Eco-friendly development in the works
Journal Record
By Brianna Bailey
OKLAHOMA CITY – A 480-acre mixed-use development planned for the area around Northwest Expressway just off the new section of the Kilpatrick Turnpike will include numerous eco-friendly elements and walking trails.
Renderings for the new Village Verde development show clusters of houses ringing parks with natural streams.
About 20 percent of the new development will be common areas dotted with trees, said Mike Nevard, who is developing Village Verde along with his father, Don Nevard, and homebuilder OA Garr. Kelly Parker, a national sustainability expert and chief executive of the Oklahoma City-based Guaranteed Watt Saver, is also a part of the development team.
“When we started this project, it was going to be built on green design uses,” Mike Nevard said. “We don’t have too many projects in Oklahoma City where you can actually walk out the door and go somewhere very close to get basic amenities.”
Village Verde will include shops that will be close enough for residents to walk or bike to, thanks to a system of walking trails.
The developers hope to attract a grocery and neighborhood banking center to the planned commercial development.
The development will preserve a few natural streams that are on the land, and also create new wetland areas for wildlife, Mike Nevard said.
The Oklahoma City Council approved zoning changes for the Village Verde development to move ahead last week.
The development will be built in several phases, beginning with some single-family homes within the next three to four months.
Retail space along Northwest Expressway that is part of the planned development will become a gateway to the northwest corridor of the city, developers for Village Verde said.
The large-scale new development will include several different types of housing.
Plans for Village Verde also include about 950 single-family homes, about 100 townhomes, and 25 “live-and-work” units that will have commercial space on the ground floor and loftlike dwellings on the upper level.
“Most people think of a subdivision as all houses of the same type,” Garr said. “But this development will have live and work units to smaller homes to increasingly larger homes, all connected so you can walk from any home to the village center or ride your bicycle or golf cart, all without getting on the street.”
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