A Mueller update

Some photos below the fold.

It's hard to get a panoramic view of Mueller; the whole developoment is, well, flat as an airport.  But here are two I took from the low ridge at the southern end of Lake Park:

The brightly colored houses with the tin porch roofs in the center of the shot are Muskin Company garden-court homes:

Mueller's first phase includes one block of "garden court" homes.  The homes front a court of green space owned in common.  The homeowners sacrifice a private yard (not much of a sacrifice at Mueller, really), but they get a mini-park in front of their homes rather than a street.

Here is a closer view of Muskin Company's "garden court" homes:

The Saldana homes on the oppose site of the court:

The garden court is an attractive idea.  I hope the owners enjoy the sound of little children's laughter, though:  With open space at a premium at Mueller, I'm sure it will be a kid magnet. 

Row houses (70' deep) along Zach Scott:

Row houses (90' deep) on the opposite side of the street:

The same row houses from the rear:

(Note to builders:  Don't put down the roof liner when the weatherman warns you that 40 mph gales will be blowing in.)

Mueller is reviving the garage apartment (technically, a "carriage house" when attached to a $500K+ home).  Here's the Standard Pacific version:

The one I toured had a separate bedroom and bathroom and a kitchenette.  A good place to stash in-laws.

The next few shots are of finished-out streets.  I think Catellus got enough variation in builders and floor plans to avoid the cookie-cutter look.

Lawless Street:

The west side of Lawless:

By the way, I like the whole "Let's-use-only-last-names-and-not-first-names-and-middle-initials-too-like-they-do-at-UT" system for naming streets.  It's retro.  And the right name insinuates that you live on an old street.  "Lawless," for example. It oozes authenticity.  We all know a developer would insist on the full name -- "Peter Lawless" -- rather than giving the street a criminal brand that might scare off conservative homeowners.  So "Lawless" must be an old street, platted in the days when the city consisted of earthy, hearty folk who couldn't have cared less about the social signals emitted by their street signs. 

I digress.  Here is Emma Long Street:

(Emma Long and Zach Scott are acceptable exceptions to the "last-name-only" rule, but only because "Emma Long" and "Zach Scott" are so well known that it would have been weird to use just the last names.)

McCloskey.  David Weekley wanted me to tell you that it has sold its homes:

Looking south along Sahm:

A house at the corner of Comacho and Emma Long:

The side view illustrates the "articulation" standards that apply to homes on corner lots:

Most of the corner-lot homes have this kind of dramatic articulation.  (You can see another example in a Muskin Co. corner-lot home in the second photograph above.)  It's a "New Urbanist" design principle:  Articulate long, flat walls to keep the streetscape visually interesting and more inviting for pedestrians.  Frankly, I haven't seen any older neighborhoods with this kind of dramatic articulation on the "off-street" side; this must really be "new" urbanism.  I admit it is more attractive visually, but it's awfully expensive, both in construction costs and sacrificed space.

Note that there is a different design principle that says homes on corner lots must address both streets.  That can be done without articulation, via a wrap-around porch:

   

By the way, if you've heard that the yards at Mueller are small, that's just not true.  I haven't shown you any yards, so let me pick one out at random . . .

(The Streetman rep told me that they could not fit another home at the end of the street due to street's curve.  The land got added to the adjacent lot.  Naturally, it was the first lot sold.)

Moving on.  The pool at the "amenity center":

More importantly, the playscape:

Lake Park is coming along.  They've done an especially good job with the lake:

In the background you can see the large steps leading down to the water.  These will turn out to be a very good idea, I think.  I've seen people milling around on them every time I've been out there.  It's an inviting place to just sit and watch the ducks. 

The park landscaping has a long way to go:

 

This was taken from the south side of the lake, looking south/southwest.  I like the way they created a swell in the grade to screen the homes from view. 

The lake on the southern greenbelt:

It's actually three ponds, dammed off from one another by blocks of limestone, all for the purpose of creating this water feature:

One last parting shot:

Note the large "For Sale" sign in the upper right quadrant.  A  portent of Mueller's long-term effect on the surrounding environment, I suspect. 

Comments

[DSK]

Good thorough set of photos. More and more places around my parts have been advertising "carriage houses"; now I'm curious to go look and see if it's the new term for garage apartments here or is used differentl.

[heyzeus]

Very cool photos. I haven't been over there in a long time (despite living on the other side of the freeway from Mueller). It's a shame there aren't more trees, but that's probably also a function of the land being a former airport, just like the grading.

[Tim]

I've got to say, I'm really impressed with the variety from these photos. That said, I can't believe how flat it is. I know it's the old airport, but wow!

[Tim]

Oh, and Edgewick has these new carriage houses too. Because of the 2 car garages underneath they're more like the grooms residences you see over some of the old stables in hyde park (if you've seen any of those), rather than a garage apartment. More just a matter of size.

[M1EK]

I'm amazed that people are still impressed by the pictures - every time I see them I get more depressed.

1. Look at the back of the "rowhouses" - it's an apartment building, folks; it's nothing at all like a block of rowhouses.

2. The carriage houses are godawful big lumpy blocks - compare/contrast to even the rundown specimens in my neck of the woods.

3. Materials look more like Anderson Mill than Hyde Park.

This is not going to age well - mark my words.

This process I'm going through is sort of the opposite that I went through with The Domain - where I was initially very skeptical, then every time I saw pictures it looked better, and when I actually went up there it wasn't half-bad apartment-urbanism. I guess the main difference is that I've already been to the worst part of Mueller - the strip retail; but it's hard to see how this is going to get much better more quickly.

AC, this is starting to look just like the high-density infill around where my cousin (and you, I think) live (Village Oak Ct. in her case) - do you see any similarity (or difference I've missed?) - looks just like Northern Virginia high-density sprawl to me.

[AC]

I think this is as good as infill is gonna get in this town, given this level of density.

Here's what I like:

1. Homes that
(a)address the street,
(b) are laid out on a grid,
(c) in relatively short blocks, (d) with garage parking through alleys in the back.
It makes a pleasant place to walk around, even with all the half-finished houses and construction debris lying around.

2. Strategically placed parks/green space that will actually draw families/kids.

3. The effort to create a mix of home sizes and styles. Different streets have a much more distinct feel than is typical of new subdivisions.

4. The effort to create an "Austin look" for the homes. There's no such thing as an Austin look now, by the way. (Half the small towns in Mississippi have neighborhoods that look like Hyde Park, minus the student housing on Duval and Speedway.)

I don't understand your objection to Mueller, just like I didn't understand it last week when you made a similar comment on your blog. "Row houses" -- Yeah, they're technically walk-up condos. So? "Real" row houses would be more authentic, but they're more expensive to build .

Garage apartments -- the ones in Hyde Park don't generally sit within 6 ft of the main structure.

Exterior finish -- some of the houses use an EIFS-like system. That doesn't weather as well as all-masonry but, again, it's not as expensive as all-masonry. (I think our argument over this is ironic given our respective comments on the Kyle issue). How well it holds up depends on how well people keep up their houses.

Simmons Vedder is about to start working on multi-family at the southern entrance. The next phase will have live-work units and "Mueller" houses -- basically, big houses subdivided into condos. There will be a pretty healthy variety of housing here.

My neighborhood (and Village Oak Ct.) has similar homes on small lots. My neighborhood is basically just a loop with 55 homes. It's a very pleasant loop to walk, but it's short, and once you step outside the neighborhood you're on streets without sidewalks and basically nothing close to walk to (other than Walgreen's/Taco Xpress). This, even though we're just a 1/3 mile from S. Lamar.

Things are improving on S. Lamar (and we're supposed to get sidewalks along Del Curto). But I think stuff will also materialize at Mueller. If catellus drags its feed adding retail interior to the neigbhorhood, some will pop up around the periphery.

[M1EK]

""Row houses" -- Yeah, they're technically walk-up condos. So? "Real" row houses would be more authentic, but they're more expensive to build ."

It devalues the brand, so to speak. Row houses mean something - separate dwellings which happen to touch on an exterior wall; not condominiums. Makes it harder to even have the discussion about zoning for these things down the road.

The garage apartments just look bad - and in my block, some _are_ that close to the main house. I think I need to go up close and get a better look at these to solidify the distaste more specifically - but they look more like a particularly ugly infill project on 34th west of Speedway than they do the traditional pattern on my side of the block (where we all have 6000 sqft lots and most have secondary dwelling units; some more than one).

The 'walk' will probably depend on how much other visual features (landscaping, etc) can make up for the uniform setback. Granted, uniform close is better than uniform far; but close with variations is better still.

Unfortunately, the HOA will largely govern how much people can change the visual landscape in the front. I didn't mention that in my last comment, but it's important, because a lot of the "it could get better" will be stopped dead in their tracks by the suburban HOA.