Introducing the Bamboo Grove Pocket Neighborhood

Bamboo Grove is a miniature neighborhood with six compact, affordable and energy efficient houses is designed for an acre of land a few blocks from downtown Crozet. Shared green space between the houses anchors the neighboorhood together while walking trails and sidewalks connect it to nature and the surrounding community. Common landscaped areas, patio, bicycle parking and mail area will be located between the vehicles and the houses to encourage the informal interaction so essential to build a feeling of belonging to a community.

This type of housing is often referred to as a “Cottage Court”, “Bungalow Court”, or “Pocket Neighborhood” and provides a housing choice that is desirable, affordable and very rare in the current housing stock. All the houses will have a compact design which will help them fit in well with the surrounding neighborhood and will make them more affordable than almost every new house being constructed in the surrounding Crozet area.

The area next to the stream running through the property will be dedicated for Public use as a part of the proposed future greenway trail system that is shown in the Crozet Master Plan.

Rain gardens, native surface landscaping and other green infrastructure techniques will be used as much as possible to manage stormwater from hard surfaces on the site and from the areas draining through it. The site lies next to a small stream, so careful design will be used to filter and slow down the water travelling through the site as much as possible with tools that work with the existing environmental features. The existing topography will be respected and used to enhance the character of the neighborhood.

Published by Chris

Chris Fuller dreams up possibilities for resilient housing communities with his friends at Staengl Engineering.

2 thoughts on “Introducing the Bamboo Grove Pocket Neighborhood

  1. Hi Chris! My name is Natalie and I live with my family in Harrisonburg. I would like to live in a pocket neighborhood and have been learning more about them over the past few years. I recently decided maybe the only way to live in one was to build/develop one myself so Im starting the research and planning journey/process. Sounds like you came to a similar conclusion a few years ago. Would love to connect and hear more about your journey. I went to UVa so Im familiar with the Crozet area and it sounds like you all got your zoning approval- Congratulations! I havent yet found more recent updates on Bamboo Grove-have you broken ground yet?

    Like

    1. Thanks! We are nearing site plan approval, so we’ll be able to break ground very soon. In Charlottesville pocket neighborhoods are starting to pop up as their popularity is growing, but I haven’t seen many in smaller towns in Virginia yet. I would be more than happy to chat about my experiences and help out if you need it. To get in touch use the contact form here: https://bamboogrovecrozet.com/contact/ or here: https://thehousinglab.org/contact/

      Like

Leave a Reply

Fill in your details below or click an icon to log in:

WordPress.com Logo

You are commenting using your WordPress.com account. Log Out /  Change )

Facebook photo

You are commenting using your Facebook account. Log Out /  Change )

Connecting to %s

%d bloggers like this: