Tracy Lakes Agrihood
A working farm as the centerpiece amenity of a 55+ community — designed for the residents who would tend it.
Planters you can tend without kneeling.
Regency at Tracy Lakes is a 55+ community, and Toll Brothers wanted the farm to be its amenity — not a token garden at the edge of the plan.
Catherine McLaughlin and I designed a 13,586-square-foot community farm at the recreation center around the people who would use it: raised planters set high enough to tend without kneeling, paths kept wide and firm enough to stay accessible, row crops and an orchard, steel trellises, and a washing and food-processing area built for real harvests.
We carried the design from schematic through 100% design development and a value-engineering round, with a smaller demonstration garden at the sales center teaching the same idea at visitor scale.
The same thinking is in design now for a continuing-care courtyard in Oakland.
