Most residential land planners designing a project organize the open space around the buildings, says architect and land planner Laurence Booth.
But in the Conway Farms residential development and golf course in Lake Forest, probably the biggest project ever done in that exclusive community, the homes are organized around the open space.
”We used the reverse planning approach,” said Booth, principal of Booth/Hansen & Associates, which worked on the design for the 380-acre development.
”As opposed to focusing on the solids – the buildings – we focused on the voids, and on arranging the voids in a way that suited the character of the open land,” Booth said.
Giving first priority to the ”voids” – the open corridors between homes and groups of homes – may not be the usual development practice. But the Conway Farms project, located along Interstate Highway 94 just south of Illinois Highway 60, is an unusual development in a number of ways.
Its centerpiece is a 190-acre, 18-hole course designed by Tom Fazio, whose courses have won the top ranking from Golf Digest for new private course design in three of the last four years and who reportedly intends to nominate Conway Farms Golf Club for an award next year.
But unlike many golf course developments, which group homes along fairways to maximize the marketing impact of the course and its open spaces, the Conway Farms plan is to keep the homes, anticipated eventually to number somewhere in the 300s, at a distance from the course.
The club itself has no internal roads except for one leading to the clubhouse, the houses are on lots outside the perimeter of the course, and lots at the course`s edge are to have building areas set away from that boundary.
”Generally when a golf course is developed, the lots on the course are seen as more valuable, so you get as many here as possible,” said Booth.
”The result is people are playing golf in somebody`s back yard. Sometimes you end up with houses impinging on the natural open space, which you don`t see in the better courses.
”In this case,” he added, ”the partners cared very much about the golf course. They were really dedicated to building an absolutely first-rate course.”
The partners who own the land and are developing it include Augustin S. Hart Jr., retired vice chairman of Quaker Oats; Hart`s brother-in-law Robert D. Stuart Jr., former chairman of Quaker Oats and former U.S. ambassador to Norway; and Gordon H. Smith, a Chicago attorney.
The course is separated institutionally as well as physically from the residential development, with no link between homeowners and golf club. Where some golf course developments require residents to become club members, dwellers at Conway Farms may even be excluded.
”Residents can apply for membership, but they need an invitation,” said Dennis Meyer, Conway Farms executive vice president, who noted that the club will have 250 members, with an initiation fee set at $28,000. ”Being a resident neither limits nor guarantees membership.”
Meyer said the greatest attraction of the course would be the open space it provided rather than possibility of membership, citing National Golf Foundation figures indicating only 25 to 35 percent of property owners in golf course communities actually become members of the golf club.
The first residential phase, for which site preparation is under way, will consist of 40 single-family homes clustered in two sections, called
”Hamlets” to suggest the notion of old European villages, said Booth.
The lots are small for Lake Forest, ranging from a quarter-acre to an acre but mostly in the one-third to one-half acre range, with lot prices averaging about $210,000. Meyer said he expects homes, mostly from about 2,800 to 3,500 square feet, will start in the $575,000 to $600,000 range, including lots. Empty nesters are the major market target.
The placement of the homes on the lots was of particular concern to Booth in trying to develop sight lines that would maximize the sense of open space for each resident while keeping the lots small.
In some cases, this mean siting some homes with as little as 15 feet between them, a rather contrarian approach in a development in which an open environment is emphasized, Booth acknowledged.
But these groupings are key to preserving openness, Booth said. ”The normal approach is to divide the land up first into whatever acreage you want, then sell lots, and then everyone in his own self-interest places his house in the center.
”But you look at so many such developments . . . and see the destruction of the open space character. Evenly spaced buildings across the landscape destroy the landscape.”
Clustering isn`t the only strategy for preserving a country atmosphere. The houses have a height limitation for 27 feet, about 1/2 stories, to avoid the outsize look common to many more expensive homes built in the last decade in Lake Forest and elsewhere.
Lake Forest, in fact, passed about two years ago a ”bulk” ordinance limiting the size of homes in relation to their lot sizes after homes in one newly developing area of town began to take on a gaudy, elephantine look some have referred to as ”dueling turrets.”
Turreted Normandy ”chateaus” are ruled out, and the architectural styles in the Hamlets are limited to native American modes such as Cape Cod or Colonial.
Exterior walls must be stone or masonry, roofing must be of slate or cedar, and even the window proportions are governed by the architectural guidelines, which are enforced by a review board.
Palladian windows, the half-circles that have become the home builder`s best friend over the past few years, are out altogether. ”They`re so much of a cliche. The idea is to go back to simple American houses,” Booth said.
”We looked to small American towns, particularly in the East,” he added. ”There is great poetry in small, simple houses fitting into the landscape without making a fuss. Too many houses together that are overly ambitious just looks awful.”
Comway vice president Meyer indicated the development`s concept represented a conscious reaction from 1980s excesses. ”The `80s had more glitzy, showy houses, ” he said. ”We`re more conservative.”
Hart, one of the partners, was more emphatic. ”We want no monster houses,” he said.
In future phases, these guidelines may be altered, and taller homes in other ”traditional” styles may be allowed. But the idea of fitting the home into the land will be maintained.
Landscaping plans for the individual homes must also be passed by the review board. ”Plantings are to be done close to the buildings, so they will be nestling in the landscape as opposed to sitting out,” Booth said.
Fences are banned from side and back lot lines to preserve the sense of openness, but are allowed along patios and near the house, ”to define a place for the houses,” Booth said.
He noted that the approach of fitting the houses into the landscape resembled that of Wood Creek Courts, a highly praised Lincolnshire project featuring houses clustered in an area of woods and ponds done in the 1970s by Evanston-based developer Bruce Blietz.
”The example it set shows you can put houses close together if you`re careful about where private outdoor spaces are,” Booth said. ”The partners went and looked at that, and saw you could build quality homes fairly close together.”
The specific concepts developed by Booth/Hansen and others derived from a general feeling by the partners, all Lake Forest residents, that they wanted to do something special with the land.
”I had the sense they they had owned the land a long time and had great feeling for it and wished to do something that would not compromise or damage the quality of the open land,” Booth said.
The partnership has in fact owned the land since the mid-1950s, and the partners always wanted to put in a golf course, according to Hart. They commissioned designer Robert Trent Jones to do seven course layouts on their property, which then totaled almost 1,000 acres.
The construction of I-94 through part of their land in 1958, however, altered their original conception, Hart said. ”We weren`t sure what to do, and we sat on it for some time, but we came back to the original concept.”
Horesemen themselves, they had also envisioned ample equestrian estates on the land, Hart said. ”In the old days we used to ride from there out into what is now Mettawa and ride through the country, but the tollway put a block on that, and then things began to grow up around it.”
The changing character of the area forced them to rethink the residential as well as the golf course aspect of the development. Eventually they turned a 233-acre section north of Ill. Hwy. 60 into an office park and designated the parcel south of 60 for a golf course and houses.
”We had to compress what we were doing in a smaller area than we anticipated,” Hart noted.
But he said the partners are enthusiastic about the ”hamlet” plan that has evolved. ”We`ve come up with something that looks very good, and we have a spectacularly good golf course,” he said.
”We`ll be able, with the help of our friendly bankers, to take the time necessary to do it slowly and right. We`re under no pressure to move in a hurry and that`s the way we intend to do it.”
The developers have taken out a $39 million mortgage to finance the project, about a quarter of which is going for the golf course.
The relaxed timetable – some five or six years for the building of all 300-some houses – may in fact be key to the project`s success, given that the market has not been kind to higher-priced housing in the past year.
”A lot of golf course communities are finding that buyers in that price bracket have a choice, and are not in a hurry,” said John Green, Chicago regional director for Residential Planning Corp., a residential real estate market research and consulting firm.
Such buyers, some of whom may be transferees, also tend to be sensitive to the national economy, so are less eager in recessionary times like the present.
Developers of a Conway Farms-type project, he said, ”are in the market for a long time, through cycles. It has viability provided the developers go into it with realistic assumptions in terms of timing and absorbtion.”
Real estate marketing consultant Tracy Cross, who is working with Conway Farms, said the developers` intention is to have the project ”recognized as one of the premier destination points in he Chicago area because of its exclusivity.”
The city of Lake Forest is also interested in that outcome, since it waived its 1.5-acre residential zoning in agreeing to the cluster concept for the project.
”There are mixed feelings in the community,” said Charles Crook, Lake Forest director of planning and development. ”There`s definitely an element that wants to maintain a large-lot character, particularly out in that area.
”But there was also a strong feeling, supported on the plan commission, that it`s appropriate to try to provide a diversity of housing units. (The developers) are going after a little different market – the empty nester – so that is a very positive aspect.”
The city did insist on having either open space or 1.5-acre lots where Conway Farms abuts the pre-annexation Lake Forest boundary line.
Crook did express concern over whether pressure might arise to change the the concept of demure-looking homes if they didn`t sell well. ”If the market starts telling them it wants something differnt than we and Conway envision, I could see some problems.”
Booth conceded that putting up low-profile houses with high prices is somewhat of a gamble.
”I`m sure that there will be a lot of concern about the small buildings and the size of the lots, but when the landscaping goes in, people will understand,” he said.
”The partners took time to think and learn, and approached the project in a way that was responsible, and somewhat risky. They clearly could have broken the land up into two-acre lots and sold the lots, and probably nobody would have objected. But the landscape would have been destroyed.”
