Podcast: | Download

When Peter Palmisano talks about Hamilton as a small town, he is actually talking about the natural evolution of a community. As he says, subdivisions are planned for subsets of the market—say, young families or active adults—and when you outgrow or change your subset, you leave and move on. In a small town, you may move into another neighborhood, but you stay and put down roots in the community. At Hamilton, Peter reports, part of the ongoing resale activity is comprised of people moving into neighborhoods that offer homes with more space, and people moving into neighborhoods that offer smaller homes, in keeping with the rhythm of their own lives.

In designing the neighborhoods within Hamilton, Peter’s vision was to create areas that offered uniquely different home designs and sizes. How did he accomplish that, when the trend might well have gone only toward larger houses with larger profit margins? Peter tells us that he reminded the builders, “I have land in Marin.” That seemed to settle most disputes.