Architect Jack Hawkins, AIA, first arrived in Reno, Nev., more than 30 years ago. Despite the city’s seedy reputation at the time, Hawkins was drawn to its relatively low cost of living and myriad outdoor opportunities, given the proximity to Lake Tahoe and the Sierra Nevada Mountains. Hawkins set up his firm, Hawkins & Associates in the Midtown District, a short jaunt—but a world away—from downtown Reno’s urbanist fever dream of Modernist kitsch, faded Old West grandeur, surface parking lots, and superblock casinos.
The Midtown District is home to an eclectic, diverse group of retailers and restaurants. Virginia Street serves as the main commercial artery, flanked by residential neighborhoods of humble but handsome bungalows. The commercial corridor was nearly abandoned and the residential neighborhoods were struggling when Hawkins arrived, but now, the area is a healthy commercial and residential destination. It benefited from a re-envisioning of Virginia Street to make it more pedestrian-friendly and accessible. At the same time, it became a more appealing prospect for buyers and renters after the fallout from the 2008 financial crisis drove up housing prices elsewhere.
“Reno has experienced exponential growth after the crash,” says Hawkins. “The shattering of the Bay Area’s housing prices has been driving people to places like Boise and Reno, and that hasn’t stopped.”
“Sustainability is, at its core, an economic issue,” he says. “It is not just a material issue.”
Hawkins set out to develop a project that could establish a principle of economic sustainability from a land-use perspective, as well as material sustainability, embedded within the architecture of the project itself.
In 2008, he developed Modern on Cheney, a cluster of four contemporary infill residences on Cheney Street in the burgeoning historic Wells Avenue Bungalow District. Hawkins and his wife have lived in one of the units since their development. Each unit’s roughly 1,000 square feet of living space feels more expansive due to the airiness throughout, created by a long span of clerestory windows and glass doors, a clever use of recessed spaces, and a meshing of indoor-outdoor areas offering expansive views of the nearby Sierra Nevada mountains.
The success of Modern on Cheney established a precedent for density in an area of predominantly single-family housing. Coupled with Reno’s increasing population and economic growth, Hawkins reasoned that similar style developments could easily take root in the area. Roughly 15 years after his first development, Hawkins is teaming up—as an architect—with a local couple, Piper Stremmel and Chris Reilly, to develop Midtown Garden Homes, an extension of his original idea at a different scale.
“We are looking holistically at incorporating all of the great things about the area and geography,” Hawkins says.
This will manifest in a program that mixes a single-family residence and a duplex that meet the street, plus three additional duplexes in back offering units of 400 and 700 square feet. All of the units will connect through interior courtyard garden spaces designed to create an intentional community. Sustainability is baked into the program, including passive solar, minimal duct work, landscaping that acts as a block-level mitigation technique to minimize climate effects, and, potentially, low-cost, vernacular cooling systems—à la “swamp coolers”—that are common in dry climates like Reno’s.
Stremmel and Reilly most recently developed The Jesse, a six-room boutique hotel and high-end taqueria and bar on the outskirts of downtown. Situated in a historic building, the hotel is a repurposed and reimagined piece of old Reno. Stremmel, a Reno native, is an artist and entrepreneur who moved away from the city and traveled the world before returning. Reilly works for Tesla by day. Together, they are carving out a niche for unique, forward-thinking development within the city.
“It was not our intention to be developers,” Reilly says. “But we loved the neighborhood—it’s our neighborhood—and we wanted to invest in it, too.”
Stremmel sees the different perspectives that each partner brings to the project—she as the boomeranger back to Reno; Hawkins as the neighborhood visionary; and Reilly as the new blood excited by its prospects—as a boon to their combined focus for an outcome that is both equitable and sustainable, contributing to Reno’s reputation as a desirable place to live now and in the years to come.
In turn, Hawkins sees Stremmel and Reilly’s equity approach as more than just a labor of love, but as a mechanism to make the economics behind Midtown Garden Homes work.
“The only reason that Midtown Garden Homes pencils is that the developers can hang onto it for the long term,” Hawkins says. Noting the front-loaded soft costs associated with rezoning concerns, among other development hurdles, Hawkins was strategic in advising the developers to separate the individual parcels that compose the entirety of the project. In the event of liquidity needs, one part of the project could potentially be sold while the other components are maintained, opening the door for more profit potential down the line.
It’s another way in which sustainability from an economic perspective is built into the design model.
“We all want to make money, but how do we do so responsibly?” Hawkins asks. “How can you increase density with an urban infill project and create a better overall environment at the same time?”
Midtown Garden Homes aims to find out.
