A small local housing project, Healdsburg Riverhouse, stole the show at this year’s prestigious PCBC trade show (the Pacific Coast Builders Conference) at Moscone Center in San Francisco. The theme was “The Future of Home,” and on awards night on June 22, the Riverhouse won not one but two gold medals, and three awards of merit, “Golden Nuggets,” from the building industry itself for excellence in the art of design.
The gold medals came in “Best Infill Site Plan Solution” and “Best Single Family Detached Home under 1800 SF”; the separate awards of merit were in “Unique Residential Detached Housing Solution,” “Residential Detached Collection of the Year” and finally “Home of the Year.” This last was a recognition that came at the awards ceremony itself and was a welcome surprise to Healdsburg resident Jim Heid.
It was a strong showing for first-time developer Heid, 65. While he and his wife, Marty McGraw, and his daughter, Mattie Heid (now in Charleston, SC), moved to Healdsburg about 10 years ago, his career in landscape architecture had long taken him around the country.
Heid received his BA in landscape design, but after 15 years of frustration that his designs weren’t getting implemented, he went to MIT for a master’s in real estate development, “with the idea I would be able to mix my passion for great design with the reality of how to get things done.”
He traveled to Denver, Phoenix, New Orleans, Charleston and elsewhere, often consulting or lecturing on small-scale development and turning himself into a guru of “small” real estate development. In 2016, now settled in Healdsburg, he founded CraftWork, a development company focused on intentional place-building. Under the CraftWork name, he transformed a vacant storefront in Healdsburg’s Mitchell Shopping Center into a co-working or shared office space (455 Healdsburg Ave.), which opened in early 2020. Now, pandemic largely in the past, it is thriving.
CraftWork and the development of Riverhouse took shape almost simultaneously. “A lot of bumps along the way, a lot of sleepless nights,” Heid said of the time. The fact that he was overdue on a book contract didn’t help his sleep any. That book, Building Small, was published last year by the Urban Land Institute, with the subtitle “A toolkit for real estate entrepreneurs, civic leaders and great communities.”
The book turns the word “small” from an adjective into a noun, not just a description, but a philosophy. It makes a strong argument that people prefer people-scale development, local when possible, environmentally conscious as a given—“to build places that allow human activity to thrive,” as he said in his TEDx talk at Sonoma Country Day School on March 8 this year.
There’s a bit of jargon one has to get used to in talking with Heid, but it’s part of his job—which includes training small town residents as well as professionals in how to make small development work. Among his training programs is “Housing Our Community,” a three-part series of workshops that educates the public on housing terminology and products, as well as open dialog between developers and locals, and concludes with a survey of what type of housing residents would like to see in their community.
When he did the program in early 2015 for the City of Healdsburg, he was pleasantly surprised to see that the “cottage court” housing option was by far the most popular of the six presented, gaining almost a third of all votes (32%). Developed in the Pacific Northwest, cottage court was a style Heid had long been drawn to: a small community of houses and cottages, linked by paths instead of driveways, emphasizing community over commerce, with a shared courtyard or green.
He decided that perhaps it was time to walk the talk, and he became a developer of housing in Healdsburg.
First one, then a second, adjoining lot on Kennedy Lane became available early in 2016. With two investors, Dan Carroll and Robert Eu, they purchased the lots and began the work on a cottage court development to consist of four two-story houses, four one-story cottages and four ADUs—Accessory Dwelling Units—to be sold at market rate.
Working with architects Eric Zuziak, president of JZMK Partners, and Kevin Stadler, associate and senior designer of JZMK, the team created a development that would preserve native trees, build with energy efficiency, and keep the garages and driveways at the perimeter of the property instead of down the middle.
Cottage court was a style Heid had long been drawn to: a small community of houses and cottages, linked by paths instead of driveways, emphasizing community over commerce, with a shared courtyard or green.
“It was designed and approved using existing zoning codes,” said Heid. “That was one of the major achievements of the project—to get that rich and interesting form using existing codes. And one of the examples of how great the City was as they helped us work through the challenges of a fairly archaic code.”
To get to Riverhouse, turn south at the Healdsburg Bridge onto Kennedy Lane into the Presidential Estates neighborhood, but it’s not a tourist stop. The houses have an early 20th century feel of coastal craftsman, with large covered porches, two bedrooms-plus, high-ceilinged great rooms and an open floor plan atop panel flooring. Every cottage has a Dutch door entrance, painted its own color to reflect that house’s particular name: Green House, Citrus House, Fig House and River House.
The first two houses went on the market about one year ago, then two more, until they were all sold by the end of 2021. Their popularity proved that the concept worked. Judging from a visit paid there a couple weeks ago, the residents are giddy with their good luck at finding such a place to land in Healdsburg: They tend to gather in the common green for “happy hour,” visit neighboring wineries and parks together, and go out to lunch.
“It’s because we all come in with that mindset; that’s why we want to be in a community,” said Jim Borgasano, who moved into the Redwood Cottage last September with his husband, Stan. “So we’re more open than when you would move into a neighborhood, just to move in. We chose to move in here; I think that’s the way it was set up.”
“[Heid’s] got a vision, and I think we really appreciate that,” said Linda Streb, who with her husband, Patrick, purchased the one called River House, also in September, 2021. “He really loves it; he’s here a lot. He looks after the place—he’s very invested, which is good for us.”
“We’re in a little bit of paradise here,” said Borgasano.
When the awards of merits were announced several weeks ago—recognition in all of the four categories they entered—Heid began to harbor a not-so-secret hope that Riverhouse would win one of the gold medals; that it won two in the final vote was a remarkable achievement. “I have to say it was a lot more emotional (in a really good way) than I would have anticipated,” he said afterwards.
He recalled, “When our second ‘Oscar’ was announced, the emcee prefaced it with, ‘And the winner shows that you don’t have to be big to be mighty!’”
Riverhouse is located at 101-125 Kennedy Lane, Healdsburg. It is easily seen from the street, though it is private property; and the walkways, no matter how inviting, have small gates to discourage walk-throughs.
