More room to roam sets houses apart

Partridgeberry Place, in Ipswich, wins praise as 'cluster development'

Municipal planners were among the crowd during a tour of Partridgeberry Place in Ipswich.
(Globe Correspondent / Lisa Poole)

IPSWICH - When Nicole Mazer considered buying a home in Partridgeberry Place, she had some concerns about the closeness of the houses.

"Living here, it's never been an issue," she said, noting that the house and its windows are designed in a way that ensures both scenic views and privacy.

"I never feel on top of my neighbor," said Mazer, who with her husband, Jeff, has two children, ages 3 years and 6 months. "We looked at another house in Ipswich that was more in the woods with a big lot, but we're glad we ended up in a neighborhood. This neighborhood is better for all of us; you meet people and the kids have safe places to play."

Built in and around wooded areas, Partridgeberry Place looks different from your typical high-end sub division. The large homes are built on small lots, and sit closer together than in most suburban developments. The street is narrow, the driveways short. The 20 homes in the development circle a large, forested hill.

Recently, about 35 planners from 11 municipalities, Conservation Commission members, and others interested in land use and preservation came out for a tour, getting a firsthand view of the neighborhood's rain gardens, drought-resistant landscaping, and other details designed to preserve open space, minimize the environmental footprint, and manage storm-water runoff.

"This is a great example of low-impact development," said Sam Cleaves of the Metropolitan Area Planning Council, which sponsored the tour with the Ipswich Department of Planning and Development.

Cluster zoning has been encouraged in the planning community for decades, said Glenn Gibbs, Ipswich's director of planning and development. Bylaws give developers incentives to build in one portion of a large parcel in exchange for leaving another section as open space. For example, at Partridgeberry Place, only 12 of 43 acres have been developed, with the rest left as open space, some of it now part of Willowdale State Forest.

One approach to cluster zoning, known as open space residential design, encourages development around the topography of the land versus clear-cutting and starting from scratch. Low-impact development techniques, which reduce environmental effects, also have been encouraged by planners and conservationists.

Partridgeberry Place, built on undeveloped land near the Boxford line, is considered one of the best examples of cluster development in the state.

"It's very much in the forefront of what I've seen," said Sara Cohen of the state Department of Conservation and Recreation. "In Massachusetts, this is one of the very first that achieved this level of cluster, with this many houses, this size houses, and this much preserved open space."

Don Bowen of Meridian Associates, who worked on some design aspects of the project, noted that, including the large hill as open space, the development achieved a 16-84 percent ratio of developed land to open space.

While many towns have bylaws for cluster zoning, Ipswich Planning Board cochairman Tim Purinton noted that few have been built.

"It's important [for planners] to see the realization, so that it goes beyond the theoretical to the real," Purinton said.

In addition to preserving open space, the lawns are built at a pitch to allow rainwater to seep into the ground. With fewer impervious surfaces, there will be not just less pollution from storm water runoff, but also less flooding and rushing water, which can cause erosion.

Molly Martins, vice president of Danvers-based The Martins Companies, which built the development, led the tour.

Martins said the finished product featured houses with about 3,200 square feet of living space priced from $750,000 to $850,000. Three of the units are still for sale.

The company received a $90,000 demonstration grant from the state Department of Conservation and Recreation to allow the property to be used as a model for tours. It also is featured in the online Massachusetts Smart Growth/Smart Energy Toolkit as an example of open space residential design (www.eot.state.ma.us/smartgrowth/07toolkit/pages/CS-osrd-ipswich_new.html).

Among the questions Martins fielded on the tour included how the neighbors get along (well) and deal with issues such as landscaping (amicably). She said that the unique quality of the development is a source of pride for the homeowners.

One fact that Martins shared surprised most of the planners: the development wasn't profitable.

Part of the reason was the slowdown on the high end of the real estate market, she said, but another factor was changes made and decisions about details - using mature trees for landscaping, or changing the pitch of the lawns so that rainwater would settle where it fell - that were made as the project moved along.

With the benefit of experience, her company could make a similar project profitable, she said.

"It's much easier to make changes on paper," said Martins.

For Jacquil Tracy and her family, the cluster was a big selling point. They relocated from Maryland, where this type of development is more common, but without the access to open space.

"We didn't want a big yard to take care of, but wanted space for the children," said Tracy, whose 6- and 8-year-old boys particularly like the central hill, which they've taken to calling "the island."