EDITORIAL: Small houses at home in a huge subdivision

If communities are to grow, they must have places for new residents to live, which explains the need for affordable housing.

“Affordable” is a moving target that has been made more difficult to hit by surging prices reflecting high demand for houses and low inventory. Still, communities seeking healthy growth need to ensure that their housing options include homes that are within the means of as many families and individuals as possible.

The City of Port Washington has an exceptionally promising opportunity to meet that need with a residential development whose defining feature is small houses (small by today’s mega square-footage standards) on small lots.

In its requests for proposals for development of one-time farmland on the south side of Highway 33 at its western border, the city asked for plans for a dense subdivision that would include small single-family houses close together as in traditional small-town neighborhoods.

Mequon developer Cindy Shaffer sent back a proposal that does that by building 276 residential units on 39 acres of land. It will be Port Washington’s largest subdivision, but a more important distinction is how small it will be in terms of the size of 105 houses included in the development.

The houses, most with living space ranging from 1,000 to 2,000 square feet, will be arranged in a compact neighborhood on lots as small as 3,900 square feet.

The concept is new only in the sense that it is rarely seen these days. It was once the standard for the residential development of Port Washington as it spread from the city center.

  The developer took cues from 20th-century houses in neighborhoods on Port’s near south side (counter intuitively known as the Canada side) and along Milwaukee and Montgomery streets to the north. Shaffer’s houses share a grace note of these older neighborhoods: front doors, porches and yards that face the street free of the clutter of prominent garages.

Alleys make possible this contrast to the large, modern homes that feature yawning three-car garages as part of their facades by providing access to garages attached to houses behind living quarters. What’s more, they add to a tidy look of the neighborhood by allowing trash pick-up out of the street view.

The intended result in this part of the development, designed with the goal of being affordable for first-time home buyers, is a close-knit neighborhood on narrow, eventually tree-lined, streets laid out in traditional geometric grids.

It’s a pleasant image to contemplate, though much of the subdivision will not look like that. Seven 23-unit apartment buildings will be built in another section of the property, as well as 15 large houses. The density of the development and the total of 161 apartments drew criticism at a Plan Commission informational meeting from some residents with homes near the proposed development.

This is expected and understandable. Traffic will increase. Homeowners who lived for years with a view of open fields will now see blocks of houses and apartment buildings. Countless city residents before them have had similar experiences as empty land near existing subdivisions was developed. In this case, as in those, it’s necessary to spur Port’s sluggish growth.

That growth will come with measurable economic benefits. The development is expected to add $75 million to the tax base and yield more than $1 million a year in property taxes.

Just as important, the population growth it stimulates will add vitality to the city, support local businesses and give a boost to the Port Washington-Saukville School District with increased state aid for a growing enrollment.

The Common Council should approve the Shaffer development to jumpstart the growth Port Washington needs.