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33 Juniper Ridge
Feature Listing
CONTEMPORARY MASTERPIECE IN SILVERTIP!
Stunning Panoramic Mountain Vistas fill this contemporary masterpiece in Silvertip. Designed by Jeremy Sturgess and featured in Western Living, Colorado publication Mountain Homes and in British film series on Modern Mountain Architecture. This strikingly unique home and innovative design blends together unusual geometries and thoughtful attention to site details. The vaulted living room, dining room and kitchen area offers breathtaking views in many directions. The master bedroom has a spectacular layout with open lofted space and unique master ensuite. This 4000+ Silvertip home living area has four bedrooms, three full bathrooms, recreational space, double car garage. Square footage includes total living area of 4017.
$1,850,000
| CONTACT LOUISE FOR MORE INFORMATION
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| Will New Houses Last A Century? Builders Say Yes! | |
By Clair Young
Some things are built to last.
The Stampede is celebrating its 100th year. So is my house.
It's a 1,500-square-foot, one-and-half storey, stick-frame home built in 1912 that once housed pilots at what was then a nearby airstrip.
A century ago, our house and the two flanking it kept each other company on the edge of town.
The three homes were built with the same floor plan, probably by a single builder.
Now, Regal Terrace is an inner-city neighbourhood.
The streets feel toothless at times, with gaps opening up as old homes are torn down and new ones put up.
Our home's centennial got me thinking about building homes. Are they being built today to last into our next century?
In a broader sense, are our neighbourhoods being built to continue to meet the needs of future Calgarians?
While we don't have a crystal ball to tell us how events and the economy will shape Calgary's growth over the next century, there are lessons we can take from looking back at Calgary's first building boom in the years just prior to the First World War - and at what we are doing these days.
Bob Clark was born and raised in some of Calgary's oldest communities - including Mount Royal, Elboya and Riverdale - and is now helping to shape the city's future neighbourhoods as senior vice-president of Calgary Land for developer Brookfield Residential Properties Inc.
He, too, once lived in a home built in 1912, but it didn't survive to its centennial.
"I'm not sure that really we did build things (then) to last as much as we do today," says Clark, pointing to foundations, insulation and windows.
"I know the houses we've lived in that were older, you open the walls up and you find that the walls were stuffed with newspaper for insulation. I can't believe that would be a lasting use.
"We had two-by-four construction throughout at the time and that certainly doesn't tend to be as rigid a construction as the two-by-six walls that we now build.
"Certainly, in terms of housing, we're building a far superior product than what was built in the past."
Shane Wenzel, president of Shane Homes, says his response to the comment: "You sure don't build (houses) like you used to" is "Thank God!"
Calgary's housing industry builds them "that much better now," he says. "We build them sturdier, in excess of the Alberta building code and the technology."
He counts improvements in today's thicker walls; engineered floors and trusses; more energy-efficient windows, furnaces, water heaters and appliances; and better ventilation.
"When you look at the world today and its growing population, you want to make the best use of your natural resources," says Wenzel.
Clark says the redevelopment opportunities are more prevalent in older communities due to their wider lots compared to the newer communities.
"With the higher densities that we've got and the additional specifications we build today compared with what we would have done 100 years ago, there's no reason houses (now) shouldn't last 100 years," he says.
While houses built today may still be standing in a century, the communities they are in are more deeply carved into the landscape.
"We learned a lot from McKenzie Towne, and Tuscany was a hybrid between what we had learned out of McKenzie Towne and what we had been doing previous to McKenzie Towne," says Clark of how community design has evolved with Brookfield Residential.
Tuscany is designed as a radial network around a central core. Further out in the community, the design becomes more of a curvilinear network - permeable for traffic, like a traditional grid system, but with a different esthetic.
"We learned from Tuscany that the linear parks throughout that community served to connect the community with a focal point - the ravine, 12 Mile Coulee - which runs through the better part of Tuscany."
"That was a very valuable thing. Calgarians really liked the ability to walk and connect within the community. You can't do those lineal projects today because the city won't let us."
The city doesn't want the cost of maintaining the extra parks, he says.
For future communities, Brookfield Residential is looking at spaces within an area where greater density or intensity can happen at a later date.
"We'll take areas where there is lower intensity commercial use, but we'll plan for that to be a higher density mixed use at a later date," says Clark.
A space could first be used as a parking lot, with a parking lot and mixed use structure put in later. A townhouse project could become work-live spaces to intensify usage.
The need for human connection fundamentally drives how communities develop when there isn't a master plan, a lesson present-day planners are heeding.
Bravin Goldade, president of WestCreek Developments, says lifestyle drives the design of Legacy, a new community on 400 hectares of land in southeast Calgary, where about 6,500 homes are planned.
A century ago, he says, people picked a home and lived in it for the rest of their lives, with a grandparent or two moving in to replace children who grew up and left.
"With Legacy, you'll be able to change your lifestyle as your life changes," says Goldade.
Legacy will have housing aimed at the various stages of life - condos and townhomes for the young and/or those who travel often; a little more room and a backyard for families in the starter, move-up and estate homes; some smaller, higher-end villas for the empty nesters; and senior retirement complexes.
There will not be a need to leave the friends and neighbours made while living in the community because life circumstances change.
"Today's communities - especially Legacy - are focused on bringing the people within the community together," Goldade says. An effort is being made to include such elements as front verandas to encourage those community connections and maintain a street-friendly feel.
"If you go back into neighbourhoods in Calgary like Regal Terrace and Crescent Heights, those are communities that were built 80 or 90 years ago, they had big separate walkways in the front yards with boulevards. Legacy has created a number of streets with boulevards, but we've also created huge walking spaces.
"We're trying to be one of the few communities in the city where you can walk from one end of the community to the other just in green space, without having to travel down the streets.
"The pedestrian connectivity makes (a neighbourhood) friendly. While it's not the same as 100 years ago, it's the same concept."
Goldade says research shows that pedestrian connectivity is the No. 1 desire of buyers across North America in selecting a new community.
In developing the commercial areas, Legacy is looking to offer some of that Bridgeland feel, another turn-of-the-century community, where people can sit outdoors at cafes and enjoy the streetscape.
It seems when it comes to communities, what was built 100 years ago has a lot to say in our next 100 years.
"We studied a lot of older neighbourhoods before we even started McKenzie Towne," Clark says. "We literally went around and measured all the roads in Elbow Park, for instance, a community that was started in that 1912 era. We measured up those streets and determined what we thought would be an optimal width with sidewalk and boulevards to replicate that in McKenzie Towne."
What's old is new again.
FIRES SPARK SAFETY
Devastating fires have led to better, safer building codes that ultimately help protect lives and preserve buildings so they have a chance at lasting 100 years.
The Calgary fire of 1886 destroyed 14 wood-frame buildings, prompting city officials to require all large downtown buildings to be built with sandstone, and to upgrade the fire brigade.
Calgary's Erlton fire of 2002, which caused $66 million in direct property damage when a fire jumped from a building under construction to three others that were occupied, brought in some changes to uses of safer materials.
Including wired-in fire alarms in building codes in homes has probably saved more lives than any other regulation, says Jim Rivait, CEO of the Canadian Home Builders' Association - Alberta.
The CHBA has advocated for changes to regulations to improve housing safety.
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| Canada's Hot Housing Market Shows Signs of Cooling |
Calgary's new home prices up by 0.5% in June, fuelled by energy industry
By Andrea Hopkins
TORONTO - Canada's hot housing market showed signs of cooling on Thursday as July housing starts slowed more sharply than expected, but housing prices were still climbing in June and analysts said a real slowdown may not come until late in 2012. Groundbreaking on new homes fell to a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 208,500 units in July, according to the Canadian Mortgage and Housing Corp, a sharp slowdown from the 222,100 units in June and below the forecasts of analysts in a Reuters poll, who had expected 213,300 starts. It was the first time in seven months that the rate of starts fell below the six-month trend, and a government decision to tighten mortgage lending from July was expected to contribute to further slowing as 2012 draws to a close. "We do expect that the impact of tighter mortgage regulations announced in late June will slow housing demand, but the impact on the construction and starts data is unlikely to show up until later in the year," David Tulk, chief Canada macro strategist for TD Securities, said in a research note. The hot market has sparked fears of a bubble, particularly in Toronto, Canada's largest city, and in Vancouver, as low interest rates fuelled condominium building and double-digit annual price increases for existing homes. The bulk of the pullback in July housing starts came in the multiple unit segment, where starts in the volatile condo market in British Columbia braked. That was in line with earlier data that has shown cooling in the Vancouver real estate market. Multiple unit starts dropped 7.6 per cent to 123,000 annualized units, the lowest level since February. Single unit starts fell 4.0 per cent to 64,000 annualized units. The slowdown in July pushed starts below the average for the second quarter and suggested the housing sector may not drive Canadian gross domestic product growth for much longer. "The July lower-than-Q2 numbers represent the possibility that housing could fade out of the picture as a positive contributor to quarter-over-quarter GDP in the third quarter and even drag on growth, contingent on how the rest of the quarter shakes out," Scotia Capital economists Derek Holt and Dov Zigler said in a research note. PRICES STILL CLIMBING Mindful of the U.S. housing boom that was left unchecked until it burst, the Canadian government in July tightened conditions for homebuyers and mortgage lenders in a bid to deflate a possible bubble before it pops. The changes took effect in July. Other data showed that prices of new homes in Canada rose by 0.2 per cent in June, the 15th consecutive month-on-month increase, on continued strength in large cities such as Toronto and Calgary, Statistics Canada data showed. The advance matched market expectations and follows the 0.3 per cent month-on-month-gain in May. Prices in Toronto, which accounts for 26.6 per cent of the entire market, rose 0.3 per cent in June, while prices in Calgary, where the booming energy industry has fuelled demand, were up by 0.5 per cent.
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| You're Not Ready For The FOR SALE Sign Until It's Styled |
The finishing touches are the layers that make a house a home and a quick sale.
While it is true that a home is never ready to be put on the market in everyday living condition, it is also true that it is never ready if it is not STYLED - with accessories, art, lamps, bedding, decorative pillows, plants, and area rugs.
This makes all the difference and separates the men from the boys, as it were. It's also those pieces a stylist and home buyers can't resist - quirky, sentimental, kitschy, or expensive - mementoes of a life well lived with stories to tell. All intriguing and interesting to buyers, making them fall in love with the home, imagining themselves living there.
There is nothing more captivating than a home with shelves lined with books, art or mementoes from travels, furniture in intimate conversation groupings, lamps shone cleverly on interesting vignettes, beds layer with attractive bedding, large potted plants in corners, and draperies pulled back to show off great views.
After I finish staging a home I waitfor the inevitable comment from the seller, " It looks so good, I don't want to move." This is because of the STYLING - the furniture arranged correctly, art hung properly, collections displayed attractively, accessories and plants placed - all shown off to advantage.
Ready for beautiful living and a quick sale.
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Thanks for reading and I will send you more info next month.
For all your real estate needs I am ready and willing to help you take that next, very important step.
Sincerely,
Louise Fuller
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