Bringing Focus and Agreement Among the Large Landowners
In April of 2001, Phill Tabb along with Jennifer Vecchi, a land planer from Colorado, plus a student from Texas A&M University to draw, came to Serenbe to lead a charrette to engage the large landowner group with the goal of organizing options and translate these varied ideas into a visual image to depict the united vision of what might be possible on 40,000 acres in the southern tip of Fulton County. Over 30 attendees spent two days in this planning process. Participants included landowners, metro developers, planning staff from Fulton County Environment and Community Development, The Nature Conservancy, the Georgia Conservancy, Georgia Tech, the National Park Service, Urban Land Institute (ULI), Oglethorpe Power, and Georgia Power. The result of this process was a consensus of ideas for the development of a master plan. Current Serenbe home owner, Jim Durrett represented ULI in those days and participated in some of the early charrettes.
The consensus from the meeting was that high value could be obtained by clustering future housing in high density clusters called villages on the larger land assemblies and lower density clusters called hamlets could be approved in any land assemblage of 250 acres or more. We determined this approach would allow up to 70% of the land to be conserved for any agriculture activity allowed in the current rural zoning districts. Because of the dwelling unit clustering, there would be no reductions in the number of house built in the future. This could be a true balanced growth approach.
As a planner in the Front Range of Colorado, Jennifer had experience with Transfers of Development Rights (TDRs). This is a tool I was very familiar with as my cousin, Charlie Nygren, was one of the first to sell development rights from his farm to Boulder County. Some Serenbe folks may know Charlie and his wife Melanie, from the time they had a second home in Swann Ridge. Phill and Jennifer suggested TDRs as a method for the Chattahoochee Hill Country to accomplish the plan that had been conceived during the charrette. Through this tool, the right to develop housing would remain at one house (a development unit) per acre but development could be clustered in dense pockets by moving the approved density of one unit an acre to any other acre in the defined area. The real appeal was the opportunity for small landowners to yield value from their land without selling the land for assemblages of large sprawl development.
Phill and his team helped the group conceive of a land use plan that created three prime village sites designated for higher density, plus the idea of a lower density hamlet that could be created on any 250 + acre parcel leaving a great deal of open space for agriculture, forestry or recreation. Phill used his ideas for Serenbe to show how such a hamlet might be incorporated into the landscape.
Below is the map Phill created to represent the consensus vision.
