Walking in Kentlands
by Jason Miller

Surrounded by suburbia, Kentlands puts the car back in the garage and the people back on its streets. Located 11 miles northwest of the Washington, D.C. beltway, in the city of Gaithersburg, Md., the 352-acre neotraditional development seamlessly combines its parts—residential, office, civic, cultural and retail uses—into a working whole that is within walking distance of all residences. As Peter Katz wrote in The New Urbanism, "Kentlands is the first application of the traditional neighborhood development principles to a real, year-round, working community." Now, more than 12 years after its inception, the mature Kentlands continues to prove itself as one of the best-conceived, best-executed TNDs in the nation.

A portion of the Old Farm neighborhood. Photo courtesy of Duany Plater-Zyberk & Co.

History Lesson
The land upon which Kentlands sits began its recorded life in the mid-18th century, when Henry Clagett, a Maryland farmer, began acquiring land in the region to build his estate.

The

The City of Gaithersburg owns and operates several buildings within the Kentlands community. Weddings, conferences and other affairs are held at the Kentlands Mansion.

A greenhouse from the past.

Clagett family held nearly 1,000 acres—including the present-day Kentlands tract—until 1852, when Frederick Tschiffely bought the property. In the following years, Tschiffely donated portions of the estate for the construction of civic buildings. He willed the remaining 600 acres to his son, Frederick Jr., who demolished the family home and replaced it with the Colonial revival brick mansion (right) that stands to this day.

In 1931, the estate was sold to Otis Beall Kent, an eccentric who spent his years constructing lakes, ponds and buildings on the land. The mansion, barn, firehouse and several outbuildings still remain; Inspiration Lake forms the centerpiece of Kentlands.

Kentlands' birth began in 1987 on an optimistic note. Developer Joseph Alfandre selected and purchased the site because of its topography and the existing buildings of Kent Farm. Alfandre had been building in Gaithersburg; he knew the political climate and the market. All signs pointed straight ahead, so in 1988 he invited Andres Duany and Elizabeth Plater-Zyberk of Duany Plater-Zyberk & Company (DPZ) to lead a design charrette to create the master plan for the community. The DPZ employees set up an office on the site. Consultants from Massachusetts, computer gurus from Indiana, an engineer from New Hampshire, local architects and other talented players joined the DPZ staff to produce in one week the perspective drawings, design codes, landscape plans and other documents needed to create an island of sanity in the middle of suburbia.

Ground was broken in the spring of 1990. Kentlands began its march toward completion.

Photo courtesy of Duany Plater-Zyberk & Co.

Financial challenges
Kentlands' financial history is full of twists and turns and is at times a little confusing.

In 1987, Joseph Alfandre paid $43 million for Kent Farm's 352 acres. At the same time, Indianapolis-based shopping mall developer Mel Simon purchased an option from Alfandre for the right to buy 70 acres of the property for $17 million. Simon was purchasing only 20 percent of the land on which he planned to build a conventional shopping mall, but he was paying 40 percent of what Alfandre was paying for the entire tract. In short, Simon was paying double what Alfandre was paying.

This

Market Square includes restaurants, retail stores and entertainment well within walking distance for Kentlands residents. It has become a destination for people all over Gaithersburg and the surrounding region. Photo courtesy of The Town Paper.

Kentlands provides a variety of building types. These Midtown cottages are near the town center. Photo courtesy of The Town Paper.

Kentlands will have approximately 50 live/work units. These buildings provide housing above a commercial space and are located on Main Street, which leads to the town center. Photo courtesy of The Town Paper.

A street vista in uptown Kentlands. Photo courtesy of Duany Plater-Zyberk & Co.

Civic buildings, such as this church, are placed within walking distance of homes. Photo courtesy of The Town Paper

was a good deal for Alfandre, except for two pertinent facts. One, demand for new malls dropped precipitously from previous levels: During the late '80s, shopping-mall construction dropped from 20 per year to eight per year. Two, the uncertain economy at that time came into play. The upshot? Simon walked away from his option, forfeited his deposit and chose not to buy the land.

With the collapse of the deal with Simon, Alfandre's financial plans disintegrated.

Other aspects of the economy also came to bear: Commerce was slowing down; the Resolution Trust Corporation (RTC) was analyzing banks more closely. The RTC paid a visit to Chevy Chase Bank, which was backing the loan for Kentlands, and told the bank it had too much land on its books; i.e., the bank had loaned money for too many land development projects. When the developers defaulted on their loans, the bank would take over the projects and end up with land instead of money to back their other loans. Thousands of acres were reverting back to Chevy Chase Bank, which, as a result, became the largest land developer in the D.C. metro area.

Because Alfandre couldn't keep up with his payments after Simon forfeited his purchase option, the bank and Alfandre worked out a "friendly foreclosure." Alfandre was retained by the bank and the bank took the project back in the fall of 1991.

Interestingly, the conventional piece of the Kentlands development (the shopping mall) was what brought the project down. The traditional neighborhood element continued to build out during the early financial struggles. Indeed, Kentlands' neighborhood development outpaced all the conventional development in the surrounding areas. Home sales slowed in Kentlands during the recession, but because the project offered a unique product, it wasn't competing with suburbia and, therefore, sales were sustained.

Relief came in 1991, when the market strengthened just as Chevy Chase was taking over. Chevy Chase Bank started doing better and Kentlands began to pick up speed. Its phasing plan responded to the market: When demand grew for condominiums, townhouses, single-family houses, etc., those became the next phases of development. In place of the mall, one company stepped in to build multi-family housing; then, another firm came to build a shopping center. A total of six phases were completed before Kentlands was finished.

Kentlands' form
Six neighborhoods blend together to form Kentlands. They are Hill Districts, Upper Lake, Middle Lake, Lower Lake, Gatehouse, Old Farm and Midtown. Each neighborhood has its own character, yet is not exclusive. A lake and wetland preserve, greenbelts and public squares help to define the neighborhoods. Public gathering spaces, residential, office, civic, cultural and retail elements are common.

Market Square serves as Kentlands' town square. Located in the Midtown neighborhood, Market Square offers a movie theater with first-run movies, village shops and restaurants, a hair salon, a spa—you can even pick up your favorite cigar there.

Keeping it real
All property owners in Kentlands are members of the Kentlands Citizens Assembly. The Assembly provides for the maintenance of commonly owned properties and facilities, including private alleys and parking areas, greens, recreation facilities, tot lots and equipment. In addition, the Assembly runs the Kentlands Recreation Center and assures the architectural integrity and appropriate maintenance of the lots within the community.

A tot lot. Note how this informal playground hasn't had the soul groomed out of it.

Not just another pretty face
Incredibly, one accusation leveled against TNDs in general has been "They all look the same." What the detractors are missing, according to Kentlands Director of Town Planning, Mike Watkins, is what cannot be seen immediately.

"When

Out for a walk. Photo courtesy of Duany Plater-Zyberk & Co.

you visit for a few hours, it is easy to miss the difference in lifestyle. Architects, planners and developers often come to Kentlands and walk around measuring streets and squares, but may not fully realize the impact that this type of planning can have. Kids can get jobs without needing a car, generations of families can live near each other. The two age groups that often cannot drive—the young and the elderly—can set about meeting their daily needs without a car. Much of what is needed on a daily basis is within walking distance. Some residents have made significant career decisions—a step lower on the career ladder, for example—in order to continue living in Kentlands because that's where they want to raise their family."

Why?

"Kentlands

Rachel Carson Elementary School. Photo courtesy of The Town Paper.

A challenging lot and a house to fit.

has the greatest degree of mixed-use. Grocery stores, movie theater, schools, churches, convenience and entertainment retail. Name a single other new neighborhood—conventional or neotraditional—where the residents can walk to a movie! Okay, Celebration—only one other TND.

"Kentlands has idiosyncrasy and imperfections—intentionally. Authentic variety is achieved by allowing odd, leftover lots to remain, forcing the design of a building for just that lot. We insisted that the imprecision of design sketches be reflected in the built work. It took years for the engineers to get used to not straightening every street or making every corner ninety degrees. Those idiosyncrasies add to the charm of the place."

Amenities
Kentlands' mix of uses is one of the town's primary amenities. This mix is pervasive; you can see examples everywhere you walk. Civic buildings include an elementary school, a clubhouse, several churches, and civic spaces such as parks, squares and the plaza.

A coffee shop. Photo courtesy of Duany Plater-Zyberk & Co.

Examples

The Kentlands Stadium 8 theater is located in the heart of the town center: Eight screens, no waiting. Photo courtesy of The Town Paper.

Elly Shaw-Belblidia, Kentlands resident, with a smile as bright as her lilies.

A public green in the Old Farm neighborhood.

of commercial buildings include live/work units with shops and offices, a large grocery store, banks, bookstores, the eight-screen theater and a dozen sit-down restaurants.

Life is lived well in Kentlands, which caters to a wide variety of people and family types by offering several housing choices. These include multi-family apartments and condos, apartments above garages, townhouses, and single-family houses as small as 16 x 22 feet in size (including the single-car garage).

Kentlands "plays well with others," namely, its suburban surroundings. "Suburbia doesn't welcome interaction because its physical makeup is all about separation and disintegration. No one would want to live on the mean suburban collector roads bordering Kentlands on three sides," says Watkins. "On the fourth side, Kentlands connects seamlessly to the new neighborhood, Lakelands, now under construction. Furthermore, socially and politically, Kentlands is very well integrated to the rest of the City of Gaithersburg."

The school mixes students from Kentlands and other neighborhoods. A Gaithersburg City Council member lives in Kentlands, as does a Gaithersburg Planning Commission member, the city manager and the city's urban design director. These and other newer residents move into Kentlands and invest not just in the development, but the city of Gaithersburg.

City-wide events take place in Kentlands. For the Fourth of July celebration, the streets are blocked off and out come the barbecues and fireworks. Every other summer Friday, a Concert on the Lawn fills the air with music. An annual Kentlands 5K run wends its way through Kentlands and Lakelands. Oktoberfest fills the streets to bursting in an entire neighborhood in Kentlands, again with food vendors and merriment. Concerts at the Mansion include visits from the Washington Symphony, to make sure that the music of Kentlands never ends.

Architecture
The homes and buildings of Kentlands don't follow a specific period of architectural history; rather, they follow the tradition of the region. Walking in Kentlands, you'll encounter Georgian, Colonial, Arts and Crafts and Victorian-style buildings, primarily.

In the Old Farm neighborhood, the architecture reflects the influence of the buildings, gardens and landscape features of the original Kent Farm.

Valuing Kentlands
When it comes to the decision of whether to live in Kentlands, the residents are willing to put their money where their mouths are. In Valuing the New Urbanism, a housing study by Mark J. Eppli and Charles C. Tu, published by ULI, properties in Kentlands were shown to be selling for $30,000 to $40,000 more, on average, than homes in the surrounding suburbs. The findings were controlled by lot size, house size and other housing variables.

Clearly, the market—at least in the region of Gaithersburg—is willing to pay more to live in a neighborhood of Kentlands' character.

But the report is "the source of some criticism," says Watkins, "because it means Kentlands becomes less affordable."

The response, according to Watkins, should be lifted out of an Economics 101 class. It is a simple supply and demand issue. "Increase the supply to meet the demand. As this is done, the prices will level out. In the meantime, it's made all those who have purchased homes here quite happy!"

Indeed. Nora C., a Kentlands resident, tells of a friend of hers in Kentlands who put her house up for sale on the Internet. It sold in seven hours.

People talk
Mark and Diane Dorney have lived in Kentlands for almost seven years. They have three children, ages 12, 14 and 16. While sharing her thoughts on Kentlands, Diane, who edits and publishes The Town Paper, was interrupted twice by her 12-year-old son, Cole, who was checking in to let her know what new direction he was heading—on foot or by bike. Not surprisingly, Diane's comments addressed her children's freedom.

"I like the fact that my kids have such a great independence here. They can get to almost anything they want to on their own. So there's not a lot of need to drive them around like I had to in my other house. They're within walking distance of their school, which is nice. Almost every day, my son makes his rounds on his bike—movie theater, ice skating rink, ball fields, lakes, you name it.

"It's a pleasant neighborhood to walk around. In my other neighborhoods I didn't like to walk around because it got really boring really quickly. Here you can go different directions and see different people, depending on the direction you go. I like the diversity of people because of the different housing types. So many people have brothers and sisters and parents living in Kentlands, because of all the different price ranges. You can't do that in a single-price suburban development.

"I guess because I've had the opportunity to live in so many different types of neighborhoods, I can see what makes the difference here. I notice the difference."

That difference is a day-to-day fact for Nora C., who is 74 years young and has found a perfect fit in Kentlands. A retired librarian and freelance writer who wrote for The Washington Post, Nora has lived in Kentlands for almost eight years now and writes a column called "The Kentlands Child" for a neighborhood newsletter, The Town Crier.

Wanting to downsize, Nora moved to Kentlands from Rockville, Md., and immediately took advantage of her freedom. "I chose a condo across the street from Boulevard Shop, so it's convenient. The time may come when I may not be able to have a car, but it won't make a lot of difference. I can walk to the movie theater, recreation center, swimming pool, shopping center—anywhere I want. Anyone in fairly good health can move through this community.

"If I want to leave the neighborhood, we have public transportation that comes through Kentlands and stops right across the street from me."

Asked

Condominiums. Photo courtesy of Duany Plater-Zyberk & Co.

to name her favorite thing about Kentlands, Nora thinks for awhile and proves impossible to pin down. "It's the people I meet and am friends with—that's been the most rewarding thing to me. I don't know how many more people I know here than I knew in the neighborhood where I lived for 39 years. I have countless more friends and acquaintances here than I ever did!

"I moved here because I didn't want to live in a retirement home, I wanted to live in a multi-generational community. I like that all age groups are respected—right down to the youngest. We don't have a 'fortress' mentality.

"I

A backyard view.

love how active a role the residents have in the planning process of Kentlands. The people here are involved; they care about how it looks, how it functions; we know we can continue to make it better. It's different here, unusual. It's not like suburbia.

"And the architecture: I love how the architecture resembles Newcastle and Annapolis. I'm part of something that goes back far in history and I love that. It's genuine. There are some developments that purport to be neotraditional, but they aren't; they're just putting big houses next to each other. They don't look or live like Kentlands."

Living in Kentlands is an active endeavor for Dick and Diane Arkin. They and their 11-year-old daughter have lived in their Old Farm neighborhood home (which they bought before the ground was broken) for about nine years. At the time they moved in, the population of Kentlands was around 12.

Back then, Dick was a member of the City Planning Commission for nearby Rockville, Maryland. He was familiar with DPZ's work and wanted to see how New Urbanism could be translated to a suburban environment near a major city. "I kind of hovered around the charrette," he says. "I wasn't an official participant, but I came in and out as an observer. I was interested in Kentlands before it was even a hole in the ground!"

Through the years that followed, Dick and his family played an active role in the community. Dick was the organizer and acting chair of the original ad hoc Kentlands Committee. He also chaired the Kentlands Citizens Liaison Committee. He's been on the board of trustees for six years and currently serves as the president of the Kentlands Citizens Assembly.

Not to be outdone, his young daughter recently got her feet wet in retail, trying her hand at a lemonade stand during the last Oktoberfest celebration. She decided that with the crowds, she needed better (read, taller) signage and a good PR person!

This level of involvement is what impresses Dick the most about Kentlands residents. "From the get-go, the kind of people who came into this community were those who shared the vision at one level or another—the vision of an old-time hometown in a modern suburb. Some were oriented toward the architecture, others toward the sociological implications. Others were looking for a nice place to live. Citizen involvement was very heavy right from the start."

This citizen involvement helped shape development in Kentlands and the surrounding communities. When Wal-Mart came knocking, attempting to build one of its massive boxes on the land that is now Market Square, Kentlands residents formed a citizen group that brought pressure to bear so intense, they persuaded Gaithersburg city officials that Wal-Mart was not a good fit for Kentlands. Wal-Mart ended up terminating its contract and leaving town.

Arkin concedes that Kentlands is a suburb, that he still commutes to work, but he is quick to extol the physical virtues of this "suburb."

"It's a wonderful environment, physically—a wonderful place to bring up a child. My daughter runs outside and plays in the neighborhood in a way that I remember from my childhood, but in a way I don't think a lot of children can these days. She can walk to the corner store, play miniature golf, go ice skating . . . it's a real island of pedestrian-friendly, human-scaled development in the midst of a sea of suburban sprawl. Its physical beauty brings people out to walk around, interact with their neighbors. I think I have more friends and acquaintances than I have had in all my other residences."

Diane

Alleys abound in Kentlands, leaving the front facades to impress and connect with passersby.

Arkin enjoys the scale and neighborly atmosphere in Kentlands. The family's yard is sized just perfectly, she says: "big enough to work on, but small enough so that it doesn't become a chore!" Another plus, says Dick, is the accessory apartment above their garage. They rent the apartment, which "makes a substantial contribution to our overall financial well-being."

The Arkins don't wear rose-colored glasses; they recognize the flip side of heavy citizen involvement. "The downside to Kentlands is that the high level of involvement by community members tends to make the politics much rougher—more difficult to reach consensus at times—everyone holds passionate views and expresses those views equally passionately! I think it's because people feel such a high degree of investment in the community. It's a real small-town dynamic."

Future talk
What sorts of changes are in view for Kentlands? A 20-acre regional park is planned (for a site originally intended for a middle school), adjacent to Lakelands. On the other side of that park, a 100-acre property has the potential to become a second downtown for Gaithersburg (right now, it's zoned for office space).

Kentlands is all but complete, but Lakelands is still under construction. Both projects will be built out by 2004, if all goes according to plan.

And both will continue to influence lives as only well-executed neotraditional towns can. "Everyone has an idea of what a neotraditional town should look like," says Dick Arkin.

And everyone wants to live in one.

Sources: Peter Katz, The New Urbanism: Toward an Architecture of Community; Duany Plater-Zyberk & Company Architects and Town Planners; History Associates Incorporated; Mark J. Eppli and Charles C. Tu, Valuing the New Urbanism: The Impact of the New Urbanism on Prices of Single-Family Homes.

Unless otherwise noted, all photography by Jason Miller.

To "stroll" through Kentlands with Elizabeth Plater-Zyberk and NewsHour with Jim Lehrer correspondent Ray Suarez, go here:

http://www.pbs.org/newshour/newurbanism/plater-zyberk.htm

This page will let you see the video, listen to the audio and read the transcript for a segment that aired July 19, 2000. (You'll need Real Player for the video and audio versions; go to the bottom of the Real Player page to download the free version of Real Player.) When finished, you can read one viewer's reaction on TNDhomes.com.