By Corinne Murdock |
The city of Tempe houses the nation’s first planned car-free community: a rental neighborhood called “Culdesac.”
The community is a smaller version of the 15-minute city concept: a design concept in which residents can access daily essentials like work, stores, and schools within a walkable or bikeable 15-minute radius. Culdesac, located on Apache Boulevard, covers 17 acres of land and offers over 700 pet-friendly apartments for rent.
Since Culdesac residents would live without the ability to travel with ease outside the community, the real estate developer partnered with city government and vehicle rental companies to provide transport outside the community.
Valley Metro will provide free rides on the light rail. Lyft, the ridesharing service, will offer 15 percent off their rides. Envoy, an electric carsharing service, will offer reduced rentals at $5 an hour. The company will also have Bird scooters on site, and allocate over 1,000 bike parking spots.
Other partners include Lugg, an on-demand moving company; Lectric eBikes; Cocina Chiwas, a restaurant; and Archer’s Bikes, a bike sales company.
The community has a single central mailroom, one resident gym, one restaurant, one coffee shop, two boutique community shops, one grocery store, and a bike shop.
Many of the staffers behind Culdesac have roots with Opendoor Technologies, an online company based out of San Francisco, California that purchases, flips, and resells residential real estate.
The co-founder and CEO of Culdesac, Ryan Johnson, was on Opendoor’s founding team and their vice president of operations for four years. Additionally, Johnson previously worked for Bain Capital, New York Metropolitan Transportation Authority, and the Chilean government’s urban planning initiatives.
Other former Opendoor colleagues include Tom Barta, Culdesac’s engineering lead who built the software foundation for Opendoor home loans; Vanessa Valenzuela Erickson, Culdesac’s founding team member and advisor who was one of Opendoor’s managers, and formerly an employee for Teach for America and the Salt River Project; Megan Meyer Toolson, Culdesac’s president of sell direct and services who held the same role at Opendoor; and Evan Moore, Culdesac’s partner at Khosla Ventures who was Opendoor’s vice president of product and the co-founder and COO of Doordash.
Studio apartments start at $1,300 a month, while three-bedroom apartments start at $3,200 a month.
The real estate developer said that it also designed its buildings to mitigate the harsh desert heat and sun.
Though its first by design, Culdesac isn’t the first community to be car-free in the nation or in the state. One in Arizona is car-free, but not by choice: Supai, the capital of the Havasupai Indian Reservation located within the Grand Canyon, is a remote community accessible only by an eight-mile hike by foot or mule, or a 3,000-foot helicopter ride.
Several other communities have been car-free, for a variety of reasons: Bald Head Island in North Carolina, Colonial Williamsburg and Tangier Island in Virginia; Daufuskie Island in South Carolina; Fire Island and Governors Island in New York; Halibut Cove in Alaska; Mackinac Island in Michigan; and Santa Catalina Island in California.
Corinne Murdock is a reporter for AZ Free News. Follow her latest on Twitter, or email tips to corinne@azfreenews.com.
