Boulder – When Annie Russell was young, recycling meant tossing apple cores, paper and McDonald’s sandwich wrappers out the car window while driving.
Now, the 65-year-old woman is one of hundreds living in a Boulder neighborhood lauded for its environmental friendliness.
“It’s embarrassing and horrible to think that when I grew up nobody even thought about the Earth the way we do now. This has been a learning process for me that started 20 years ago,” says Russell, who lives in the Wild Sage co-housing community in north Boulder’s new Holiday neighborhood.
Holiday is being featured in a documentary called “Designing a Great Neighborhood: Behind the Scenes at Holiday.” It airs at 11 a.m. June 19 on KRMA-Channel 6.
David Wann, the documentary’s producer, hopes other stories like Russell’s personal conversion to a healthier, more energy-efficient lifestyle will be a model for others.
“People don’t really understand there are choices about how you build and where you live,” says Wann. “This story enables them to see an example of something different to make them happier, save them money and save the environment. It’s a lay person’s look at what green building really means.”
The documentary took four years to complete and follows the development of Wild Sage co-housing, a project within the Holiday neighborhood. The co-housing concept means residents own their homes but collective activities such as entertaining, laundry and eating are centered in a common house.
The Holiday neighborhood, named after the old Holiday Drive-in Theater that used to be on the site, leaps out as you drive along U.S. 36 on the northern edge of town. With its houses painted in brilliant shades of blues, pinks, greens and yellows, this neighborhood was created to be livable and edgy. Anything but uptight.
Higher density, a community garden, walkable and interconnected streets, nearby shops and even shared car rentals encourage a sociable existence. What’s lost in almost nonexistent backyards is gained in large common areas such as a central park where outdoor movies will be shown this summer.
The Holiday neighborhood is similar to new-urbanism communities created out of infill projects such as Denver’s Stapleton and Lakewood’s Belmar neighborhoods.
“It’s just housing and privatization in suburbia,” says David Barrett, one of the architects who developed the master plan for Holiday. “But our goal was to try to preserve some thread of the neighborhoods of our past.”
The Holiday neighborhood was selected by the Sustainable Futures Society – Wann is the group’s president – because the city of Boulder purchased that land to keep the development affordable. The society secured a $182,000 grant from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency to make the project green-built.
The 27-acre site is nearly built out, with only 100 homes left to complete. The site will soon have 330 homes, plus 5,000 square feet of commercial space.
More than 40 percent of the single- and multi-family homes, duplexes, condos, townhomes and live-work units in the Holiday neighborhood are deed-restricted for lower-income individuals. Individuals paying as little as $200 for rent live next to couples paying a six-figure mortgage to create a more diverse community.
The documentary features future residents, including Wann and Russell, participating in the design of their own community. Russell says she took particular pride in working with other residents to choose energy efficient options for the common house.
“This was going from making a personal commitment to recycle to embracing a much broader concept of sustainability for the future,” Russell says.
Developers can find it difficult to create green neighborhoods because they must balance the need for affordable housing with the efficient use of energy resources. Upfront costs can be very high, especially if you want all the bells and whistles of green housing. What that generally means is doling out extra dollars for more insulation, solar panels, nontoxic paints, wood instead of less costly plywood, compact fluorescent light bulbs and energy-efficient washers and dryers.
“When you start to add green features, you will add some expense,” Wann says. “But it’s a trade-off when you think of future costs. You’ve added energy efficiency, but in the course of its life, you will save more over time.”
Staff writer Sheba R. Wheeler can be reached at 303-820-1283 or swheeler@denverpost.com.
