New player hires old hand for new project

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HUNTERSVILLE – An Arizona-based developer and production builder never before seen in these parts has sites in the Charlotte market in its sights, and its first proposal in Mecklenburg County is for a 395-home subdivision in a booming section of central Huntersville.

With veteran Charlotte developer Bill Kiselick as a partner, AV Homes of Scottsdale, Ariz., in December quietly formed a limited liability company called AVH Carolinas to make a foray into the Old North and Palmetto states, according to the Arizona Newspapers Association website that tracks company registrations in the Grand Canyon State.

Kiselick confirmed that report, saying AV Homes – a publicly traded company that builds both conventional and 55-and-up age-restricted subdivisions in Arizona and Florida – has been “flying under the radar” in its push into Carolinas markets, waiting to make formal announcements of its first three projects in N.C.

AV Homes closed in November on land for its first project in the Charlotte region, a standard subdivision of 135 homes called Morgan’s Branch in the southernmost tip of the Gaston County town of Belmont. It is under development, Kiselick said, and he expects building to begin this summer.

Kiselick said AVHomes is keeping the third project under wraps until it closes on the property, though he did indicate it would be in Durham.

In Huntersville, AV Homes brought in Nate Bowman of the locally based Bowman Development Group to broker a contract to buy 213 acres for a conventional subdivision, according to documents on file with the town. The deal would close at an undisclosed price if AV Homes and the landowners receive a rezoning from the Huntersville Board of Commissioners. The bulk of the acreage, which is between Huntersville-Concord and Ramah Church roads not far east of downtown, is known around town as the Brown Property.

It is in the midst of the successful Centennial, Mirabella and ever-expanding master-planned Vermillion subdivisions, and comprises 10 parcels along Fred Brown Road owned by six members of the Brown family. Also under contract by AV Homes are four other parcels owned by seven members of the Dail family and a pair of other parcels owned by two Nance family members.

“This property comes with an interesting backstory,” said Bowman, whose company is developing Centennial and Vermillion. “It was supposed to be a Toll Brothers subdivision, but it never happened.”

David Peete, principal planner for the town of Huntersville, filled in the details of the backstory this way: “The old proposal, in 2007-08, won full approval, but for their own business reasons Toll didn’t go through on the deal. It fell through the cracks of the recession, but that didn’t mean that Toll couldn’t have circled back around and done the old plan.”

But Toll Brothers didn’t, and the land’s conditional neighborhood residential rezoning expired.

That means that even though the AV Homes’ sketch plan is fairly similar to Toll’s original concept – relatively small, tightly clustered lots and enough preserved natural areas and developed green spaces to “far exceed regulations,” Peete said – AV will have to win a new conditional rezoning.

“It really is pretty much the same, the same road patterns and green spaces,” Peete said. “The only difference is slightly smaller lots, a slight increase in density.”

The conservation subdivision-type layout “will be a good fit,” Bowman said, with Vermillion’s new-urbanism features, which include a retail village square and plans to someday have a 600-unit apartment complex in addition to single-family homes.

The sketch plan AV Homes filed with the town of Huntersville planning staff, which was submitted with the rezoning petition earlier this month and recently posted on the town website, also shows the subdivision has the connectivity that Huntersville officials like to see in proposed developments.

The plan shows entrances on and alternative street access to both Huntersville-Concord and Ramah Church, as well as three connections to streets in Centennial and a street stub that could access future contiguous development.

For those reasons, and the town’s past approval of the similar Toll Brothers plan, Bowman and Kiselick said they believe the subdivision has a good chance at getting its required rezoning and could go on to be as successful as the surrounding developments, with which the new subdivision would compete.

And, Bowman added, Kiselick’s local bona fides won’t hurt in winning over town officials unfamiliar with AV Homes.

“Bill Kiselick is a known quantity around town; he was at M/I Homes for years,” Bowman said.

After leaving M/I in 2008, Kiselick went to work for Mattamy Homes for five years “until I signed on with AV when they came looking to come to the Carolinas.”

The history of AV Homes stretches back to 1933, according to the company’s website and confirmed by news reports from Arizona and Florida media outlets, but its history as a developer begins in the 1960s and blossomed in the early 2000s when the company began to specialize in mixed-use developments.

AV is best known in the development world for one such subdivision, the humongous master-planned Poinciana, 20 miles south of Orlando, which has 28,000 homes and 80,000 residents on 47,000 acres. It includes the Solivita community, which won a 2012 National Association of Home Builders award as the best active-adult community of its kind in the country.

AV Homes, which closed more than 4,500 homes in the three years leading up to the 2007 housing crash, expanded its Arizona holdings coming out of the recession in 2010 by acquiring Phoenix-based Joseph Carl Homes. The company now has seven active, under-development or planned subdivisions in Arizona and four in Florida, in addition to the three unpublicized ones in N.C.

While he acknowledged that the proximity of the proposed Huntersville subdivision to the surrounding residential developments might mean some friendly competition, Kiselick said he believes the location will help, not hurt, AV’s chances at making good on the Toll Brothers’ original intent.

“The economic recovery makes us very optimistic; Huntersville is a fast-growing area; and this section of town is close-in and has excellent schools, activities and amenities,” Kiselick said. “We plan to build off the success of those other communities.”

For more information on the AV Homes rezoning petition, go to huntersville.org, click on Departments and follow the links to Planning and Projects List.