Father and son Mark and Zach Schwarz of Mid Atlantic Development Group are working together to build and sell Stone Gables Luxury Villas, which are located adjacent to the Liberty Road entrance to Forest Oaks.
Townhome model to open by August
Stone Gables, located at the main entrance to Forest Oaks, will target retirees.
Father and Son Team
Father and son Mark and Zach Schwarz of Mid Atlantic Development Group are working together to build and sell Stone Gables Luxury Villas, which are located adjacent to the Liberty Road entrance to Forest Oaks.
By Kim Cable Brafford
Forest Oaks Community Association
The first handful of Stone Gables Luxury Villas, the development adjacent to the Forest Oaks entrance on Liberty Road, are on track to open by October, and a model will be open by August 1, in time for the Wyndham Championship, says Mark Schwarz, president of Mid Atlantic Development Group.
The site will eventually include 46 units starting at 2,000 square feet and $234,900.
“We should be able to start moving people in in the fall,” says Mark, who runs Mid Atlantic with his brother, Todd Schwarz.
The units will look similar to other villas Mid Atlantic has built on Pisgah Church Road and in Jamestown, called Jamesford East and Jamesford West. The one-story, three-bedroom floor plans will feature handicap friendly doors and higher outlets, catering to its targeted clientele of retirees.
Six units have already been pre-sold. One of those units has been spoken for by Forest Oaks residents Bob and Vickie Chamberlain of Brookhaven Drive, who were excited to have a downsizing option so close to the home they’ve shared here for 32 years.
“For folks who have lived here for a number of years and are looking to downsize, there was really no option for us, and if we wanted to stay in the community, we couldn’t,” Bob says. “We had to go somewhere else. Even if we stayed in Greensboro, we had to go somewhere else.”
He and Vickie visited Mark and Todd at their Greensboro office last year and visited one of the model homes in Jamestown.
“It was like, ‘Wow.’ Here was an opportunity for us to do what we wanted to do and be able to downsize and at the same time not leave the community. We liked the floor plan, and we definitely liked the construction because it was all brick and stone, which is very low maintenance for us.”
The luxury units will feature a 2-car garage and gas fireplace and optional upgrades such as granite countertops, built-ins, wider molding, a sunroom, a bonus room and full bath over the garage, and a patio across the back.
Bob and Vickie opted to add a sunroom, screened-in porch and patio to their floor plan.
“It gave us that open-air feeling that we wanted to retain without all of the maintenance that we would have here at our house,” Bob says.
Offering upgrades and flexible amenities is a selling point for the company, its president says.
“Really, it’s a very flexible plan,” Mark says. “One thing that sets our company apart is we sit down with the homeowner and say, ‘Here is your electrical plan. Is there anything you want to change?’ A lot of builders don’t do that.”
That’s one of the features that Bob and Vickie liked most when going through the process of designing their home. “We could pick and choose things: We could either go with hardwood or carpet, a combination of hardwood and carpet, tile, or a combination of tile and hardwood and carpet. We could do a whole lot of things that, for us, made it very attractive.”
The Chamberlains have a 2,400 square foot home. Their new villa will be about 2,200 square feet. For them, the move is not as much about downsizing their space as it is about reducing their level of home maintenance.
The Chamberlains see the handicap friendly features as a safety net for the future. “If we get into that kind of environment, and something happens to us health wise, we’ve got a better chance of staying there longer than we would maybe with one that wasn’t handicap friendly,” Bob says.
The most attractive selling point, however, was being able to stay in the community. The Chamberlains have lived in Forest Oaks for three decades and have attended Community in Christ Presbyterian Church for about that entire period.
“Our friends are here, some of our family is here,” Bob says. “We have a good network of friends here and that’s one reason why folks like us, who, if they decided they wanted to move to an environment like this, never had an opportunity because they had to move to somewhere else.”
The entire Stone Gables development, which will take two years to build, will include 15,000 square feet of retail space, called “Forest Oaks Commons,” within walking distance. It will also include a retention pond for storm water runoff and extra parking spaces for visitors.
And although the development is targeted to retirees, anyone can move in.
“The homes are age targeted, but not age restrictive,” says Zach Schwarz, Mark’s son and the company’s onsite sales representative.
In a concession to residents on Forest Oaks Drive whose back yards abut the Stone Gables property, Mid Atlantic will not build any units with bonus rooms on that side. They want to protect the privacy that otherwise might be compromised if people could look from their second-story bonus rooms down into the back yards of residents on Forest Oaks Drive.
