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Serenbe is a unique community just outside of Atlanta, Georgia. It’s based on the development pattern of traditional English villages, with walkable, mixed-use “hamlets” surrounded by nature. In today’s episode, Chuck sits down with Serenbe founder Steve Nygren to discuss the process of developing this kind of community, as well as Steve’s development philosophy of “radical common sense.”

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  Chuck Marohn 0:00

  Hey everybody. This is Chuck Marohn. Welcome back to the strong towns podcast. I can't remember how many years ago it was a while now, I was invited to go visit the development outside of Atlanta called Serenbe. It's rather famous for a bunch of reasons that we will discuss. The invitation was extended by a very kind guy named Steve Nygren. Steve actually has a new book out, or coming out now, called "Start in Your Own Backyard: Transforming Where We Live With Radical Common Sense," and I invited him to come on the podcast and chat about his book and Serenbe and all kinds of other stuff. So Steve, welcome to the strong towns podcast.

  Steve Nygren 0:51

  Thanks Chuck for the invitation.

  Chuck Marohn 0:53

  It's nice to chat with you. I feel like a good place to start would be, in a sense, your story of being a restaurateur and then ending up doing this development, it's an odd story arc, but it's one that, you know, I think would give people a little bit of confidence, regardless of where they are, that maybe they could do a version of this. So can you, can you maybe start there?

  Steve Nygren 1:23

  Sure. You know, Chuck, through my life, I found that the richness is many times the 90 degree turns, well, we're headed one way, and we just know where we're headed, and all of a sudden, something takes us in another direction, and and there are no expectations. And also, you enter with a naive world. Maybe I went to school to become an architect, and got seduced into the hospitality industry. Opened my first restaurant in Midtown Atlanta when it was in an area that was run down and, you know, been built in 1900 it was the only place I could afford the rent at the time. But we became successful and and and continued to go into locations that were not obvious to most people. You look back now, we were at the beginning of uptick, and that was throughout Atlanta, Washington, DC, various places. And so through a hospitality, I was transforming real estate. So I was on the edge of it, not a developer as such, but working with developers in transforming areas. I was very successful. And then in 1994 I had an opportunity to sell the company. We had 36 restaurants in eight states, and we retired to our weekend farm, and I thought, you know, I was just a lucky guy. Kids were young, and I was able to have all this time to travel and go to Europe for a month. You know, life was great, and our farm is, is, is that area of Atlanta that just had missed development? There was, there was no transportation services. It was unthought of in the southwest quadrant of Metro Atlanta, but we loved it because it was so convenient to Atlanta, to the airport, what have you. And so in my seventh year of retirement, there were several threats to the area that development had found this and was finding the area because it was the last affordable land. I started buying more land, and at 900 acres, I realized I couldn't keep doing that. And as we looked at models, we thought, Oh, well, we'll create a model that's going to transform and give a different idea. But as we talked with George and Vicki Rainey outside Chicago, Seaside, these various places that were great models actually ended up accelerating a destruction of the area in more traditional areas. And so I stepped back and said, Hey, we've got to think bigger if we really want to transform the area. And so we spent the next two years bringing 500 landowners together to talk about this. Now, what happens throughout the country is people don't think development is going to affect them. Then a developer borrows money, buys land, starts planning, and starts to the zoning process, and the community decides that's not what I want happening. And so this is where the battles start, whenever, when everybody is already entrenched. And so we started this early thinking about this with with people who were land speculators, who were pro development, and those people who had been here for generations, and they were divided. Part one to you know, bring on the bulldozer. This is payday we've been waiting for, and the other half Don't you touch this land. So we had a diverse group of people that's no different than most areas that are on the edge of development as we brought them together. It was one of the largest land use zoning changes in metro Atlanta, 60 square miles. I. Yeah. And so then all of a sudden, you know, you're down this path of passion. And all of a sudden, you know, I've got this land, I have got to show what we're talking about. So we use the countryside of England as our model, because a dear friend had already been there, really became familiar with how you could cluster development and stave the majority of it for agriculture, because after World War Two, England couldn't afford that sprawl. The island was only so big, and so this was the model we were we were holding up, and several things were happening that helped us support that. This could happen in the United States, in the southwest, on the edge of Atlanta, but then it I felt the responsibility to actually take our land and demonstrate what we were talking about. And that's how I found myself in the path of a developer. And this is what my book's about. Hey, don't worry about what you do not have control of. Look at your own backyard, your own area of influence, wherever that is, and focus there. And if we all did that, it could be a changed world. I'm

  Chuck Marohn 6:09

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