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NEWS
> NEWS COLUMNISTS
DMB's Verrado project sheds likes, dislikes for this observer
If you have been following DMB's proposed development "El Rancho San Benito," you know that the project submitted a draft specific plan and proposed General Plan amendment to the county late last year.
All along, DMB has asked for, and received, comments and ideas from community members. The resulting vision plan is available for viewing on their Web site.
One of the steps in the process has been to invite groups of locals to their development in Arizona called Verrado.
The Verrado project is a good one to visit since, besides being close, it is near the historic town of Buckeye, which is about the same size and in about the same condition as Hollister.
I joined the group on the last visit to Verrado and the trip gave me a lot to think about.
Just in case, and without impugning the hospitality or generosity of DMB and its staff, I would like to clarify that pretzels, sandwiches and pizza do not constitute the kind of wining and dining that are likely to turn my head. We rode in buses, not limos, and walked most of the afternoon.
So what was it like?
Verrado has been built on the site of the former proving ground for Caterpillar heavy equipment, so the land was already torn up many times over by the time DMB started to build. Even so, it is still squarely in the middle of the desert, with saguaro cactus punctuating the landscape on the margins of the town.
Within the town, the lawns are green and the trees are leafy, requiring irrigation that I had to ask about. The answer was that the town center had been planned with lawns and trees, but as one moved out from the center, landscaping would be more and more native-based, so that the large, custom homes on the edges would have almost all native landscaping. I wasn't sure that was the best possible answer, but at least they had thought about it.
The main street-style downtown that has only a few core businesses so far - grocery, bank, coffee shop, pizzeria - was inviting. It would have been fun to actually drink an iced coffee at the sidewalk tables. The street is laid out with the public golf clubhouse at one end and a community center at the other. There is rental housing above the businesses and parking in the back. The sight lines have been well planned to provide focal points at each end, and the architecture styles are mixed but harmonious.
We toured some of the mid-range model houses, which had some nice features, but what I really liked was the mix of housing, from small townhouses to larger ones, around 3,000 square feet.
And there are alleys! Alleys take the garages off the street and let the house itself be what people see. I also liked the way you can walk from one section of town to another, often crossing at least one park or mini-park on the way.
The middle school and high school we visited were planned well. In fact, the high school had some amazing features like a 3-story atrium that helped with natural cooling and lighting, an open auditorium, a cafeteria that was more like the food court in a mall, and open classrooms. Even better than all these physical features were the enthusiasm and pride of both principals. And even better than that was hearing about how DMB, the schools and the community had cooperated on ways to get lighted playing fields and other features that the schools might not have managed on their own.
What didn't I like? Despite the variety of architecture, new buildings that try not to look new always seem a bit "theme-parkish" to me. On the other hand, hardly anybody really wants to live in a purely modern house, and I don't think genuine log cabins are the answer either.
I didn't really like the use of all the water-needing lawns and trees in the core areas, although it made for cool, pretty spaces.
What else didn't I like? It was all so new, so clean, so fresh. It could have been a movie set filled with actors. If real life has caught up with Verrado, we did not see it.
I also wondered about the impact Verrado has had on Buckeye, the 19th-century town of which it is a part.
To learn about that, and what my conclusions are about El Rancho San Benito, read my column next week.
Elizabeth Gage
Elizabeth Gage writes a weekly column every Thursday in the Hollister Free Lance
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