Would-be Teton Meadows Ranch aims to be green

Wednesday, September 19, 2007

By Ben Cannon

Jackson Hole, Wyo.-Looking north across the South Park property on which he aims to build a major residential development, James Reinert took in the landscape that has, in part, lured him back to the valley for regular visits since he was a teenager.

The property, a large open pasture that for years has served agricultural uses, boasts a clean shot of the Grand Teton, which from this perspective soars above the buttes that obstruct the major peaks from much of the Town of Jackson.

“The beauty is that [the view] is almost 360 degrees,” said Reinert, a Chicago native, who wore a contemporary Western-style shirt. “It’s great down here.”

A year ago, Reinert, 42, moved to Jackson Hole from metropolitan Chicago with his wife and young children. He is a figure still largely unknown in the valley, but that is likely to change in the coming months. Reinert, who formed a group called Sequoia Development, last month began the county application process to build 500 homes on 288 acres of the Seherr-Thoss property adjacent to Melody Ranches and Rafter J Ranches off of South Park Loop Road.

The project proposes to build 25 percent affordable housing – 10 percent more than what is required by current county mandate. The prospect of 125 deed-controlled affordable homes would increase by nearly a third the affordable ownership units that now total just under 400 in Teton County.

But it is the other 375 units, what Reinert and his agents call “Homestead Ownership,” that aim to address what many in the valley recognize as a threat to the community: a hemorrhaging of the middle class and work force population.

Through Homestead Ownership, Reinert intends to create a sovereign housing niche, insulated from the free market by restrictions that would allow – among other criteria – only full-time Teton County residents who work at least 1,500 hours a year to buy a lot or unit as their primary home. By deed-restricting in perpetuity who can buy in, the theory goes, the demand set by Jackson Hole workers will determine the value of a homestead ownership lot.

Beyond how the public, planning staff and county electives weigh the projected benefits of Homestead Ownership against whatever socio-political issues are sure to arise, another hallmark of the application is likely to sway some additional support for Teton Meadows Ranch: A commitment to an eco-friendly community.

Reinert and his team joined with Yellowstone Business Partnership (YBP) to become a pilot member of the group’s Framework for Sustainable Development. The fledgling regional program was adapted from the Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) Green Building Rating System, a national recognition for thoughtful development and building practices.

Harry Statter, an ecologist who founded Jackson-based Firewise Landscapes, consulted on the Teton Meadows Ranch site plan to help ensure green building principles throughout every aspect of the project.

“This is really the first project of its kind in the region,” Statter said Monday. “It’s one that we expect the Yellowstone Business Partnership will use as a model to hang its hat on.  The gist of it is we’re designing it from the ground up with all of the components of an attractive and sustainable, eco-friendly community.”

It is difficult to detail the myriad green components of the plan, which proposes 50 percent open space, improvements to the surrounding habitat and green building regulations like energy efficient homes.

“We think it’s a really important part of the project,” Reinert said of the green approach.
The Framework for Sustainable Development pilot certification, for which the TMR website said the project is “committed to qualifying” for, was adapted from the more urban LEED model to mirror the values and community-landscape interface within the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem, YPB director Jan Brown explained.

“We wanted to regionalize a LEED product,” Brown said.  “Our framework was developed to be in concert with land use, community considerations and management of resources.”

By that framework, a development project must score a certain rating or higher for: land use and conservation, biodiversity, cultural and historic values, built environment, public service and infrastructure, transportation and connectivity, community vitality, recreation resources, and regional innovation and investment.

The Teton Meadows Ranch plan, with its urban park-style nodes, green space, multi-modal paths, bus stops, trip-saving mail kiosk, and wide habitat buffer to keep development away from surrounding houses – to list but some of the planning components – might look like a community planner’s dream. That is a credit largely to the site plan design of Jim Verdone and his team at Verdone Landscape Architects (VLA).

“When I first saw [the site plan], I nearly wept openly,” said one county employee who asked not to be named.

Still, there is a long road ahead of the Teton Meadows Ranch application, now under staff review.

And it is no first rodeo for Reinert, who in Chicago rose to senior vice president with U.S. Equities, a commercial real estate managing firm. There he focused on development in the more vertical sense of big city high-rises, working for clients Giorgio Armani and Citadel Investment, Reinert said the unique challenges at each individual project help provide a broad template for problem solving.

“This site doesn’t have anything that’s a particular challenge,” Reinert said in the VLA conference room. “It’s pretty straight forward project to design a high-quality neighborhood.”

Later, looking at the vista from the Seherr-Thoss property which he lives just south of, Reinert offered how a newcomer might figure in to a housing crisis with much history.
“Hopefully it’s the right place at the right time to do something meaningful here,” he said. “I hope so.”

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Would-be Teton Meadows Ranch aims to be green | Planet JH News Article: Development

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