Bill Westel, ECO

The single most important driving force in the Asheville, North Carolina market today is this: How close to downtown Asheville do you want to live? The answer to this question usually influences many other decisions that buyers will make about purchasing a home or land since proximity to downtown goes hand in hand with price points. The other important issue now affecting buyers is gas prices, with many clients considering living right in the downtown area in any number of the new green condos being built.

So what does draw soo many people to the downtown Asheville area? I know there are plenty of answers to that question so I will just list some of my reasons why I thoroughly enjoy a visit to downtown. First is the walkability of the area. There are at great streets that you can leisurely stroll shopping at unique retail shops, cultural exhibits and galleries, a variety of fantastic restaurants and of course, the Grove Arcade. My favorite streets are Haywood Ave., Battery Park, Lexington Avenue, Broadway, and Wall Street. During the spring, summer and fall you can listen to a variety of musicians playing on the sidewalks. They even play classical music from time to time (see photo). The library and Civic Centerare also on Haywood Ave right next to each just down the street from Malaprops Bookstore. The Civic Center has a variety of different performers and musicians scheduled throughout the year with this month featuring Kenny Rogers, the Asheville Symphonyand Loreena McKennitt All of downtown also has free Wi-Fi. There are also a variety of outside eating areas in different restaurants and coffee shops so that you can sit among the trees, sip some latte, surf the web and watch the world go by.

The city is also looking to cash in on a state offer and turn its public transit system into one of the greenest in the state. City leaders hope next year to use state transportation money to start converting Asheville's fleet of diesel city buses into diesel-hybrid vehicles. This order would give Asheville one of the biggest hybrid city bus fleets in the state.

There are also several art galleries in the downtown area with the most unusual being the Woolworth Walk , where 150 local artists have their creations featured in an old remodeled 1938 Woolworth store. You can easily spend a hour or two walking through here taking in a variety of different artists ranging from sculptures and paintings to fashion design and beautiful photography of the Western North Carolina mountains.

I guess my favorite store is Malaprops Independent Bookstore. This was the first place I visited when I came to Asheville. It has a potpourri of various authors visiting on a monthly basis for readings while also offering a great range of books on many diverse subject matters. It also has a great cozy coffee shop that you can enjoy without even going to the bookstore.

The City Council of Asheville is also considering a new master plan that would divide the downtown area into five distinct districts. The plan is still being developed but this would give everyone a better sense of how development in the downtown area will occur in the future.

My last two blogs were about a seller of 52 acreshere in the Asheville real estate trying to sustainably develop his property without having to sell to a buyer who wants to do a traditional development of singe family homes with 4 homes on an acre lot. Bill, the owner has created several different options of how the land might be used as a green development, but as I indicated my boss Janeanne and I did present him with one other option and that was to create an Eco-Village or Conservation Subdivision on his property. Bill has studied these type of development concepts over the years but is somewhat hesitant to create an Ecovillage plan because there are so many potential variations of this design that someone would like. His initial strategy is to let potential investors decide what they would like - the blank slate approach. I told him that investors would like to see what is being proposed, the vision of a community and then decide if that is place for them.

We would include the core concepts of an Ecovillage (from the Wikipedia definition) some of which are

• "Green" infrastructural capital;
• autonomous building or clustered housing, to minimize ecological footprint;
• renewable energy;
• permaculture;
• cohousing or other forms of supportive community.

The goal of most ecovillages is to be a sustainable habitat providing for most of its needs on site. Its organization also usually depends upon some instructional capital or moral codes - a minimal civics sometimes characterized as eco-anarchism:

• local purchasing so as to support the local economy;
• local food production and distribution;
• moral purchasing to avoid objectionable consumption;
• consensus decision-making for governance;

a choice to respect diversity

Some examples of current eco developments around the country include: Sawyer Hill, Berlin Ma , Ecovillage at Ithaca, NY, the Columbia EcoVillage, Portland ,Oregon. Feel free to post any other others that are your favorites.

Given all the above, Bill already is assuming that there would be a large area for organic gardens and an area for small farm animals ( i.e. chickens, goats, alpacas ,etc). as well as the ability for residents to have horses.

So there are a wide variety of EcoVillage designs and concepts floating around out there, what would your top 3 design features be for such a development were one to be built in your area?

I offered my top 3 choices to Bill that I would like to see in his Asheville Eco Village:

1. Having some or all of the green homes equipped with green roofs. A fair amount of gardening can take place on these and they also help offset the impervious footprint of roads and home foundations. Green roofs also cut heating and cooling costs.
2. Doing a major solar energy concept plan that could provide a sizable amount of energy for the entire community. There are many new and effective solar technologies on the market from solar roof shingles to the solar film technology. Being able to say that the community is getting a lot of energy off grid will also be a great selling feature. You can look at individual unit features and upgrades to solar collector panels for each knoll. I know this may add to costs, but it is something I think needs to be looked at now in this stage of your thinking.
3. Installing or having available as an upgrade a grey water system to recycle water used in the house for irrigation purposes. (there are other variations as well). I have a client who is installing the first such system in his Asheville home and the inspectors have approved it, although admitting they know little about it. The plumber putting it in is training the permitting inspectors on it. With water issues being what they are with the drought, this will be seen as a really important green feature.

So what three great features would you put in such a development? I will pass everything on to Bill for his consideration. In the meantime here are the particulars and a update on Bills 52 acres:

The first part of this blog began with my finding some very beautiful property in the Asheville, North Carolina real estate market for clients who are looking to build a green, dog friendly community. The owner, Bill, very much wants a conservation subdivision on it, but has serious cash flow problems and is facing having to sell to traditional developers who will build homes on quarter acre lots. To make matters worse, Bill and his wife, their children and families all live on property adjoining the land that is for sale, so their view-shed and neighborhood will be directly affected by any development that occurs on the land.

So Bill is effecting stalling the potential traditional developer while he and I start to think of other potential ways the land could be used. One scenario has his 52 acres up listed at 3 million dollars. Dividing the land into 3 estate size lots utilizing the three gentle knolls on the property while keeping about 17 acres in green space is another scenario Bill starts to consider. A third possibility arises with dividing the property into 8 lots, with 18 acres of green space and making it an exclusive green equestrian community. Here is the link to Horse Haven. What makes this attractive as a horse community is an adjacent 75 acres of pasture land with a 12 stall horse barn that will be part of the developments facilities. Miles of riding trails on and off the property help as well.

So Bill is out there trying his best to get at least one buyer to come and fall in love with the land, and buy any one of a number of different lots ranging from 2 to 29 acres to help him stave off selling all 52 acres and having the land traditionally developed ( I am being kind in my description here). Janeanne, owner of EcoSteward Realty (whose computer motherboard has crashed, yikes!) had a potential buyer out this weekend with two more slated to come over the next few weeks. It is now a race against time.

But while Bill waits for a buyer to appear, Janeanne and I put yet another idea in his mind about how the land may be best developed ....

It all started out innocently enough. I had some clients that were looking to build a green conservation development that would also be very dog friendly. These buyers were interested in obtaining a piece of property of at least 20+ acres fairly close to downtown Asheville owned by a seller willing to do some owner financing.

I found a very nice 29+ acres in the town of Weaverville located only 15 minutes from downtown that bordered an existing 52 acre, 50 lot green subdivision, meaning all homes there would be built to Healthy Built Home standards( not crazy about the density of this subdivision, but more on that later). Asking is price 1.9 million. The land is rolling with two distinct knolls that have great views to the east, south, and west. In addition, the seller also owned the subdivision next door and also indicated that he was open to doing some financing. So far so good.

I went out to preview the property and met the owner, Bill, who is also a Realtor/builder/developer. Bill has already built two luxury green model homes on the property, with one having sold for about 900K . The other is listed for 1.5 million with way too many green features to list. It has high end custom craftsmanship evident in every room and is a wonderful house to walk through. Things are looking even better now since my clients will be next to a green subdivision with a seller living next door who is all about sustainable development.

But then I start to get a lot more information. Bill is apparently experiencing some severe cash flow problems due to the lots in the existing subdivision not selling. And then comes the cruncher, he has a firm offer from an out of town investor for 52 acres ( Bill has another adjoining 23 acre parcel up for sale as well, but not listed) who wants to put a minimum of 4 lots per acre on this property. The kicker, though, is that the Bill also owns 65 adjacent acres(up the side of a mountain) to the entire 52 acres where his home is located, along with the homes of his 3 children and their families. He will be looking out over this densely developed subdivision should he decide to sell to out of town investor. Bill and the other agent representing the investor have already agreed on a price and are negotiating the terms of the offer. Bill tells me that he listed the 29 acres in the hopes that some sustainable development buyers might magically appear and bail him out of the ecological dilemma he is facing. He is ideally looking for someone to build a mountain conservation community or similar eco-development. Bill believes that the Asheville real estate market is prime for this type of green development. I tell him I understand his problem and as I am leaving ask him if he ever considered selling a 5-10 acre piece of the property. I happen to have several clients looking for something like this willing to pay anywhere from 400-500K for the right parcel. Bill indicates he had not thought of that, but will percolate on the concept. So we part ways.

I later convey all of Bill's problems to my buyers who understand the issues but as fortune would have it are in the process of moving to Asheville to a home they have just purchased with my assistance. They meet with Bill who indicates that he needs 500K down and he will carry the rest of the balance at 12% interest for 12-18 months. He stipulates that the deal does need to be done ASAP. Normally these are terms that my buyers would find reasonable, but due to their moving find themselves not in a position to do anything until late March at the earliest. Bill indicates that he does not know if he can wait that long. He likes my clients a lot though, and their plans for the land. So Bill starts to implement plans to try and stall the other buyer, who seems very eager to buy the property.

To Be Continued ...

I considered a number of topics to write about for this contest but finally decided to take a look at the history of the Green/ Environmental Movement and found some interesting historical facts and figures. So here we go on a journey down the Green Memory Lane ....

I found the history of the Green/Environmental really dates back around 270 years ago when 363 members of the Bishnois, caste in India gave their lives in order to prevent trees being cut to provide timber for a kings fort. The story basically goes that when the kings men came to cut the timber, one member of the group rushed out and hugged the tree and said cut me first if you are going to cut this tree. The kings men did just that. When the community saw what happened 362 other individuals stepped up and hugged the tree and were slain. Only when the king himself came and saw the tragedy did he order his men to stop. Whew!! These are the first recorded "tree huggers" in history, and they gave rise to the modern tree hugger. Read on.

In this country the late 19^th century had John Muir and Henry David Thoreau writing about mans relationship with nature that spurred the creation of the first environmental groups including the Sierra Club. Aldo Leopold's book "Sand County Almanac" published in 1949 also appears to have been a huge influence in the conservation field. In 1962, Rachel Carson's book " Silent Spring" detailed the dangers of pesticides(especially DDT). It was here that the pairing of land conservation issues with problems of environmental pollution began and the foundation of today's environmental movement was established.

n April, 1973 a group of villagers again in India began the peaceful disobedience of stopping deforestation in the Himalayan Mountains by hugging trees before they could be cut down. This later spread throughout many of the provinces and began known as the Chipko Movement Almost all of these protests were local in origin and slowly spread as people saw its success in changing policy in India. This is where our modern phrase of "tree hugger" originates with a big nod to the 363 Bishnois you set the example 200 years earlier.

It was also in 1973 that the Endangered Species Act was passed and from there many of the environmental groups we know today sprung up.

Looking at where the Green Movement in this country has come from in the last 50 years is pretty impressive, although there are miles to go before we sleep. But I see an evolution happening in regards to more and more people, businesses, and corporations understanding that the old paradigms are not working any more. Here in Asheville new paradigms are being created every day in regards to Green Awareness. There is the obvious motivation for folks to become more Green due to the high cost of energy. But there is also a greater awareness that Green, Healthy Built homes and offices have a greater payoff in regards to overall health and sense of well being. For businesses this translates into higher profits due to increased employee productivity and reduced employee turnover. For homeowners it means raising children in healthier environments. I believe research will eventually show that these children have fewer health problems and less allergies than those living in what we call a traditional home today.

The Awareness of Green is spreading and growing. When a company like Wal-Mart jumps on board with Green Initiativesyou know things are moving in a totally different direction. Although we have to wait and see if they live up to their goals, other businesses are also jumping on board As janeanne's earlier blog Green Goes Mainstream showed this trend is real . Citigroup has launched a real-estate portfolio review,so that it can investigate what levels of renovation or operational changes are needed to earn LEED ratings (or equivalents) for everything from Citigroup's office buildings to its data centers. The company has also LEED-silver rating as a target for all its new office and operations facilities around the world They have crunched the numbers and for them being Green means earning more Green $$$!

So when the big multinational corporations have seen the Green Light, get ready for a major shift to occur in all segments of our economy because the Green Locomotive is on the tracks and will be heading your way sooon! Many thanks to the people who started us on this path so many years ago, and especially to those brave souls in India who gave me a whole new appreciation for the phrase tree hugger!