Meeting with Clarion Homes

Community meeting December 11th, 2024

This is the project that Clarion Homes presented us with last night. The top edge of their project is on Horseshoe Road. The bottom edge touches 3606 Calista Road. At this point, the plan is in its infancy, so the retaining ponds are not included. That is one of the reasons they stated that there would probably be less than 38 homes.

The edge of the property on the north ends 750 feet from the intersection of Calista and Horseshoe.

This photo is looking down Horseshoe if you were turning off of Calista. This road is 16 feet wide. They will be widening the road to 18 feet, from this point to the end of their property which is approximately 750 feet. They are not required to add any turning lanes.

The entrance to the west will be on Calista. Clarion’s entrance lines up with the driveway to the farm on the left of this photo. No upgrades will be made on Calista.

They assured us that each home will have its own septic. The perk has been completed as of this meeting.

The homes will range from 2000-2800 square feet. The price point is $500-$800k.

From their research, they have found that “a majority of our clients are either empty nesters or retired. Therefore, the impact on schools should be minimal. Of the most recent 42 homes we have built in Creekview Estates in Gallatin, only 13 of these households had children in the home….. In addition, usually around a third of our clients have at least one family member working from home as in-home offices are a common request. This will lessen the impact on traffic especially during peak hours.” Quoted from their presentation packet.

They repeated stated that there was not a market for homes on larger lots than .75-2 acres. The largest lot on this plan is just over 3 acres. There are only two other lots over an acre.

There were roughly fifty people in attendance. The community rejected this plan. When the builder asked us what we wanted, we told him 3-5 acre lots with homes. We would not even be fighting that. He stated they could not afford that.

This project isn’t terrible. The homes look like the other homes on Luton Way, and the 21 that were built on Calista north and south of Bill Moss. The lot sizes are similar as well.

This particular project, again, is not the issue. I spoke to a woman last night that lives in the area, and she assured me that as soon as this R-30 rezone goes in, the developer will be back to the Frost property asking for the same rezone. Clarion, over and over, told us that they are not building a “cluster” and they weren’t changing their plan. We get it. We aren’t mad at you Clarion, we are standing at the floodgates holding the doors.

This isn’t all on Clarion though. This is on the property owners too. Let me start this with, it’s your property. If you want to make money on it, go for it. However, you can’t make as much money as you could possibly get out of it and then be mad when no one else likes your plan. The 39 acres sold for $1.86 million.

Those 39 acres could have been sold in 3-5 acre lots. A quick Zillow search found a few lots for sale in the area. Yes, a few. There isn’t much in the way of lots for sale around White House.

Let’s say he could have sold 10 lots of 3 acres in that property for $150k each. That’s still $1.5 million. He’s worried about what will go in next to him. Well, at 3 acre lots, you are pretty safe that lovely homes will go in next to you.

Then the real estate agents say, “But there isn’t a market for these large lots with expensive homes.”

That’s funny. There are five homes that were sold in 2022 on five acre lots on New Hall Road, the cheapest was $766k. Another agent in the meeting stated that she has people asking for 1+ acre lots. I remember speaking to someone that moved into The Parks that said they wanted a bigger lot, but there wasn’t anything available.

The biggest news of the night is that this request for the rezone will NOT be in front of the county commission this month. They have pulled the request.

The builder stated that they would not go before the commission without approval from the planning board. They will be back, just not this month at county commission.

Honestly, I feel for this builder. They purchased this property without really understanding the climate in this area. His product is nice. His family is local. It wasn’t Lennar or Ryan. He asked me what we wanted, and I said 13 homes. He said he couldn’t afford that. Well sir, we can’t afford your rezone.

Full video of meeting can be found https://rumble.com/v5ywzyk-clarion-community-meeting.html. (if the link doesn’t work shoot me an email and I’ll see if I can upload it somewhere else)