Email this page  Print this page  del.icio.us  digg

	Photo: Lisa Sze

Buying a home at Warmington Homes California’s Bayport Alameda development, next door to Alameda College on Ralph Appezzato Parkway, isn’t that different from buying a car at a dealership. First you figure out your price range, and then you look at the models that you can afford.

At Bayport, the entry-level homes are all in the Harbor Collection, a group that boasts three designs, each with three to four bedrooms and 2.5 baths. The smallest and least expensive floor plan is the Aria, which offers 2,035 square feet and is priced in the mid-800s. The Aria comes in three models—the Spanish Colonial, the Classic Colonial or the Cottage. All of these styles are intended to reflect Alameda’s existing period homes.
    “The city would only allow us to do the project if we emulated the old neighborhoods,” says Phil Hove of Hove Design Alliance, the architect of the Harbor Collection. “Their insistence on adhering to the town’s architectural styles was the heaviest, most difficult requirement to meet.” To create a friendly street scene that complements Alameda’s small-town feel, Hove and the other planners for Bayport separate cars from pedestrians by putting front doors along walkways and garages in back, off a series of alleys. They also add front verandas, porches and patios to encourage interaction among neighbors and passersby.


    The Aria model home at Bayport features the Cottage exterior and faces a half-acre mini-park with perfectly manicured Victorian landscaping. The home interacts with the park and pedestrians by way of a broad front porch that wraps around the side of the house, plus there is a small recessed deck on the second floor.
    Inside, the open floor plan has a strong contemporary appeal. No space is fully enclosed, and no matter where you stand, you can see into nearly every other room on the ground floor. “We wanted the eye to carry as far as possible when looking through the house,” says Hove. “But we didn’t want a big barn with lots of furniture. To meet this objective, partial walls, wide openings and a large island in the kitchen separate the living room, dining room, family room and kitchen.”
    Hove appreciates period elements like decorative windows and high ceilings, but there are other aspects of older architecture he could do without. “The bedrooms in older houses make you feel like you’re being punished,” says Hove. “Windows are just there for ventilation, and everything is closed up.”
To brighten the upstairs bedrooms, he used more windows to pull light into the stairwell and stretched the master bedroom by adding its own private deck across the front of the home. “I wanted the master bedroom to have nice light and privacy but not feel like it’s stuck off at the end of the house,” he says.
    The prospective owner for the Aria plan, says Hove, is a professional couple or young family with one child. The plan is also attractive to “move-downs,” those buyers who want a smaller home with lower maintenance and an opportunity to live in a community with a younger demographic and more vitality. To accommodate all these types of buyers, the Aria plan offers the option of turning the second bedroom into an “optional retreat” adjacent to the master bedroom, thus creating a lavish master suite. A third bedroom, second bath and generously proportioned laundry room complete the upper floor.
    All around, tall mullioned windows offer outlooks of the backyard or mini-park. The Hove group is very sensitive about the placement of windows and their shape. “We try to be more vertical,” says Hove. He also likes to place double and triple windows into a single wall, thus making an essential element decorative as well as functional. The idea of adding beauty to function also carries over into the kitchen and baths, where eye-pleasing fixtures receive extra emphasis.
    To add punch to Hove’s clever floor plan, interior designers from Creative Design Consultants add custom touches to create an interplay of crisp, clean styling with Victorian finishings and a floral motif. Wainscoting graces the living room, where the fireplace mantel has been modified, and light, soft colors are used for upgrades in the kitchen cabinetry and tile. Furniture and accessories include small painted white end tables in the living room and bedrooms, floral cushions and comforters and an extensive use of indoor plants such as hydrangea and philodendron.
    Bayport estimates close to 127 homes in the Harbor Collection have sold. Hove believes the appeal lies in the hybrid quality of the architecture. “You can move to Alameda and buy an older house that needs tons of work,” he says. “Or you can buy something that emulates the authenticity of a vintage home without the hassle of maintenance and repair.”