Charter Homes looks to future, building ‘places’ in Cranberry
For Rob Bowman, president of Charter Homes and Neighborhoods, what makes a neighborhood isn’t solely the houses in it.
“What we find today is people think about the place that they live (as) creating moments and memories for very short periods of time, kind of unplanned, ‘let’s get together and do something,’” Bowman said. “That’s what we find people are really looking for.”
The idea of creating a “place” as opposed to a row of buildings, where residents and visitors can gather socially and live their lives as well as reside, has been a driving philosophy behind Charters’ two large developments in the Cranberry Township region.
Charter, a neighborhood and home builder with projects across the state, is the developer behind the Meeder complex, across the street from the Cranberry municipal building.
Built on the 57-acre site of the former Meeder family farm at the corner of Route 19 and Rochester Road, the mixed-use development has about 380 residential units planned in total. About 260 of the units, a little under two-thirds, are built, a mixture of townhomes and single-family homes.
The company’s upcoming Crescent development, which will take up 114.4 acres off of Coolsprings Drive near the UPMC Lemieux Sports Complex, is being built with that same philosophy in mind.
Phase 1 of the development will consist of 46 single-family residential lots, 103 townhouse units and 288 apartment units. In all, the development will contain 790 units when completed, with more than 550 multifamily homes and townhomes. About 9,300 square feet of the development is designated for nonresidential use.
“The first thing I personally do is spend a couple of days on the property, just listening and watching and looking for what makes this property unique,” Bowman said. “We are very careful about being thoughtful about how we create the neighborhood on the land, starting there, to all the way through to having people move into the houses.”
Charter held an “open house” for Crescent on Oct. 15, inviting people to preview the floor plans for the upcoming neighborhood. According to Bowman, some future residents already have purchased and reserved homes in Crescent, and he expects the first residents will move in in summer 2023.
The neighborhood, once finished, will include a lake, fishing dock, campsite, shopping area, and green space. About 40% of the site will not be built on, Bowman added, in order to preserve the area’s environmental quality.
“Oftentimes people start their home search looking for square footage, room count, and price, but what we’ve really come to appreciate after doing this for almost 30 years is people want to connect with the place they live,” Bowman said. “The preview event was about sharing the story of the land and the story of the neighborhood, giving people a sense of what we’re looking to create and giving people a chance to see if that’s something they’d be interested in. Is this a place that can become a backdrop to their lives?”
Cranberry Township manager Dan Santoro said the recently completed MSA Thruway will lessen the traffic impacts of the new development.
“With the MSA Thruway, the impact of Crescent on Cranberry Springs Drive will actually be very minimal,” Santoro said. “Most folks won’t notice a difference at all, because there’s major infrastructure there that we built. It was always envisioned to handle all of the development of that area to the north, and that’s why the Cranberry Springs developer and the Crescent developer are paying for the costs associated with the MSA Thruway in addition to the grant funds we have.”
Crescent’s homes will include a “broad range” of housing options, Bowman said, placing people of different generations in proximity to one another.
“I grew up with a Russian grandmother in my home, so I lived in a home with three generations growing up. That was a defining kind of life experience for me,” Bowman said. “There’s a lot of conversation about multigenerational kinds of home plans, but there's a broader opportunity to have a multigenerational neighborhood. Neighbors can be of all different life stages and all different ages. Older neighbors love the youth and vitality of their younger neighbors, and the younger neighbors love to have some wisdom and good advice across the street.”
Bowman described the Meeder neighborhood as a chance to build the “Main Street” of Cranberry, a walkable area where residential plots and local businesses exist side by side. In the center of Meeder, a coffee shop, Coffee Brake, an athletic club, and a brewery, Recon Brewing, face onto a central green.
“Especially after the pandemic, if you can walk three blocks and work, and have a coffee or drink a beer, a lot of people are looking for that,” Bowman said. “It’s hard to find that in new homes. We are just using some ideas that are old and that we didn’t create but that were pretty good when they were first thought about, that we want to incorporate into creating great neighborhoods.”
Many of the people who have moved into Meeder since 2019 have been residents of Cranberry Township or surrounding townships, he added.
“The majority of the people are within a ZIP code of Cranberry or in Cranberry Township, as well as people who move into the Pittsburgh area,” he said. “I would say most people come from a 10-mile radius and are either moving over, moving up, or moving down.”
Meeder isn’t without its detractors, especially for its closer-together arrangement of homes, a fact that Bowman is aware of.
“Everybody has an opinion about growth and land use, regardless of who you are. Everybody cares about where they live,” he said. “We always take comments about our neighborhoods as people demonstrating and caring about where they live.”
The neighborhoods Charter builds may not appeal to everyone, but neither do other options for living in Cranberry, he added.
“Being right in the center of Cranberry Township is an opportunity to create a place where the space between (what) we build is very interesting. It’s not for everybody, just like having a lot out in the country is not for everybody,” he said. “We find that if people are talking about their personal choice, we totally get it might not be for you. But if we have a broader conversation about context and place-making, that’s an opportunity for a place like Cranberry to make places that don’t all look and feel the same. Some will have more houses, some will have less, some will be very people-oriented in terms of connectivity and others won't. I think that’s something Cranberry Township is very thoughtful about, as it continues to be the place everybody wants to be.”
On the municipality end, Santoro says he does see more activity in and around Rochester Road and the municipal center since Meeder was built.
“There are more and more people walking the sidewalks, walking around the municipal center facility and walking internal to Meeder,” he said. “There’s a lot more activity, people walking dogs and their kids and the like, than there had been previously.”
The Meeder neighborhood is one of the most popular developments in the region, he said.
“The market is responding to it, and people like it because it’s one of the fastest growing developments in the Pittsburgh region,” Santoro said. “If it were a failure, it wouldn’t be selling. We’re all different people, what I like might not be what you like. Nobody’s forcing you to buy a house in Meeder, and nobody is forcing you to buy a house in any of the other developments in the township. That’s what this is about: variety, choice and allowing for multiple types of living situations.”
The township has long-term transportation and growth plans, and when it comes to Meeder, the neighborhood met the expectations of the municipality, he said.
“We recognize that there are folks in the township that have mixed opinions about what Meeder is, but I would say it has met the exact intent or expectation of the township from a long-term planning and sustainability perspective,” said Santoro. “Providing that type of variety, or alternatives in housing, is what’s good for the long term sustainability of the community. We have lots of opportunities for folks who want to live in the other types of developments in the township that they’ve been building since the 1990s. This provides another opportunity for different folks.”
