Arbours of Keswick offers room to grow in Southwest Edmonton

RYAN GARNER, EDMONTON JOURNAL Updated: March 15, 2019

Neighbouring the river valley in the heart of Edmonton’s growing southwest is a new community gaining attention, Arbours of Keswick.

Spanning over 160 acres, this new neighbourhood from Rohit Land Development will welcome over 1,000 new families and homes to the area. Arbours of Keswick is a finalist for Edmonton’s 2019 Best New Community in the Canadian Home Builders Association’s Awards of Excellence in Housing.

Located a short drive from the Currents of Windermere shopping centre, Arbours of Keswick features many amenities and will be home to a K-9 school, a new playground and a park, making it a community that will grow with your family.

For the golf enthusiast, the River Ridge Golf Club, Windermere Golf and Country Club and Jagare Ridge Golf Club are all just minutes away.

Arbours of Keswick is comprised of three areas: The Estates, The Arbours, and The Towne, where residents will find innovative architecture and homes with remarkable curb appeal to perfectly fit any lifestyle.

Gordon King Pond is centered in the community. This natural area is surrounded by multi-use trails connecting to neighbouring communities and ultimatelythe river valley. Large steel arbours, a new playground, and commemorative plaques will be installed this summer to tell Gordon King’s story and add character to the area’s walking trails.

One of the first things you’ll notice coming into the Estates at Arbours of Keswick are the open and generous entry features, giving a wide and comfortable welcome to the community. These larger-than-expected areas provide room for enhanced landscaping, including more boulevard trees, and feature fencing. Here, you will find triple car garage luxury homes with classic and modern architecture built by award-winning builders Dolce Vita Homes, Kanvi Homes, Kimberley Homes, and Parkwood Master Builder.

The landscaping features continue into the Arbours. As you drive down King Vista, the main street leading to Gordon King Pond, the enhanced landscaping combines with modern and traditional styles of Streetscape homes giving the community its unique curb appeal.

Streetscape homes are the latest innovation in housing, where the veranda and front doors line up with the front of the garage, whereas typical homes have deep front entrances behind large garages, hidden from the street. The result is an upscale façade with the same square footage and price as a typical home. The Streetscape homes are built on wider lots and available from Excel Homes, Kanvi Homes, and Rohit Communities.

Designer duplexes are also available in Arbours of Keswick. Rohit Communities offers their innovative front-back duplex, a contemporary and unique layout where one home has a street-facing garage, and the attached duplex home has a lane-facing garage. The duplexes offer six designer interior styles with your choice of double attached or detached garage.

ARBOURS OF KESWICK

Where: Located in southwest Edmonton, close to Currents of Windermere and walking distance to the river valley, Arbours of Keswick is accessible via Hiller Road from 170 Street SW. At the end of Hiller Road, turn south on 182 Street SW.

Launched: Phase One launched in 2017 with Estate, Streetscape, and Duplex Showhomes opening in Fall 2018.

Builders: There are six award-winning builders including Dolce Vita Homes, Excel Homes, Kanvi Homes, Kimberley Homes, Parkwood Master Builder, and Rohit Communities. Excel, Kanvi and Rohit Communities are building Streetscape homes, as well as standard single-family homes. The Estates Phase One features homes from Kanvi, Kimberley,and Parkwood Master Builder. Dolce Vita Homes has been added to the Estates builders in Phase Two.

Features: A total site area of 160 acres with a central pond water feature, pergola, park and playground — street names to honour remarkable Edmontonians, walking trails connecting to parks, and the river valley trail system.

Developer: Rohit Land Development is a premier land developer with many developments in the Edmonton area, including Callaghan and Glenridding Heights in the southwest, Starling at Big Lake in the northwest, and Timberidge at Edgemont and Woodhaven Edgemont in the west.

Beautiful streetscapes contribute to a sense of community and belonging

ANDREA COX, FOR THE EDMONTON JOURNAL Updated: April 27, 2019

Edmonton’s face is rapidly changing, spurred on by a host of new communities sprouting up in all quadrants. But, good community design is about so much more than just plopping down houses and building roads. It’s about crafting beautiful homes that blend together in a harmonious streetscape, and thoughtful planning that incorporates the power of scenery, nature, trees, boulevard and street design, and strong amenities — the framework that shapes and activates that series of intangibles — connectedness, belonging, and pride, that we call community.

“The most important thing to keep in mind, whether we are building new or redeveloping existing areas is that we are building our city for our people. Great cities are great not because all of the buildings are perfectly designed, but because they are fundamentally built to work for the people who inhabit them,” says Kalen Anderson, director, City Plan, Office of the Chief Planner, Urban Form and Corporate Strategic Development at the City of Edmonton.

“In order for a well-designed urban environment to emerge, we need our municipal planning tools and approaches to set a strong and supportive foundation and then we need the innovation and creativity of the private sector to lead the way,” says Anderson.

And that formula is transforming the look of Edmonton, while meeting the increasingly sophisticated demands of its ever-growing population.

The Village at Griesbach, designed and conceptualized by Canada Lands Co. to transform the once active military base in the city’s northwest quadrant, was one of Edmonton’s first master-planned communities to feature new urbanist design principles based on sustainability, walkability and beautiful streetscape designs.

Plans for the 251-hectare community were drafted in 2002 with the first homes framed in early 2003. Since then, the community, which features four lakes, interconnected walking trails and wide boulevards with tree-lined appeal, has evolved, incorporating urban designs that emulate cutting-edge designs found in cities like Portland and Seattle, while still maintaining the new urbanist principles of connectivity and walkability.

“It really has a completely different feeling than the standard suburban community,” says Marvin Neumann, senior director of real estate, Canada Lands Co.

The community features a central park with axial roads that extend like the spokes on a wheel. The lakes chain across the community, while walking paths laced with interactive exhibits and public spaces brimming with sculpture and public art that nods to the community’s heritage creates a walkable and connected environment where neighbours stop to chat and kids feel free to kick a ball with friends in park space.

“We really tried to de-emphasize the automobile by implementing the modern grid system that you see in new urbanist developments,” says Neumann. While some of the newer phases also have a chicane type of road pattern, emulating turn of the 20th century community designs by New York City’s Central Park designer Frederick Olmstead.

Streetscapes in Griesbach are also innovative, incorporating designs that ditch the front drive garage concept, opening up the home’s front facade for large verandas. Homes feature old-world architecture; rear-attached garages, many with secondary carriage suites, and reduced front setbacks — all features that encourage interaction with neighbours and the community.

“We really wanted to give it more of a pedestrian feel that emphasizes good quality architecture, staying true to the older Edmonton character in communities like Glenora, with its century-old tree-lined boulevards, separate sidewalks, alleys and front porches,” says Neumann.

In addition, the community features unique zoning that allows for different housing types to be placed side by side in the same block.

Similarly, designed for those who enjoy an active lifestyle, the master-planned community of Stillwater in Edmonton’s northwest features an abundance of green space and a central village amenity centre, along with a sleek architectural presence defined by European design.

Stillwater’s home designs are varied and include single-family, urban townhomes, and rear-laned townhomes. Innovative architectural designs incorporate spacious front porches, larger rooms, expansive windows and set back, integrated garages that don’t dominate the streetscape.

Founded in Ontario and now with projects across Canada and the United States, Mattamy Homes is the developer and sole builder behind Stillwater.

In the new southwest community of the Arbours of Keswick, a finalist for Best New Community 2019, Rohit Land Development has also introduced some stunning home designs that incorporate several architectural “firsts” for the community’s hand-selected homebuilder group. Wide sidewalks, plenty of nature, walking trails and a central pond feature set the back drop for three architecturally prominent enclaves — the Estates, the Arbours and the Towne — all connected with an arbour motif. Home styles are varied and include estate, single-family and multi-family designs.

“The community shows very well, with enhanced landscaping and quality finishes. The curb appeal is beautiful,” says Rohit’s senior project manager of land development Doug VandenBrink.

Within the Arbours, the builder group of Excel Homes, Kanvi and Rohit Communities has innovated “Streetscape” architecture that allows for integrated garages, expansive front porches, lots of glazing, and beautiful entranceways to create an inviting and welcoming street design. Lots are wider with less depth to encourage interaction with neighbours and give a welcoming feeling.

“It creates this really walkable and approachable streetscape where people want to reach out and say hi to their neighbours. People are going to be proud to live here,” says VandenBrink.