Building an Agri-hood: When the Development Revolves Around the Farm

Indigo, a new community outside of Houston, is a different type of residential development. Led by farmers, the project will be anchored by a 42-acre working farm.

By Emily Baron Cadloff
Modern Farmer
May 24, 2023

Excerpt:

But it’s the 42-acre production farm that will anchor the community. Six acres will be devoted to vegetable production, with community plots and farmer’s markets. The other 36 acres will house livestock, both broiler chickens and hens, and traditional row crops, with some fun additions such as watermelon thrown in. If this sounds like a big undertaking, it is. But, for Garrett, it’s also exciting. “Farmers by nature are stubborn,” he says. “When we started our development journey, we were both stubborn. And we knew we were just going to have to do all of these things to accomplish our vision, to build the community that we’d be proud of.”

While not everyone who lives in the community will necessarily be connected to the farm, residents will have access to the community garden plots and the vegetables produced onsite through a farmer’s market. Snodgrass and Garrett hope that many of the farm’s workers would also choose to live in the community and that people want to participate in community gardening projects.

That means, the guys say, that they want to make the units affordable within the growing Houston real-estate market and provide enough of a community and active neighborhood to entice people. They are looking at building vertically, committing to two- or three-story homes, rather than sprawling bungalows on huge lots. “Then you can condense everyone into a smaller space, and they can then walk to everything they need to get to. And we can reserve huge portions of the property for wildlife habitat and agriculture,” says Snodgrass. It’s a form of conservation development, where city planners start at the center (a main street or a community square) and build out from there, keeping in mind the facilities people will need as the neighborhood grows.

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