December 22, 2005

By Lauren Heaton

Local developers Suzanne Clauser and Mike Alexander envision “small homes” for the residential neighborhood they plan to build off Dayton Street next year. They began platting the 1.7-acre parcel owned by Clara Mae Stancliff and located just east of the Antioch Company earlier this year and presented an informal concept plan for their planned unit development to Village Planning Commission on Monday.

Clauser, who has built and renovated two affordable homes in the village, and Alexander, a local home builder and renovator, said that Yellow Springs needs more housing and that they want to build the kind of neighborhood where seniors, singles and small young families can live. The homes they plan to build aren’t necessarily low-priced, but they are small homes on small lots, which will keep the cost down, Clauser said.

“They are my reaction to what’s being done south of the Village,” Clauser said, referring to the larger, more expensive homes planned for the Birch III development. Because she also feels that through the efforts of groups such as Home, Inc. and Starfish, homes for lower-income residents are available, Clauser wants to build moderately-priced homes for residents with moderate incomes, she said.

Plans for the Stancliff neighborhood include two-story homes averaging 1,400 square feet on 10 lots of about .1 acre each. Many of the homes were chosen from the COOLhouseplans.com Web site and contain two to three bedrooms and several bathrooms, and for all of them Clauser insisted they have a veranda or screened-in porch, she said. The houses are clustered in the center of the plat around one main through street with a ring of common green space encircling the plat.

While Alexander will likely do all the construction, Clauser and Alexander each will build and sell several of the homes, and they also plan to sell several of the lots as empty lots, they said.

Planning Commission members, interim Village manager Phil Hawkey and Village-contracted engineer John Eastman all commented on the plat layout and focused on issues such as roadways, utility easements and stormwater drainage. At the request of the Village, the 11th lot at the north end of the right of way will be left empty to allow for road access for potential development on the Kinney property. Eastman recommended that if the road were extended into the Kinney property, the Village should dedicate the right of way and extend it all the way to Yellow Springs-Fairfield Road. He also suggested that Clauser/Alexander, Kinney and future beneficiaries of the roadway could share the cost of extending and possibly widening the road from Dayton Street up to the Stancliff neighborhood.

Clauser and Alexander plan to submit a formal concept plan of the Stancliff neighborhood at plan board’s meeting next month. The developers hope to have their plans approved by early summer and possibly start building before the fall, Clauser said. The purchase of the Stancliff property is contingent on the approval of the plans, she said.

Clauser is a former member of Home, Inc. and has long tried to support maintaining a diverse housing stock in the village, she said. While Alexander doesn’t claim to be a proponent of affordable housing per se, he is committed to increasing the housing stock in Yellow Springs with “good, quality, smaller-scale” homes, which he feels aren’t currently available, he said. The two have worked together to build two moderately priced homes on Dayton Street in the last two years, and they both agreed that they compliment each other well.

“Mike knows developing and surveying, and he’s a builder who knows how to handle the business end,” Clauser said of her partner.

“Sue is a great lady to work with, and she has the resources and has used them to help people,” Alexander said. “I’ll build the houses, and she does the planning, chooses the houses, decorates them and does some of the landscaping. She has a lot of energy.”

Clauser, who had a career as a screenwriter and novelist, had difficulty writing after her husband Charlie Clauser died several years ago, she said. She thought she might have to give up working altogether until three years ago, when she started building houses that she believes people in the village need.

“I can’t tell you how wonderful it is; I have a whole new life,” she said.

Contact: lheaton@ysnews.com