Would-be Teton Meadows Ranch aims to be greenBen Cannon
Published: September 19, 2007
Wednesday,
September 19, 2007
By Ben Cannon
Jackson Hole, Wyo.-Looking north
across the South Park
property on which he aims to build a major residential development,
James
Reinert took in the landscape that has, in part, lured him back to the
valley
for regular visits since he was a teenager.
The property, a large open pasture that for years has served
agricultural uses,
boasts a clean shot of the Grand Teton,
which from this
perspective soars above the buttes that obstruct the major peaks from
much of
the Town of Jackson.
“The beauty is that [the view] is almost 360
degrees,” said Reinert, a Chicago
native, who wore a contemporary Western-style shirt.
“It’s great down here.”
A year ago, Reinert, 42, moved to Jackson Hole
from
metropolitan Chicago
with his wife
and young children. He is a figure still largely unknown in the valley,
but
that is likely to change in the coming months. Reinert, who formed a
group
called Sequoia Development, last month began the county application
process to
build 500 homes on 288 acres of the Seherr-Thoss property adjacent to
Melody
Ranches and Rafter J Ranches off of South
Park Loop Road.
The project proposes to build 25 percent affordable housing –
10 percent more
than what is required by current county mandate. The prospect of 125
deed-controlled affordable homes would increase by nearly a third the
affordable ownership units that now total just under 400 in Teton
County.
But it is the other 375 units, what Reinert and his agents call
“Homestead
Ownership,” that aim to address what many in the valley
recognize as a threat
to the community: a hemorrhaging of the middle class and work force
population.
Through Homestead Ownership, Reinert intends to create a sovereign
housing
niche, insulated from the free market by restrictions that would allow
– among
other criteria – only full-time Teton
County
residents who work at least
1,500 hours a year to buy a lot or unit as their primary home. By
deed-restricting in perpetuity who can buy in, the theory goes, the
demand set
by Jackson Hole workers will
determine the value of a
homestead ownership lot.
Beyond how the public, planning staff and county electives weigh the
projected
benefits of Homestead Ownership against whatever socio-political issues
are
sure to arise, another hallmark of the application is likely to sway
some
additional support for Teton Meadows Ranch: A commitment to an
eco-friendly
community.
Reinert and his team joined with Yellowstone Business Partnership (YBP)
to
become a pilot member of the group’s Framework for
Sustainable Development. The
fledgling regional program was adapted from the Leadership in Energy
and
Environmental Design (LEED) Green Building Rating System, a national
recognition for thoughtful development and building practices.
Harry Statter, an ecologist who founded Jackson-based Firewise
Landscapes,
consulted on the Teton Meadows Ranch site plan to help ensure green
building
principles throughout every aspect of the project.
“This is really the first project of its kind in the
region,” Statter said
Monday. “It’s one that we expect the Yellowstone
Business Partnership will use
as a model to hang its hat on. The gist of it is
we’re designing it from
the ground up with all of the components of an attractive and
sustainable,
eco-friendly community.”
It is difficult to detail the myriad green components of the plan,
which
proposes 50 percent open space, improvements to the surrounding habitat
and
green building regulations like energy efficient homes.
“We think it’s a really important part of the
project,” Reinert said of the
green approach.
The Framework for Sustainable Development pilot certification, for
which the
TMR website said the project is “committed to
qualifying” for, was adapted from
the more urban LEED model to mirror the values and community-landscape
interface within the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem, YPB director Jan
Brown explained.
“We wanted to regionalize a LEED product,” Brown
said. “Our framework was
developed to be in concert with land use, community considerations and
management of resources.”
By that framework, a development project must score a certain rating or
higher
for: land use and conservation, biodiversity, cultural and historic
values,
built environment, public service and infrastructure, transportation
and
connectivity, community vitality, recreation resources, and regional
innovation
and investment.
The Teton Meadows Ranch plan, with its urban park-style nodes, green
space,
multi-modal paths, bus stops, trip-saving mail kiosk, and wide habitat
buffer
to keep development away from surrounding houses – to list
but some of the
planning components – might look like a community
planner’s dream. That is a
credit largely to the site plan design of Jim Verdone and his team at
Verdone
Landscape Architects (VLA).
“When I first saw [the site plan], I nearly wept
openly,” said one county
employee who asked not to be named.
Still, there is a long road ahead of the Teton Meadows Ranch
application, now
under staff review.
And it is no first rodeo for Reinert, who in Chicago
rose to senior vice president with U.S. Equities, a commercial real
estate
managing firm. There he focused on development in the more vertical
sense of
big city high-rises, working for clients Giorgio Armani and Citadel
Investment,
Reinert said the unique challenges at each individual project help
provide a
broad template for problem solving.
“This site doesn’t have anything that’s a
particular challenge,” Reinert said
in the VLA conference room. “It’s pretty straight
forward project to design a
high-quality neighborhood.”
Later, looking at the vista from the Seherr-Thoss property which he
lives just
south of, Reinert offered how a newcomer might figure in to a housing
crisis
with much history.
“Hopefully it’s the right place at the right time
to do something meaningful
here,” he said. “I hope so.”
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