by Beth Slater
Staff Writer
THE DAILY RECORD, JULY 27 — Mack Bissette, with his company SRG Homes & Neighborhoods, has been building the Springfield neighborhood up and out of the shadow of its former self.
Bissette’s company started building in Jacksonville in 2003. The homes are brand new, not refurbished or restored like most of the rest of Springfield, and follow the Certificate of Appropriateness requirement for the neighborhood. Bissette calls the homes, which are predominately two-story, Carpenter-style, but they’re also sometimes called Prairie or Florida Cracker. Before SRG moved to Jacksonville, the company built the same style homes in a similar area of Atlanta, the East Atlanta area near Agnes Scott College.
Bissette didn’t hesitate when asked why he targeted Springfield.
“It’s the best market and the best place for what we do,” he said. “We’ve essentially only built in urban areas. We don’t build in the suburbs.
“Where can you build high quality, single-family homes in the urban core? In Springfield. In Riverside, Ortega and San Marco, they build ‘McMansions.’ We don’t build ‘McMansions.’ We believe in higher quality, not higher square footage.”
Bissette said Springfield’s style and abundance of property also made the area attractive for redevelopment.
“Springfield has roughly 150 to 200 lots we can build a business around. Plus, it’s got the most unique architecture. The quality of the architecture ranks up there with Avondale,” he said.
“Back at the turn of the century, people didn’t want to build on low-lying areas. All the decision makers built over here,” he added, citing bankers and ship captains as former Springfield residents. “This area, hands down, beats any area in Atlanta. Maybe (not) Inland Park, but it doesn’t have the magnitude we have here.”
The City of Jacksonville contributed to Bissette’s decision to move his business and his family.
“Atlanta city government is hard to work with,” said Bissette. “With the Better Jacksonville Plan, government is proactive and they try to revitalize downtown and revitalize Springfield. We’ve never seen a city government like that. You’re looking at a pro-business government and a great area architecturally.”
Springfield’s proximity to downtown contributes to the neighborhood’s quality of life, which Bissette said was another reason to build half-million dollar homes in a formerly blighted area.
“We go to JMOMA, to the Cummer, we use Met Park, or right to the symphony. You can’t do that in Atlanta, it takes an hour. Logistically it’s a nightmare,” he said.
Bissette said the trend in building is moving to “new urbanism,” which “promotes the creation and restoration of diverse, walkable, compact, vibrant, mixed-use communities composed of the same components as conventional development, but assembled in a more integrated fashion, in the form of complete communities,” according to www.newurbanism.org. “There’s a big national trend to redevelop urban cores,” such as New York City’s Harlem, San Francisco and Atlanta. “Atlanta is second tier in that but Atlanta is done so it’s coming to cities like Nashville and Jacksonville. It’s the value of the urban core experience.”
Most people interested in SRG homes are in their late 20s and early 30s and are urban professionals seeking something different, said Bissette.
“It’s a new generation of people. People are starting to understand how much cost is involved in commuting,” he said. “If nothing else, it costs time and frustration, plus the cost of gas. People are fed up with commuting and the wear and tear on a family. There’s a lack of quality of life because you’re in the car all the time. In Atlanta, Los Angeles and San Francisco, it’s true.
“On top of that, people are more open to diverse lifestyles than they used to be. People don’t want to be in a cookie-cutter house. We frequently hear that ‘We don’t know our neighbor.’ It’s car-oriented. You drive into the garage, close the door, don’t come out until the next day. Or you stay in the back yard.”
In-town living, as Bissette calls it, lends itself to ‘neighborliness.’
“With front porches and small lots, there’s no backyard to hide behind. There’s a lot of walking, a lot of biking. In the suburbs there are no sidewalks,” he said. “Since 9/11 especially, there’s a sense of nesting. People like to come home and know their neighbors.
“We believe that’s the trend, just like the ranch was the trend for 20 or 30 years. New urbanism is the next major trend. It makes sense. I think governments finally realize it, too. You don’t have to build a new school or a new road. Sure, you have to repair that road, but that should cost less than the price of suburban growth.”
Since Springfield is a limited area and SRG has bought most of the lots available, the company can only do so much more in the neighborhood. Bissette said his next move will be more toward downtown or into Brooklyn.
“We have about two to three years left in Atlanta, maybe two to three years in Springfield. From here we’ll go to downtown eventually, maybe do a three-story live-work. We’d like to be in Brooklyn. That’s going to take a couple years,” he said.
“It took two years for Urban Design Associates to design it and there’s a 10-year implementation period,” Bissette said of the design by the consulting firm, UDA, that is the blueprint for Brooklyn. “By that time we hope to be part of Brooklyn.”
Bissette is optimistic that SRG can reinvigorate Brooklyn similar to what has happened to Springfield, and that Springfield’s growth will not wither.
“We used a strategy that most wouldn’t do. We build in the worst area first, in terms of crime and trash. If you can do $5 million worth of business in the worst part of Springfield, you can do it everywhere,” he said.
“People said don’t go to the east side (of Main Street in Springfield). We presold every one on the east side.”