SABRINA SHORT
Mike and Judy Benson stand on the front steps of their home in the Briar Chapel neighborhood in Chapel Hill. The Benson's enjoy spending time on their front porch where they can speak to their neighbors as they walk through the neighboorhood. The Benson's like the double front porches because they remind them of the homes in Niagara-on-the-Lake in Canada where they vacationed as children.PHOTO BY SABRINA SHORT
Mike: This is an area like Southern Village and Meadowmont. It’s a planned community in the neo traditional style — front porches close to the sidewalk. It was designed to promote interaction among the neighbors. Most of the people who live here came from places where they had all the land they ever wanted and more. They came for various reasons, but the overriding reason they picked this is it was manageable and they wanted to be part of a community. It’s the antithesis of a retirement community. There are people our age here, but there’s a wide spread of generations living here.
Judy: It’s kind of like a dollhouse. I enjoy playing with everything. The layout of the house has given me space to create little areas of interest and fun. I’ve been able to take a small space and create little living areas but to be able to open it up to have 40 people for Easter.
Mike: It is a great entertaining home because you’ve got three porches. The main living area on the first floor has two porches, so you can circulate. You’re not trapped in one room.
Judy: I think because it’s a shotgun style house.
Mike: The shotgun style house was typical of New Orleans. It’s tall and narrow, and when you look in through the front door, you can look all the way through the house.
Judy: Because the dining room is in the middle of the house, this can open up and we can seat 12 people.
Mike: And nobody feels isolated from anyone else.
Why we chose our house
Mike: I was ready to be part of a community, and I was ready to have a more manageable house. We have all these children and grandchildren, and the community has so many facilities. It has an 11,000-square-foot clubhouse, a full gym and two swimming pools with a diving well and two slides. Many of the people who moved here came here because they had children or grandchildren.
Judy: A lot of people moved here because of that.
Mike: Rather than feeling like you’re imposing on your children to see your grandchildren, they come here.
Judy: They want to come here.
Mike: When you decide to buy into a planned community of any kind, the concern always is: Well, what happens in a bad economy when the developer goes broke? It happens everywhere, even established resort communities. That was a concern for us. But Newland Communities is a San Diego company, and it’s the nation’s largest developer of planned communities. We looked into Newland. They’re very well established, well funded. They didn’t give you promises. Already they built the beautiful, two-mile drive …
Judy: Which was designed after the drive at Biltmore House.
Mike: … the pool and the clubhouse and the trails before they sold lots. So they weren’t selling you a picture and an idea.
We grew up in Buffalo together back before Buffalo became the mistake on the lake. We spent our summers when we were little on the Canadian shore. There were cottages that looked like this. There’s a place we used to go called Niagara-on-the-Lake in Canada. It was a sort of miniature Victorian community — small houses close together like this that looked out on the lower Niagara River. When we saw the plans, this is what we thought of. I think subconsciously this is an effort to relive our youth. It works.
Advantages
Mike: Chatham County has a very low tax rate. And there are advantages to living in a green community and a house built to the current green standards. They’re more sustainable. It has state-of-the-art construction techniques, and it’s new.
Judy: I guess for me I’ve lived in a very old house, I’ve lived in a middle house and now I live in a new! I like the fact that this house has three floors because the third floor we have a playroom, a bathroom and a bedroom for the grandchildren and the young adults, so they have a game room that’s really removed from the rest of the house.
There are lots of things at the clubhouse. We have a book club; we have a ladies game night. I think there’s a men’s poker night. We’ve had tai chi. There’s a lot of social events at the clubhouse. And they’re all ages so that it’s a mix of people, which is really nice.
Disadvantages
Judy: I’ve had to get used to living on the other side of Chapel Hill. You have to learn to gauge your travel time differently; 15-501 could be backed up. The traffic patterns are just very different. There are back ways to get to Carrboro. I haven’t learned a back way to Hillsborough yet.
Our neighborhood
Mike: In the middle are the clubhouse and the pool, all the recreation. There are little green spaces, like little mini parks that are available. Down by the middle school on the south side, there are athletic fields.
Judy: We also have wonderful hiking paths and bike paths in the community. This is pristine. When you walk down the trail it looks like …
Mike: It looks like something out of “Avatar.” It’s out of this world.
Judy: There are just beds of ferns everywhere along the trails.
Mike: No golf course — that’s a plus. It’s a green community. And a golf course, although it’s green, it’s the least green thing you can build. It takes lots of fertilizer and water. No golf course — just bike trails and walking trails.
Making our house a home
Judy: I am a very eclectic person, so I brought all of my collections and worked around them.
Mike: We actually have King Tut’s burial chair in the corner of the room. Up on the top shelf, there’s a rocket thruster from the space shuttle. Of course, we have all these stuffed animals here that were once alive.
Judy: My children actually found them in the trash and brought them home.
Mike: Her favorite uncle, among other things, was a lecturer on the Queen Elizabeth II; and a lot of things like the Zulu masks and ceremonial spears were from his travels. When he died, Judy shipped them all home. People come in here, and it’s always interesting. I mean I live here and it’s still interesting.
Judy: We have a lot of out-of-town company, and one lady she came in here and she said, “Ahhhh, you don’t have to go out of town. You just go to Judy’s.” To me a house is like a dollhouse. It’s fun to move things around and arrange things. I guess I’m just a play baby.
