Avimor moves forward 

By Dani Grigg

Plans have undergone a little shuffling at Avimor, the planned community in the foothills north of Eagle.

With Ada County homes selling at a slower pace (494 homes sold in July 2008 compared to 1,149 when the developers submitted plans to the county in July 2005, according to the Intermountain Multiple Listing Services), jumping head-first into building the community’s almost 700 planned homes and townhomes didn’t fit

“We’re actually moving much slower than we had hoped to, not that we didn’t anticipate going through some periods of time like this, we just didn’t anticipate it happening right as we opened,” said Dan Richter, general manager of developer SunCor Idaho, which will build the community over the next 30 years. “What I’m budgeting for next year in houses is about one-sixth what I would typically hope to do. But the following year we hope to be back – we’re hoping the economy will start healing and be back to some semblance of normality in 2010.”

So instead of plowing ahead with scores of homes, the developers moved up construction of amenities. With tens of millions of dollars of infrastructure freshly completed, the company broke ground about a week ago on a $2 million, 12,000-square-foot community center.

Richter said building amenities at the outset of a project isn’t the typical way to develop.

“It wasn’t in our plan originally, but we need to show people that we’re still confident,” he said.

He added, “Avimor’s all about lifestyle, and we’re giving people a sample of the lifestyle.”

Eighty miles of on-site trails are open to the public, and four small parks, including one with a lake, are ready to go. About a month ago crews broke ground on a large community park, which will have a terraced amphitheater and athletic fields.

Twenty homes are currently taking shape on site, with 15 completed including seven model homes. The first two sets of residents moved in a few weeks ago, and a third house will be occupied on Friday. Richter said most of the built homes are intended for residents, though a couple are spec homes.

“We want to make sure that in the wintertime, if someone’s in a hurry, we’ve got a couple homes on inventory,” he said.

Avimor http://www.avimor.com/

plans  http://idahobusiness.net/archive.htm/2006/12/14/Avimore-received-plat-approval

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