SPRINGDALE, Ark. — As Northwest Arkansas rapidly grows, it’s getting harder for many to find affordable housing.
For developers, rising costs and scarcity of land are driving up costs of construction, and some are looking for ways to help.
One idea some developers are trying around the area is building taller rather than wider. Cottage court developments, or ‘pocket neighborhoods,’ are popping up around Bentonville, Fayetteville and Springdale.
Zach and Sarah Brothers are the developers for a new cottage court development in Springdale called The Hideaway.
The couple said the idea with these neighborhoods is to build taller homes closer together, resulting in more housing options and more affordable costs for construction and homebuyers.
In Northwest Arkansas and around the country, many cities are working to adjust zoning to allow for housing concepts like this.
The Brothers say they were inspired to start this project when their own children entered the housing market and struggled to find options.
“We have a 28 and a 25-year-old who were getting into the market at the time that the costs were going up and up and up, and we saw them and their friends not be able to find a property that they could purchase in an area that they wanted to be in,” Sarah said.
“The sprawl was going further and further out. They wanted to be close to things, close to where they could walk or ride their bikes to restaurants and get coffee and events and stuff like that. That was our first motivation was to try to provide a product that they would be interested in, or their friends, or anybody else, a single person or a couple or whatever.”
The Brothers said this also gives another option to people who want to invest in a home rather than renting, consolidating space to allow for a nice home at a lower price in an area where the property value will increase over time.
“With the rising costs, especially in downtown urban areas, if you can find a plot of land, even though it's small, you can do a creative project like this where you just put the homes closer together and just go up a little bit higher,” Zach said.
“There's a lot of character to these cottage court-type developments. As you can see with ours, with the porches that face each other, and then the parking on the outside, we feel like it'll develop a lot of community with the people that decide to live here.”
In designing The Hideaway, the Brothers said it was important to them to maintain a seamless look with the rest of the area.
"It was really important that we fit in with the neighborhood," Sarah said. "We did not want this to be something that looked like it was brand new and made the neighbors uncomfortable ... We did a lot of walking, driving around, looking at the colors of the homes that are around here, the styles of the homes that are around here, and ... even the color palette that we chose, trying to make it something that would blend in and look like it could have been here for quite some time, instead of something that's brand new."
The Hideaway is still under construction and is located within walking distance of Downtown Springdale.