at the one-time rice plantations of northern Port Wentworth, he sees the small town's future.
He sees a pedestrian-friendly cluster of neighborhoods – what he calls "smart growth" – with houses in very different price ranges sharing the same block.
Well-organized grids of neighborhood blocks – the sort that would make James Oglethorpe proud – are in.
It'll be an open community with no gates and with roads that tie into existing thoroughfares in the area.
It'll be rich with sidewalks served by lanes with parking and garage access in the rear.
Homes won't be clustered by price. Rice Hope will be the sort of place where one might find homes in the low $100,000s next-door to more upper-scale dwellings in the $400,000 range.
There'll be space for retail shopping centers and office buildings, mainly along Ga. 21. Land has also been set aside for "civic buildings" that could include a new post office, a school, or – although nobody's saying it publicly – maybe even a new city hall.
"At the end of the day, we feel we've come up with a master plan that will provide a very unique community in this area," Odom said.
Many had consigned Port Wentworth's 5,000-acre master plan district to oblivion last year after city officials torpedoed a master wetlands permit for the district's 2,100-acre first phase, which is across Ga. 21 from Rice Hope.
That initial phase ran into snags, many agree, because the city tried to coordinate the development of the land by more than 90 property owners – a process that might best be compared to herding cats.
The Rice Hope tract, by comparison, is owned by a single family – the Christian clan, based largely in Dublin.
Mayor Tim Holbrook, a steadfast critic of the master plan's first phase, said Rice Hope is a project he can support.
"I am happy to see something like this go forward. It will truly put us in a competitive position in offering the amenities that master plan communities can offer," Holbrook said.
However, he still thinks the first phase was a bad idea.
"It was flawed from the very start because you had 2,100 acres with 97 different owners," Holbrook said. "It will never take place the way the city designed it."
Some residents worry the Rice Hope project will adversely affect drainage in the low-lying area along the Savannah River.
"The people who live in this part of the city don't want to stand in the way of this development because they see it as benefiting the entire city," attorney James B. Blackburn Jr. said. "But they also don't want to be run over and treated like stepchildren."
Blackburn said the city hasn't always kept the drainage promises it made in the past.
Odom said the site has already gone through a federal wetlands delineation study, and that drainage will be carefully engineered in every phase.
"We will ensure that water leaves our site at the same rate post-development as it does pre-development," he said.
