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Remote Coastal Town Embraces New Urbanism

Published 7/29/2004
Justin Stranzl
For the Portland Daily Journal of Commerce

Developer Casey Roloff isn’t a stranger to the Pacific Northwest coast. But the concept that drives his newest project is.

Five years after establishing the 80-home Bella Beach community outside of Lincoln City, Roloff is building Seabrook, a 400-home, 88-acre town that brings the new-urbanism development concept to the Washington coast.

New urbanism – a practice in which suburban sprawl is offset by building on smaller lots, with shops and meeting places within walking distance of homes – isn't a new concept in the Northwest. Portland's Pearl District and Orenco Station in Hillsboro are just two of the many examples popping up in urban areas. But in the Northwest, the concept hasn't been advanced much beyond metropolitan Portland and Seattle.

Some elements of new urbanism can even be seen in coastal Oregon cities like Cannon Beach. But new urbanism has yet to reach the coast on the scale of Seabrook, which is just south of Pacific Beach and 30 minutes from Aberdeen. An out-of-the-way site, new urbanism will fuel Seabrook from the ground up. Construction of its $200,000 to $500,000 houses is scheduled to begin in October.

"From a business standpoint, this is the most incredible story," Roloff said. "We're out in the middle of nowhere. Where there might be 10 or 15 sales a year, we have 135 reservations in escrow. We’re basically creating a new market in a place that was not exciting to anybody. When you tell people you're building a town instead of subdivisions, people raise their eyebrows. And that’s what we love."

The reservations are rolling in, Roloff said, because Seabrook will offer everything its residents need. Rather than build with only vacationers in mind, Seabrook aims to be self-sustaining.

While most developers who target locations like Seabrook shoot for large plots and houses on the coast, Roloff says Seabrook’s homes will be focused around a main street that will feature a café and small grocery store immediately, and there are plans for a theater, bowling alley, pool hall and pub after that.

Homes on the outskirts of the community near 2,500 square feet in size, but most are fewer than 1,300 square feet.

The homes' sizes mirror that of the houses in what many regard as the birthplace of new urbanism, a coastal town on the Florida panhandle called Seaside.

While dreaming up his first coastal development, Bella Beach, Roloff learned of Seaside, Fla., and fell in love with the town and its new urbanism concept. Subsequently, he hired a project architect, Laurence Qamar, who studied under one of the Florida development’s driving forces, Andres Duany.

Qamar worked on Bella Beach and now is designing Seabrook, incorporating Seaside’s new urbanism without creating "Florida west," he said.

Seabrook, while using many of the ideas behind Seaside, will embrace the trees and coastal patterns for which the Northwest is known, Qamar said.

Qamar's goal is to condense Seabrook’s 400 plots as much as possible. While Seabrook comprises 88 acres that include a forested bluff and the coast below it, only 55 acres will actually be developed; the remaining 33 acres will exist as public park space and walking trails. The coast won’t be owned by anyone.

The design concept goes against the popular belief that bigger equals better, Qamar said.

"For the average builder it's tempting" to spread out, he said. "People over the last 50 years have wanted a big suburban lot. That's the American dream."

But living in a vibrant community is "the more enduring American dream," Qamar said. "When you start spreading things out, you start to lose those connections to community. You lose walkability. Your house is farther out and you can’t walk to the corner store. People want to actually know the other people around them. When you're spreading out into 7,500-square-foot lots, you’re no longer in the center of action."

GOING GREEN

New urbanism isn't the only element of Seabrook that’s unique to re

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