Brea Jones

Aug. 6, 2005
Brilliant-colored houses line the streets in Doe Mill neighborhood, so close to the sidewalks that it looks more like Disneyland’s Main Street than a typical subdivision in Chico. Doe Mill residents say the difference is more than just appearance. It’s a simpler life.

Some no longer have a lawn mower, just a weed-whacker for their small patch of grass. They’ve traded a large yard for shared green space they don’t have to maintain, a garage off an alley, and a better chance of knowing their neighbors.

Living in Doe Mill reminds Chris Canterbury of growing up in the 1960s and 1970s: neighborhood barbecues, kids playing together and neighbors forming a community.

“I think this is what society needs to come back to,” his wife Rebecca added.

When Chris and Rebecca moved into their Magnolia-style house with their two daughters, all they could see from their porch was dirt.

Two-and-a-half years later, a community lawn and two streets of houses fill their vista, and they said they never want to leave.

“The kids will live here until they’re 18 years old,” Rebecca said. “I couldn’t imagine a better place.”

Many days Emi, 5, and Ivo, 8, play with the neighbors on the big common green space their porch looks out on.

But the close quarters do create some problems.

“It’s pretty hard for everybody to get along,” Chris said while sitting on his porch with a beer as his daughter, Emi, cleaned off the side tables.

Some people disagree about landscaping decisions in the neighborhood flanked with roses, grass and bark. Others don’t clean up after their dogs when walking around the neighborhood. But when the Canterburys sit on their porch in the evenings, the neighborhood visits.

Too tight

Chico resident Bob Ryan bought a Doe Mill house, but doesn’t want to live there.

He planned to move into the green house on England Street while he remodeled his home in west Chico. When those plans changed, Ryan ditched the Doe Mill house, which is now in escrow.

Unlike many Doe Mill homeowners, Ryan never wanted to live there long-term because he likes having orchards as his neighbors rather than tightly packed houses.

While the city of Chico encourages higher-density building like Doe Mill, the yards are small.

“It’s not really like a yard a kid could play in,” he said.

Ryan, who has lived in Chico for 29 years, is not in favor of growth in Chico, because no matter what the houses look like or how close they are together, cars still impact the city.

“It’s the cars that ruin a city,” he said. “It’s traffic; it’s not people and houses.”

The purpose of neighborhoods like Doe Mill and the upcoming Meriam Park is to discourage driving by using narrow, curving streets and encourage walking by building wide sidewalks with an assortment of shops, churches and entertainment nearby.

“It’s a good idea on paper, but it doesn’t work,” he said. “People still get in their cars.”

Big-box stores like Wal-Mart and Costco still require driving and Enloe Medical Center isn’t a walk away from any new urbanism development.

Ryan doesn’t think growth is good in Chico because it brings crime, pollution and neighborhood deterioration, he said. “Like a tree, when it grows too big, it starts to rot in the center.”

A true believer

Jim and Julie Horne moved from a Paradise property large enough for a baseball diamond to a bright-yellow Magnolia-style house with a porch, balcony and bright-blue door.

“We wanted something easier to take care of,” Jim said. “Less yard, less house.”

Sitting on overstuffed brown sofas with area rugs covering the bamboo floor, Jim said the small yard in the back is just enough space to maintain.

“If you had a yard twice this big, you’d have to spend an unreasonable amount of time trying to keep it up,” he said.

While waiting to move in, Jim said he studied the neighborhood and a design style called new urbanism.

Jim, who has run a family lumber company in Oroville for more than 30 years, hosts a Web site, www.doemill.org, dedicated to the neighborhood and the principles of new urbanism.

Jim said some essential elements are:

*The alleys that make it possible for community time when neighbors wash their cars on Saturday mornings.
* The houses are built higher off the ground than most, which gives residents extra privacy.
* The five-foot-wide sidewalks are a foot wider than average, making evening strolls more comfortable.
* The large porches and small houses set close to the street give a feeling of enclosure and protection.

Creating a neighborhood

New Urban Builders began construction on the Doe Mill site in 2001 to fill a need in Chico, developer John Anderson said.

Young couples, empty nesters and single people used to have to choose between a bungalow in the avenues with a 30-year-old roof or a beige-colored stucco house with new appliances and a warranty, he said.

Doe Mill houses are a compromise.

“They were able to get all the charm of a house in the avenues with a warranty,” he said.

Anderson lived in a 1952 house in the avenues with three teenagers and one bathroom before moving into Doe Mill.

He faced reshaping the garage into living space, renovating the kitchen and porch, and putting on a new roof, he said.

Instead, the family opted for a wrap-around porch in Anderson’s Magnolia-style Doe Mill house.

“I couldn’t see myself drinking margaritas in the garage,” he said.

While his kids can’t walk to Chico High School anymore, Anderson’s PG&E bill dropped, and he no longer owns a lawn mower.

“I’m greatly relieved that I can get the neighbor kid to cut the modest patch of lawn without owning a lawn mower,” he said.

Huge houses in suburbia are not what many non-traditional families or families whose children have already moved out are looking for, Anderson said. The biggest Doe Mill house has four bedrooms and is 2,000 square feet.

Small homes like those in Doe Mill’s Bungalow Court or multi-family housing can be a solution.

“When presented with the reality of, ‘We need a place to live’,” Anderson said, “they often settle for a house designed for Ward and June Cleaver and their two kids.”

Finding home

Doe Mill resident Debra Huiras didn’t settle.

Huiras, who lives in a bright-yellow Cypress-style house with a sweeping porch, said she likes the more traditional architecture of the subdivision.

While the houses seem close enough to touch, she said it’s an illusion created by the tall, two-story frames.

“Our space is about the same,” she said.

Rather than having a few feet on each side of the house, the Doe Mill yards span 10 feet from house to house, with each house getting one side yard.

The neighbor’s living area windows don’t face her house, so her neighbors can’t look in.

“Even though we’re close, there’s still privacy,” she said.

Unlike many subdivision residents, Huiras walks down her street regularly and knows many people in the 175-house subdivision.

“It’s almost like living in San Francisco,” she said.

But unlike the busy streets of San Francisco, Doe Mill streets are narrow and curve to slow traffic. Cars can only park on one side of the 26-foot-wide street.

Fresh flowers bloom beside often-used porch seats on most Doe Mill houses. Dogs bark when strangers walk past their houses, but the wide sidewalks invite evening strolls.

Students move in

Shauna Gowdy moved out of a Matson Street house one Wednesday afternoon. A recent Chico State University graduate, Gowdy said she wishes she could stay in the Doe Mill neighborhood, but she couldn’t find a place to suit her needs.

Loading up a pickup and the trunk of her car with boxes, Gowdy said, “The houses here are beautiful.”

While few Chico State students rent houses in Doe Mill, Gowdy said it is beginning to attract more of the college crowd.

When Chico State student Matt Howard came to see the Doe Mill house he now rents, he thought he had driven onto the set of Pleasantville, a movie based on a 1950s sitcom. “Is this a movie lot or what?” he recalls saying.

Howard and two friends got a list of available houses from a rental agency and liked the Doe Mill neighborhood.

The three-bedroom, three-bath house rents for $1,300 a month, he said, which is what he expected to pay for a three-bedroom house in Chico.

On his first night in Doe Mill, Howard said he and a friend were drinking beer on the second-floor balcony, which is one of the reasons Howard liked the house so much.

The next morning, Howard woke up to his neighbors asking him to clean up the bottles, he said.

The communication between neighbors may contribute to the pristine appearance of most Doe Mill houses.

“They want to make sure everything looks good,” he said.

The close quarters also mean Howard has to keep the sound down. When his house is quiet, he said he can hear the fan in his neighbor’s bathroom.

“You really have to watch the noise,” he said.

But Howard doesn’t mind too much because the neighbors are friendly and helpful.

“You’re truly neighbors,” he said.

The only problem with living in Doe Mill is that it’s far away from the campus and downtown Chico.

“It’s an expensive cab ride,” said Howard, who spends $17, including a tip, for a trip home from downtown.

Carriage rentals

While students think Doe Mill is out of the way, Gina Mitchell said the homes off 20th Street are in a central location.

After her son moved out of her ranch house in Oroville, Mitchell was ready to move into a smaller space, she said. She picked a Doe Mill carriage house, a studio apartment built above the garage to be rented out or used as an office.

About 70 percent of houses with full-size garages have carriage houses.

Mitchell plans to stay in Chico until she completes her nursing degree at Butte College, she said.

“It’s a good location,” she said. “It’s a nice place to be.”

While many people rent their carriage houses now, New Urban Builders President Tom DiGiovanni doesn’t think that will last.

DiGiovanni has a garage converted into a studio apartment behind his 1931 house near Bidwell Park.

When he bought the house, it was rented out, and he kept renting it for six years. But as his children grew older and relatives began staying over more often, he decided his family needed the space. He thinks that will happen in Doe Mill, too.

While DiGiovanni calls his Doe Mill project a success, he said he learned a lot along the way.

“We also recognize that this isn’t for everybody,” he said, “and we’re not trying to sell to the entire market.”

Staff Intern Brea Jones can be reached at bjones@chicoer.com.