LandChoices: Opportunities for Landowners to Preserve Their Land

Land Choices: Changing Development in America

History
Advisory Group
Board of Directors

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The LandChoices
Advisory Group
We simply could not do this without the following wonderful people who so generously volunteer their time and expertise.

Sue Choma
Novi, MI

Sue offers a diverse skill set to our advisory group. Holding BS and MSA degrees, Sue served as a Human Resources Director for a variety of industries, including the health care, automotive and non-profit sectors. Her current interest, besides raising two very active young boys, is fundraising for non-profit organizations. An outdoor enthusiast, Sue’s recreational experiences have included speckled trout fishing in the glacial lakes of Nova Scotia, hiking in Utah, camping around the US and Canada, and bicycling in Northern Michigan.

"I am passionate about LandChoices because it offers the potential for our children to enjoy the natural beauty of our land for generations to come. I am interested in educating others about land preservation and feel LandChoices offers the perfect vehicle to do so."

Jon Kohler
Jon Kohler & Associates Real Estate Consultants
Tallahassee, FL

Jon Kohler founded Kohler & Associates in 1991 as an entrepreneurial real estate consulting firm specializing in representing high net worth land owners and investors of high-quality properties in plantations and ranches including the 75,000 acre A-Cross/Sanger Ranch in Saratoga, Wyoming, regarded as one of the top three fly fishing ranches in the lower 48 States.

Jon Kohler is leading the region in "smart" residential development; the firm's flagship project is Centerville, the regions first conservation community and one of the largest developments in North Florida/South Georgia. This innovative development plan preserved 70% of the land as permanent open space, while at the same time, meeting the landowner's investment backed expectations. This project has received national acclaim and recognized by the 2006 Florida Legislature as a role model for development in the State of Florida.

Tom Montgomery
Ford Motor Company
Residence: Plymouth, MI

Tom is an avid outdoorsman and received his undergraduate, graduate degree and PhD from the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor. Tom works at the Ford Motor Company Research and Development Center. Tom would like to help rid our countryside of the all too common bland housing and is a proponent of creative conservation subdivision design. Tom provides LandChoices with top notch writing skills, business sense and strong consumer insight.

Larry Collins
President:
The Collins Company, LLC
Flatrock, NC

Larry was instrumental in the award-winning communities of Highland Lake (Flat Rock), Straus Park (Brevard), and Peachtree City (south of Atlanta), and is interested in demonstrating ways to accommodate growth without destroying the rural and small-town character of our cherished mountain setting.

"It's unfortunate that most land development regulations disallow the very kinds of planning that most landowners, area residents, and new-home purchasers would prefer if only they understood the choices. With LandChoices as a resource, I fully intend to design conservation communities, whether or not they comply with existing regulations. I am more than willing to endure the brain damage of showing local residents and elected officials how such regulations can be changed to allow development that actually respects our regional environment."

Edna Stephens
EDCO Publishing
Auburn Hills, MI
Edna Stephens is the founder of EDCO Publishing. A retired Lake Orion School teacher with a driving passion, Edna founded EDCO to produce and create high-quality educational materials for teachers and children.

Edna brings this same drive to LandChoices and is very passionate about taking LandChoices' program with conservation subdivisions to the children and making it part of the curriculum in schools. Edna feels strongly that educating children about conservation subdivisions will have a strong influence when their parents are purchasing a new home.

Kurt Andrae
President & CEO
First Wisconsin
Bank & Trust
Pewaukee, WI
also President
Red Wing Land
Company, LLC
Keefe Real Estate
Lake Geneva, WI

Red Wing Land Development Company was formed for the sole purpose of creating truly special residential developments, utilizing the concepts espoused by Randall Arendt, which preserve and enhance the unique characteristics of the land. Developments include Sugar Creek Preserve in Wisconsin that preserves approximately 177-acres, over 69% of the site, as open space.

“When I became a developer, I knew that there had to be a more respectful way to treat the land while also creating unique living spaces. Conservation subdivision design is the perfect solution to accomplish both of these goals and is the only way I approach development. More often than not, this approach saves on project costs and accelerates approval timelines," says Kurt Andrae.

Bonnie G. Snavely
Kona Ranch
Missoula, Montana
Bonnie is is passionate about preserving ranches. She has extensive real estate experience and is working with LandChoices to preserve her over 700-acre family ranch, the Kona Ranch.

Ken LaRoe
Organizing Director
and upcoming CEO,
First Green Bank
Florida

Hometown: Eustis, Florida. First Green Bank, expected to open in November, 2008, is a commercial bank that will promote environmental responsibility and green building through its employees and by offering lower interest rates for commercial projects that meet green building certification defined by U.S Green Building Council's LEED standards.

Ken went to college to move away from what he felt at the time was a "dreadful country atmosphere". Ken graduated with a degree in Management from The Florida State University in Tallahassee, Florida. Ken's fiance at the time and current wife of twenty-five years, Cindy, encouraged him to take a job at a bank in his home county. Once returning home, Ken recognized the area's beauty and decided he never wanted to leave.

After working for 10 years in the banking industry in Lake and Volusia counties Ken enrolled at the University Florida College of Law;and graduated 2.5 years later. Ken left the practice of law after one year and returned to banking. He started Florida Choice Bank in 1999 and served as President, CEO and Chairman until selling the bank in 2006.

Ken is presently working with his father to develop a 15 acre conservation subdivision development designed by Randall Arendt that will preserve 40% of the land. He is also developing an 8.5 acre commercial parcel with the help of Randall Arendt and restoring his great grandfather's homestead and family machine shop.

"I serve as Chairman of the Lake County Public Land Acquisition Advisory Committee and I have been very active in local political races. I am committed to preserving as much of this special place as can possibly be preserved."

Karen McDiarmid
Art Director, Carl R. Sams II Photography, Inc., Milford, MI

"When I recently drove along the roads in Ada, Michigan, near my hometown, I wanted to cry as all the farms had "For Sale" signs in front of them. I just knew they would be leveled and turned into conventional subdivisions. When Kirt told me about LandChoices, I jumped at the chance to help!"

Colleen Murphy
Owner: Murphy and Associates Landscape Design and Planning
Birmingham, MI
Colleen is passionate about the founder of landscape architecture, Frederick Law Olmstead's work, and would like to see conservation subdivisions taken
mainstream.

Cyndi Vozza
TRAVERSE, Northern Michigan's Magazine, Traverse City, MI
Cyndi helps LandChoices spread the word at events and with the media in northern Michigan.

Cheryl O'Brien
Market Arts
Ann Arbor, MI
Cheryl is LandChoices' web and marketing guru who often gets us out of tight website jams and helps us meet deadlines.

Randall Arendt
Greener Prospects
Landscape Planner, Author, Site Designer, Lecturer Narragansett, Rhode Island

Considered the nation's leading authority on conservation design. Author of Rural by Design, Conservation Design for Subdivisions and more. Owner of Greener Prospects, a consulting firm that bridges the gap between land-use planning and land conservation. Services include conservation subdivision design workshops, ordinance review and site design.

"LandChoices is the first -- and so far only -- group to take this highly effective land-use approach (conservation subdivisions) countrywide, with a national campaign to inform the public and offer it to help communities preserve their special places: working family farmlands, forests, lakeshores and natural lands. Moreover, this technique does so at no cost, and is a clear win-win for the landowner, developer, community, wildlife, etc."

Mr. Arendt has designed "conservation subdivisions" for a wide variety of clients in 21 states. His site designs have been featured in publications of the American Planning Association, the American Society of Landscape Architects, the National Trust for Historic Preservation, the National Association of Home Builders, and the National Association of Realtors.

Mr. Arendt's designs are "twice green" because they succeed both environmentally and economically. One of his recent designs was praised by the Director of Advocacy of the Massachusetts Audubon Society as "one of the most innovative subdivision plans I've seen".

Mr. Arendt works closely with each client, walking the property and taking the measure of its natural features and elements of the historic or cultural landscape.

After analyzing both the constraints and the opportunities offered by the site and the client's program for conservation and development, Mr. Arendt prepares a scale drawing showing the location of protected features, houselots, streets, trails, and stormwater management areas. (The latter can usually be incorporated into the neighborhood design as an attractive feature that also serves to recharge local groundwater supplies.)

Photograph of Randall Arendt by Mari Harpur

Steve Manz
Marsh Inc.
Residence: West Bloomfield, MI
After graduating from the of University of Michigan in Ann Arbor, Steve pursued a career in geology and is now working in new business development and brownfield redevelopment with Marsh, Inc. A passionate conservationist and outdoorsman, Steve brings strong relationship building and sales skills to LandChoices.

"I feel helpless as I watch the woods in my region cleared for subdivisions. The pile of once beautiful trees in the center of the graded and cleared land, waiting to be burned, is so opposite to conservation subdivision methods where land and trees are treated like gold for their conservation and return on investment value.

I don't believe that local promulgation and enforcement of woodland ordinances is necessarily the best answer, rather educating developers and planners that, through conservation design, there is a better way to develop that maintains the original beauty and environmental benefits of the area while simultaneously increasing the overall profitability of the development.

LandChoices is working to create the change so badly needed in development methods."

Ed and Eve Noonan
Edward Noonan & Associates, Tryon Farm
Chicago, IL
Ed Noonan is a Chicago-based architect. Eve Noonan is a marketing specialist. This husband and wife team are the developers of Tryon Farm, a conservation design subdivision in Michigan City, Indiana that set aside 120 of the 170-acres as open space.

"Friendly settlements of simple houses surrounded by big stretches of woods, dunes and open prairie - this is the dream," Says Eve Noonan.

Timothy J. Mistry
2nd Vice President Investments, Smith Barney Citi Group
Farmington Hills, Ann Arbor, MI
Tim is a financial planner working with clients and their estates. Witnessing first hand the low level of awareness of land preservation and estate planning for family lands, Tim felt the need to get more involved.

"Land conservation has been of great interest to me ever since I was a child. I just hate to see lands broken up and destroyed for no reason other than landowners and heirs not knowing what else to do. LandChoices gets the message out to landowners that many choices are available."