Granary developer Colby Cox talks designing community, planning growth

Why Should Delaware Care?
The Granary at Draper Farms is one of the largest master-planned communities to have ever broken ground in Delaware, and its ambitious builder has a unique view on how it should fit into the greater community.

Colby Cox is a fourth-generation Miltonian who left his mark on his hometown two decades ago, when he built Cannery Village. Today, the master-planned community surrounds the Dogfish Head brewery and helped launch the intimate, mixed-use development concept to Delaware.

He’s recently kickstarted work on his latest Delaware project, The Granary at Draper Farms – a massive project on Milton’s southwest side, which will likely double the town’s population in the next decade.

Cox discussed the project, how he approaches building a community, how to view Sussex County’s building boom and more in a sit-down interview with Spotlight Delaware.

The entire conversation can be heard in an exclusive podcast. A selection of the conversation, edited for length and clarity, is offered here.

So we’re here in Milton as you kick off sales in The Granary at Draper Farm, a 451-acre planned community with 1,350 residences and 60,000 square feet of commercial space. There’s a lot to unpack, but I really want to start at the beginning, because this land has been in your family for about 80 years. Can you give us the background of Draper Farms?

My family’s been in Delaware for a long, long time, hundreds of years, but Milton became a place that a big portion of my family settled. My great grandmother was born here, just up Federal Street. My grandmother was born in that house, which is still there to this day and a lot of my extended family has lived here. I lived here for a while at one point in the early 2000s

And my great grandfather started a tomato company and canned tomatoes, which ended up becoming the Draper Canning Company and later Draper King Cole. My grandfather took it over in the ‘40s, when he moved down here after playing football at the University of Maryland, and took that from a tomato company to agriculture in general, and vertical integration with rail cars, manufacturing and owning his own soybean and corn farms. He was a major supplier across the U.S. of canned goods for about 40 years, until the industry started to transition and frozen food became popular. 

I’ve heard that there were about 140 canneries on the Delmarva Peninsula at one time, and today there are none. So that went away, and then through some kind of weird serendipity, I ended up purchasing that property back in the early 2000s, tore down that factory, and then turned that into a community, which is where Dogfish Head brewery is today, and a housing community called Cannery Village.

You mentioned earlier that this is not your first development in Milton. Convergence Communities also did the Cannery that surrounds the Dogfish Head campus today. Did you learn any lessons from that project that you hope to carry over to The Granary? 

Some of the stuff that we did in there has worked very well. I was very into New Urbanism and traditional neighborhood design at the time. I’d been studying projects under Andrés Duany and some of the projects that he had worked on. I worked with a group out of Washington, D.C., at the time called Rogers Consulting that had really worked closely with Duany. 

This is more common now, but back in the early 2000s this was kind of cutting-edge. These concepts were really developed in the late ‘80s and it had never really been done here. There was one project in DC that I was able to get some inspiration from, but it was a big sell. 

The mayor and town council originally did not like the concept. My pitch was, ‘All I’m trying to do is implement a lot of the same values, architecture and design principles that exist in Milton as it was designed hundreds of years ago.’ Well, then engineers get involved and they’re like, ‘Yeah, but what about the 100-year snowstorm? And what about this? And, how’s the fire truck going to swing around this 90-degree radius with a median in the middle of it?’

Those are all practical concerns, but I realized the only thing I could do is take them somewhere and show them what it looks like, what it feels like. So, I ended up convincing the mayor and council at the time to get on a bus and we all drove to a master-planned project called Lakelands and Kentlands in Maryland.

We walked around for a day in this community. And they finally started to see that houses fronting on the street with alleyway access behind can work. And 5 feet between residences actually breeds more human connection than fences everywhere and distance between people. And so they got it, and they ultimately bought in. And I think that that has worked very well. 

We can’t let engineers control the way that we live, because a lot of times what feels best in terms of the way we live isn’t the most practical in terms of trash pickup and snow removal.

Cannery Village has really transformed Milton in many ways, bringing new life to an area that was largely kind of forgotten, but it also really introduced master-planned communities to Delaware in a way that hadn’t existed beforehand. Now there are many communities around the state using that model.

What is it about mixed-use or master-planned communities that convinces you this is not just a fad, but something that people are going to want for generations?

I’ve spent a lot of time all over Europe, Asia, and South America, and there’s some real common elements that you see in the way that people live that hammers in the general idea that there are a couple things that people need.

People need to feel that they can readily connect with nature, with each other, and with themselves or their spirit — those three things are very important for the development of self love and human happiness. 

When Convergence says we want to “create conscious communities,” it is designed around those very specific things.

Our goal in all of our projects is for people to see their home as the place where they sleep and have some time with their family, but the most important thing is for people to come out of their home and engage with other people and do things out in the natural world. 

We want you to have opportunities to sit quietly with yourself, without a phone or a computer in front of you, and sit in stillness and really kind of discover your inner voice and answer some of the big questions in life. That is the driving mission of The Granary. 

And so the entire planning around The Granary is about really giving people very accessible opportunities to connect with other people, to feel part of a community. And a key component of that is making sure that the Town of Milton feels as connected with the project as the project feels with the town.

There was some minor controversy over Convergence’s decision to seek a special development district to help pay for The Granary’s infrastructure like roads, sewer and amenities, which essentially puts the cost on future homeowners rather than on the developer upfront. We don’t see a lot of those special tax districts in Delaware. What went into that decision? 

Yeah, I think part of the reason why we don’t see more creativity in projects is because there’s a feasibility analysis that’s done that says, this is the amount of infrastructure benefits, recreational uses, or whatever, that this project can support based on what homebuilders are willing to pay for lots and, ultimately, what buyers are willing to pay for homes. 

That equation has resulted in a lack of creativity, not just here in Delaware, but most of the places that I go.The standard practice in a community is to now build a clubhouse that nobody’s going to use, a pool that people only use twice a year, and a hotel-style gym that’s too small.

That’s kind of the standard amenity package that people are being offered, and it’s absurd; it’s weak.

So, how do we deliver a product at a reasonable price that people are willing to pay for and afford all of these things? Well, there’s another mechanism, and we’ve used that in other areas. 

I’ve used it in Texas, and I’m currently involved in a project in Colorado where we’re looking at this tool. The best way to do that is to spread those costs out over time, have those costs borne by a combination of the developer and the new residents in the community, and actually be able to afford to pay the town for some of the impacts to the town, but also bring a litany of other amenities and uses to the community that otherwise would not make any economic sense. 

A lot of the stuff we’re doing, like the recreational athletic fields, the amphitheater, the bouldering field, the skate park, the outdoor basketball courts, the 3 miles of walking trails, preservation of 20 acres of waterfront — all of this is being funded by us in combination with this public financing program. The risk is borne, ultimately, by me, but it’s my ability to sell to these new homeowners, and then once they purchase a home, they pay their annual fee, and they pick up some of the expense. Until that happens, I’m paying all of that. 

Would the public financing up front allow you to build some of those amenities earlier in the process?

It does. It advances some of those funds, and it does allow us to move substantially faster with some of those things.

So you’re getting those things earlier, and then you’re paying for it in the long run with an additional tax on top?

Yeah, and the beauty is that there’s no risk to the town, and the risk is all on the residents and the developer of the new project. This is where we get into the win-win. 

The current residents of Milton are going to be getting a bunch of additional things that are public access and that the new residents are paying for – and they should be paying for it. That’s their contribution to this community, and it’s OK for them to have a bit of an entrance fee because somebody else built all of this.

Here in Sussex County, it seems there’s increasingly a tough climate for builders in  criticism from residents, even around some mixed-use projects like Belle Mead and Cool Spring Crossing. What have you learned as you look at those debates, and do you feel like the conversation is changing around development?

Well, I think to be truthful in a conversation about growth, you have to recognize both sides of the equation. It is not true that all development is good, and it is not true that all development is bad. There are ways of doing things that are mutually beneficial. 

I think the standpoint that “I’m here and nobody else should come” is unreasonable in any community. Communities need to welcome people that want to come and join, but they have to accept the values of that community. 

There’s a lot of benefits that have come with growth. That said, not every community should be developed. I believe wholeheartedly that the best growth is growth that occurs around already existing infrastructure, and frankly, towns. I do not believe that we should just allow people to develop green fields in the middle of nowhere. 

Now, you have to balance that with the fact that this is traditionally a farming community. These farmers have worked very hard to survive for many years, they have value in their property, and that value should not be taken away without just compensation. And there are ways to do that. 

There are transfer of development rights (TDR) programs and other things that can be done to protect these people who have owned this property for a very long time, and they deserve to be able to continue to farm, and they deserve to be able to have some value for what they have long term that isn’t just legislated into nothing.

There’s not a strong TDR culture in Delaware. Is that something Delaware should put more thought into as other states have?

No matter where I go — I develop in Texas, I’ve done some stuff in the Carolinas, I live in Jackson Hole, Wyoming — I run into a lot of the same concerns in a lot of these places.

How do we deal with growth? 

And yes, there are ideas that have worked well and transfer development rights programs have worked well. For people who don’t really know what that is, it’s the idea that you can put something that is not in a growth area under permanent preservation, but then you can monetize the development rights that you’re giving up for that by allowing somebody to purchase those and use those rights in an area that is more designed for growth. 

And I think that Delaware should very strongly consider that concept, especially here in Sussex County. I think it’s a potential solution for a lot of issues, and I think it can preserve a lot of the rural character of this place without destroying the value that the rural community has right now in their property. 

People probably aren’t used to hearing this from people like me, but I do not believe that growth should be occurring outside of the annexation area of towns. I think that that is where growth should occur. 

You and your family have been here for generations. When you look at Milton today, what do you think about in terms of how it’s changed over the decades?

I used to live at 424 Chestnut St. I drove by it yesterday. Every time I come to town, I kind of take a look at it as the first home I ever owned. It’s pretty humble, but I have a lot of nostalgia there. I have a lot of nostalgia for this town. 

I used to go to King’s Ice Cream when I was a kid. It’s been here forever. I remember my grandfather taking me on tours of the factory when I was 6 or 7 years old.

I think it’s a uniquely special place, and it’s different from some of these other towns in southern Delaware. They all have their own cool and unique attributes, but Milton in particular has this history of industry and culture and arts, and there’s a lot of really creative people in this town. 

You run into these very interesting people who are highly intelligent, highly creative, and they just happen to be in this town because there’s something about it that seems to draw those types of people in. It’s always been that way. 

But I do think there is something unique about Milton, and my mission with this project is to make sure that is preserved and enhanced.