Builder Urbandale Construction has revived sales at Bradley Commons in Stittsville with new models that showcase its townhome offerings.
The four townhome floor plans have been given a facelift with fresh exteriors, plus inside tweaks that build upon the popular features they had in previous versions.
“We do a very good job of utilizing space with our layouts where you feel like you could be in a single,” says Melissa Boudreau, Urbandale’s operations manager. And that’s an important consideration in today’s market, where affordability has become an issue for many.
While Boudreau concedes Urbandale is not a price-point builder, the four models at Bradley Commons are meant to show how easily a family can live in a townhome.
“In today’s market, I think it’s really important to show that,” she notes, but adds, “A townhome could obviously work for any stage of life and that’s what we’re trying to show.”
Urbandale brought in the design firm of Wei Sanchez to style the interiors, with each home designed for a specific family profile.
“We really thought about the buyer and the families but, in terms of styling them, we tried to make them all very different,” says Wei Sanchez co-founder Mark Sanchez.
The models range from the 1,809-square-foot Calypso with three bedrooms to the 2,534-square-foot Santa Maria with four bedrooms and a double-car garage on a corner lot.
As the smallest of the models, although not the smallest townhome in Urbandale’s portfolio, the Calypso has become “hands down our most popular home,” says Boudreau. “It’s a very efficient design for its size and you’re able to get everything you’d ever want.”
Wei Sanchez designed it with a somewhat alpine-inspired interior, envisioning an athletic, outdoor-oriented family — hence the rock-climbing wall in the basement. “We tried to keep that one feeling more casual,” says Sanchez.
The largest is the Santa Maria and this is the first time Urbandale has built a model of it. The builder also added 457 square feet to the floor plan to give it even more of a single-family home feel. “With the Santa Maria, we’re showing that dream townhome where you’re getting everything,” says Boudreau.
It’s styled with a retro revival theme, says Sanchez, with a pastel-coloured design inspired by the ’60s and ’70s. “I think everyone in our studio is in love with the main bath,” he says, with its blue tile, round mirrors and wall sconces.
In between those two model sizes is the Atlantis II, which comes with 2,443 square feet and can either be built with three bedrooms (which includes a very large primary suite) or four bedrooms. In the model, Urbandale has opted for the three-bedroom option since the previous model showed the four bedrooms.
“The Atlantis II is a large and historically extremely popular end unit,” says Boudreau, although she notes it can also come as an interior unit.
It has a Japandi-inspired theme, which means a blend of Japanese and Scandinavian minimalist design, with light, airy and textural touches.
In fact, all three of the models are light and airy, making the fourth model — the Discovery — a marked departure with its moody, more masculine leanings.
At 2,119 square feet, the Discovery is a mid-sized townhome in Urbandale’s lineup, which is why it was chosen as the home to be styled with standard finishes (meaning the absence of upgrades).
“Rather than spending money on upgrades and maybe purchasing something smaller (this model shows how buyers) could finish one of these homes, where it is in the middle of our lineup, and have it look great as standard,” Boudreau says.
Urbandale’s practice is to build one of its floor plans in a model home row with standard features and finishes. “We want our homeowners to feel like their starting off point is strong enough that if they so choose to do upgrades, great, it’s their decision, but we never want them to feel that they have to.”
The Discovery shows how you can utilize darker finishes, she says. It boasts black kitchen cupboards, dark floors and black or deep-toned accents.
Pairing the already-high-standard finishes with quality furnishings helps elevate the overall esthetic, Sanchez says, so that it doesn’t feel like a “standard” home.
“This is the third home we’ve done that’s been standard and it’s so far our favourite,” he says.
Townhomes are definitely the emphasis in this phase of Bradley Commons. It’s the final phase of the community and will see 261 townhome lots and 34 single lots, which are divided equally between Urbandale and fellow builder Richcraft.
Urbandale’s towns are Energy Star-certified, come with much of the smart technology of its singles, and include features such as a finished basement, mud room, air conditioner and smooth ceilings.
At the moment, Urbandale is pre-building the homes and selling them as either move-in ready or taking them to the drywall stage so that buyers can still choose finishes such as flooring, counters and faucets to personalize their home, while shortening the build timeline.
“For the client, they can go and look at their finances and say, ‘Realistically, I’m within this pre-approval window; I feel confident that I’m going to be able to secure my financing and close the home,’” Boudreau says.
“Affordability is such a topic right now, and I think it’s going to continue to be … (for) a lot of people, my hope is that they consider townhomes as a viable option.”
For more on Bradley Commons, visit our development summary.
