Roxanne Downer – My Articles

Greenhouse Effect: At the new wave of eco-friendly seaside communities, the coast is definitely clear.

It’s not easy being green for the man of means. With Al Gore polishing his Nobel Prize and the History Channel airing episodes about the tsunamis and the global fireball that might result if the planet doesn’t get its act together soon, we’ve all gotten the point about reducing our carbon footprint. It’s just that some of us start out with bigger feet than others. You likely already own a Prius and carry your groceries home from Whole Foods in chic canvas bags.

Giving up the plane is simply a non-starter. That leaves the second, third and fourth home. Perhaps at this moment, you’re examining the real-estate section of the El Pedro Daily Mail, comparing prices on beachfront candlelit shacks with their own dedicated “dry” and “wet” composting systems. But we’re here to tell you that there is another way — and it starts with the eight exquisite coastal communities on these pages. Each has been built to exacting environmental standards, and offers enough top-notch luxury and pristine surroundings to make you consider giving up the place in Aspen. There’s no guarantee that purchasing a home in one of these resorts will save the planet, but it certainly couldn’t hurt.

Daniel Island
LOCATION: Charleston, South Carolina
PRICE: Estates $800,000–$5 million
NEAREST AIRPORT: Charleston International Airport (8 miles away)
WEB SITE: danielisland.com

At the end of Gone With the Wind, Rhett told Scarlett that he was headed home to Charleston to “see if somewhere there isn’t something left in life of charm and grace.” Vacation-homebuyers looking for the same could do worse than head for this quasi-island community (technically, it’s a peninsula) jutting into Charleston Harbor. Daniel Island has the look and feel of a late-nineteenth-century Lowlands hamlet if perhaps the Civil War had never occurred and Sub-Zero refrigerators and Dolby surround-sound had come along about 130 years earlier: some streets lined by brick sidewalks, band shells, ice cream parlors and neat two-story twins; others by antebellum mansions with wraparound porches, Jacuzzis and floor-to-ceiling windows. The most exclusive nabe is Daniel Island Park, where the plantation-style estates stretch to 7,000 square feet. Those used to more acreage for their mid-seven figures may be struck at first by the relative proximity of the lots, a result of Daniel Island’s strict land-use policies. But any worries will evaporate once you walk out your long boardwalk, un-tether your canoe and paddle off into the marshes or line up your putt on the Tom Fazio– or Rees Jones–designed golf course and try to block out the gallery of egrets watching expectantly from the creek at the green’s edge. Rhett would have been pleased.

Palmetto Bluff
LOCATION: Bluffton, South Carolina
PRICES: Estates $300,000– $4 million; Family Compounds $2.95 million–$4.95 million
NEAREST AIRPORT: Savannah Airport (30 miles away)
WEB SITE: palmetto-bluff.com

Naturally, anything Charleston does, Savannah is going to want to do better. This new old community set on a 22,000-acre tract just 30 miles outside the Garden of Good and Evil is a warren of metal-roofed cottages, wide-veranda estates planted with fragrant azaleas and camellias and moss-draped oaks that practically echo the song of the South — and that of the bald eagles, hawks and waterfowl that also make their home here. One-third of the property has been set aside as protected preserve, including 600 acres of shoreline, great for scoping out alligators from your kayak and tailing bottlenose dolphins as they chase their dinner into the banks of the creeks. But how do you plop a golf course in the middle of this watery idyll? If you’re Jack Nicklaus, very carefully. Working with the contours of the terrain — just 20 feet above water level at its highest point — and weaving most of the back nine along the shores of the May River, he designed (and redesigned) the 7,100-yard, par-72 to leave most of the wetlands and maritime forest intact. “When we started this process, I was reminded frequently that the most important thing we can do is monitor water quality,” says developer Jim Mozley. To that end, the course has been planted with resilient papsalum grass and is monitored from 20 sampling sites to ensure that any runoff ends up in the man-made lagoons and not the wildlife-laden estuaries. Even the sand in the bunkers is special — it’s made up of angular grains that limit erosion from coastal storms.

Spring Island
LOCATION: Okatie, South Carolina
PRICE: Estates $1 million– $4 million
NEAREST AIRPORT: Hilton Head Island Airport (30 miles away)
WEB SITE: springisland.com

Residents of Spring Island may cringe when they hear how close their historic Lowlands paradise came to becoming just another cookie-cutter housing development. In 1990, the barrier island southwest of Beaufort had just been purchased by a developer who planned to raze its antebellum plantation ruins and 200-year-old oak trees and put up more than 5,000 houses and two golf courses. Luckily, developer Jim Chaffin heard about the plan and decided to stop by with his wife. “She looked at me and said, ‘If you are going to do something here, you cannot screw it up.’ ”

Chaffin convinced the previous developer to sell — and has done a pretty good job of listening to his wife ever since. The result is a 410-home community whose considerable amenities — a 24-stall equestrian center shaded by a towering stand of oak and pine; a golf course with an eighteenth hole routed by Arnold Palmer and Ed Seay practically inside the ruins of the original plantation manor — are thoroughly folded into the lush tapestry of wetlands and woods. “We like to think of ourselves as a park with a community in it, rather than the other way around,” Chaffin says. The Chaffins’ pride and joy, though, is surely the 1,200 acres they have set aside as protected wetlands. Grab a rod and skiff and head out in search of the island’s legendary 15-pound redfish. Or hike the moss-draped maritime forest with one of the three staff naturalists, who can help you get up close and personal with wild turkey, horned owls, eagles, otters, foxes and bobcats — OK, maybe not bobcats.

Kiawah Island
LOCATION: Kiawah Island, South Carolina
PRICE: $629,000–$15 million
NEAREST AIRPORT: Charleston Executive Airport (15 miles away)
WEB SITE: kiawahisland.com

Forget trees and water hazards. From mid-May through late October, your biggest penalty strokes on this barrier island are likely to come from the loggerheads. It’s around that time in which the endangered sea turtles climb out of the Atlantic Ocean to lay their eggs in the sand and Kiawah residents set out on patrol to help count and protect eggs from local predators. That includes you, Mr. Careless Nine-Iron Swing.

It’s this kind of deference to the environment that has always been part of the Kiawah Island experience. Even before the first course broke ground in 1974, the tone was set with a 16-month, $1.3 million environmental study. Two decades later, work began on the planned 5,000 homes — a number that decreases almost daily — with the developers setting aside half of the island’s 9,000 acres for conservation and green space. The island has since been partitioned into 26 distinctive neighborhoods, including four brand-new enclaves. Most homes come with a membership to one of the community’s seven golf courses. For example, the Settlement, so-named for its proximity to the original seventeenth-century site where colonists first hung their golf caps, grants access to the Tom Fazio–designed River Course and features a mix of traditional Lowcountry and other styles. Seaside Ocean Palms, meanwhile offers privileges at the River Course and Cassique and stucco Old World retreats with loggias surrounding fountains — which are, mercifully, turtle-free.

The Concession Golf & Residences
LOCATION: Bradenton, Florida
PRICE: Villas and Estates $1 million–$9 million+
NEAREST AIRPORT: Sarasota Bradenton International Airport (20 miles away)
WEB SITE: theconcession.com

During the 1969 Ryder Cup, Jack Nicklaus conceded a two-foot putt on the last hole to Britain’s Tony Jacklin, ending the contest in a tie. Nearly 40 years later, the spirit of that moment lives on in this 1,200-acre community designed by the Golden Bear and his old rival as an enduring legacy to the power of sportsmanship, integrity and not always playing to win. The game plan started with one of the largest tree replantings in history to save the property’s spectacular collection of native slash pines, palmettos and live oak. “Palm trees are not native to Florida,” says developer Kevin Daves. “And you won’t find any here.” The next lucky opponent was the endangered gopher tortoise, for which more than 100 acres on and around the course were set aside as protected breeding grounds. The effort has been such a success that the community has also seen a resurgence in predatory species, such as alligator and even the occasional wild boar and bobcat (which evidently never got Nicklaus and Jacklin’s sportsmanship memo).

Each of the villas and estates — many with portico-lined courtyards surrounding an outdoor pool — offers serene natural panoramas of the sparkling lakes, mature-growth trees and nightly tortoise-boar matches. Here again, though, residents are encouraged to channel the vibe that gave rise to the place. Daves’s staff will work with buyers interested in constructing their new sanctuary in accordance with LEED-standard green-building practices — the world’s toughest for materials, water savings and energy efficiency. “It’s not mandated,” he says, “but we definitely encourage it.”

Old Palm Golf Club
LOCATION: Palm Beach Gardens, Florida
PRICE: Estates $1.6 million– $5 million
NEAREST AIRPORT: North Palm Beach County Airport (10 miles away)
WEB SITE: wcicommunities.com

Old Palm Golf Club takes its name seriously. The 7,400-yard, par-72 Raymond Floyd–designed course has been built to evoke Palm Beach’s Gilded Age, when the Rockefellers frequently hired architect Addison Mizner to build them such rarefied enclaves: On each of the 3,500- to 7,000-square-foot estates, accents of iron, stone and wood emerge from balconies, spiral stairways and Florentine arches. Intimate courtyards surround Old World fountains; period lighting fixtures grace vaulted studies and drawing rooms of stucco and inlaid tile.

Of course, the Rockefellers never experienced $100-a-barrel oil (just imagine the money they would have made if they had!). You aren’t that lucky — so these villas have been insulated with a state-of-the-art material called Icynene, which helps them exceed national energy-efficiency standards by 20 percent. Similarly, 50 acres have been set aside as a nature preserve. But perhaps the most seamless combination of old-school decadence and new-school social conscience comes on the course, where duffers can step straight from settling wagers on the classic nineteenth Scottish bye hole — planted, like the rest of the course, with immaculately groomed, low-impact papsalum grass — into a golf studio tricked out with the latest digital three-camera swing-analysis system to help them do even better next time.