Norton Commons recently put the kaboosh to HVAC systems using outdoor condensers.
Every home built there from now on will be geothermal.
It was by popular demand.
It also is the tip of the iceberg.
Norton Commons is the largest (nearly 600 acres) fastest selling zip code in Kentucky. This is not just any 150-home subdivision.
It also is B very, very deliberately – a vision of the future of homebuilding. One that is being built today. Call it “proof of concept.”
That huge chunk of acreage, probably the largest developable plot left in Jefferson County, was put together by George W. Norton half a century ago. Norton was like a Woodstock generation-type a generation early. In 1948, when few homes had TV sets, Norton put WAVE-TV on the air. (Disclosure: For years, Steve represented WAVE-3 TV.) As much as he saw the value of technology, he also invested in farming. The nearly 2,000 acres that became Norton Farm started as the WAVE Farm, hosting live farming shows and demonstrations for Channel 3 WAVE-TV. You could say Kentucky farmers were the seeds for network TV’s growth in Kentucky.
As late as the 1980s, eastern Jefferson County largely was big farms. Then came the expressways. The roads turned those same farmlands into America’s most booming area of suburban growth and homebuilding in the 1990s.
Not much later, ex-fighter pilot Charles Osborn and co-developer Charles Tomes hooked up with Norton’s family and Andres Duany, the son of Cuban refugees who fled Castro in 1960, graduated from Princeton (with his immigrant wife) and Yale School of Architecture to become, now, the leading architect in America’s “New Urbanism” movement. (After creating Seaside, FL, and revamping Charleston, Hurricanes Katrina and Rita smashed the Gulf Coast. Duany led 170 New Urbanist architects in re-designing 11 cities including New Orleans along 11 miles of Louisiana Gulf Coast, still be built. For more, check out http://www.residentialarchitect.com/practice/firm-profiles/andres-duany_o.) Together, they created Norton Commons.
The set up a Norton Commons Builders Guild to assure quality construction. (Yup, believe it not, Norton has thrown out builders they decided were not meeting quality standards. You don’t see that every day.)
Visit, and you will see the future of homebuilding, infused with the gestures of old Charleston and old towne Boston.
But what you will not see is exterior heat exchangers. And in all the streets going up from now, you may not notice it at first, but you also will not hear the buzz and whirring of those AC condensers.
They are no more in Norton.
Gone with them are power company bills that are about 10 times higher in the earlier Norton Commons homes. Homearama had about 25 homes there on display this year — all geothermal. Even though most with over 3,000 sq. ft., electric bills were running around $30-40 a month. Did we mention the energy tax credits?
