A neo–traditional streetscape in The Saluda Club Photos contributed by Bill Barley Club

New Urbanism: Toward an

Architecture of Community,

author Peter Katz illustrates the country’s return to traditional neighborhood planning. Beginning with Seaside, Fla., designed by Andres Duany and Elizabeth Plater– Zyberk around 1980, Katz describes the projected population of 2,000 as comparable with a small town or city neighborhood in the 1920s or 1930s.

Others in the real estate development business have described Seaside as too cute. Seaside was the setting for the movie, “The Truman Show,” which needed an artificial and touched–up environment for the hero played by Jim Carey.

In Columbia, Andres Duany was hired around 2001 by developer Don Tomlin to help with the plan of Lake Carolina, and maybe five years later Tomlin tapped Duany for the proposed layout of the former mental health compound on Bull Street. In both projects, there is a mixed use, a combination of retail, commercial and residential. Residential, though, takes the emphasis.

The Edisto in the Village District in the Saluda River Club Under the influence of the new urbanism, some suburban developers have developed residential communities with plenty of porches and small yards but little in the way of mixed use. The residential subdivision as a derivation of the new urbanism still has a town center. It’s a property owners’ clubhouse with impressive recreational amenities, but it’s not a general store connected to a drug store and a post office surrounded by eateries and small–scale retail, like Seaside.

Columbia’s Walter Taylor in partnership with Bill Theus and Andy White have put neo–traditional planning principles to work along the Saluda River right across the river from Saluda Shoals Park. The development is on Corley Mill Road about halfway between Interstate 20 and the Lake Murray Dam. Called Saluda River Club, Taylor’s 235–acre residential project is really two neighborhoods, the Village District and the River District.

The Subarberry in the Village District in the Saluda River Club In Saluda River Club since late 2008, there have been 16 lot sales and 45 home sales. Homes range in price from about $300,000 to $450,000 in the Village District, while the River District homes run about $500,000 and up.

Available to all of the homeowners at Saluda River Club, the town center for the Village District is the Village Clubhouse, restricted to ages 21 and older. The River District’s clubhouse, however, is open to all ages with its kayaking, canoeing, and fly fishing. The Saluda River is fed upstream by the bottom of Lake Murray, where the water is about 57 degrees year–round, so trout swim along the shores of the River District clubhouse year– round.

The housing at Saluda River Club runs mostly along neo–traditional lines. Some of the houses look like they are Shandon and University Hill transplants, while others suggest they took their aesthetic cues from Charleston’s King Street or Savannah’s Bull Street. Actually, back when the new urbanism began with Katz and Duany, there were many references to Charleston and Savannah. Celebration, the neo–traditional residential development by Disney outside Disney World in central Florida, shows plenty of attributions to Charleston and Savannah.

Service alleys, always with practical appeal besides historic recall from the pre–automobile days of carriage houses in the back, are found behind the houses throughout Saluda River Club. Whether an amenity is from 100 years ago or an accommodation is inserted to meet cutting edge demands from the contemporary wifi set, the critics and the home buyers are coming to terms here.

Saluda River Club is this year’s national winner of

Professional Builder magazine’s Best in American Living Award, also sponsored by the National Association of Home Builders. Virtually sweeping this year’s Home Builders Association of Greater Columbia Awards, Saluda River Club and its marketing firm B. Sheppard Consulting Inc. netted 10 Regal Awards, among the most that any single community has won in the organization’s 20–year history of the awards.

Downstream from Saluda River Club is another development by Taylor and his partners. Called The Reserve on the Saluda, the residential development is a collection of large lots overlooking the Saluda River. There are six interior lots, where Taylor has five left for sale between $175,000 and $225,000. The waterfront lots number 13, and there are four left at prices between $315,000 and $785,000.

Taylor is about to see his first house go up at The Reserve. It’s 4,600 square feet designed by Columbia architect Tim Hance.

Between The Reserve on the Saluda and Saluda River Club, Taylor and his partners are learning to appreciate the river as a barrier against the Great Recession.