It took years to come to fruition — seven, in fact — but Brian Grover was determined to make his vision for Fox Point Farms a reality.

There is so much exploration going on with younger developers around placemaking, social interactions, and how we can create a new form of community where people are encouraged by their built environment and the way we design it,” says Grover, managing partner of Encinitas, California–based Nolen Communities.

He was describing his motivation for the yearslong journey from vision to entitlement to land acquisition to reality for a 20-acre agrihood in a challenging coastal California market. That community,

Photo credit: Maria Russo
  • Hatch Gatherings is a greenhouse event space at the front door of the community with transparent views of the natural landscape. The location hosts movement classes, mindfulness meditations, and wellness programming, and anchors the large community event lawn that showcases live music from a small stage multiple nights a week.
  • Fox Point Roasters is an electric-powered on-site roastery that uses advanced convection and conduction technology to roast coffee while reducing its overall carbon footprint and providing craft-brewed coffee for the café.
  • Heal Botanics uses ingredients grown on the farm. An herbalist blends organic teas, tinctures, and other nontoxic personal care products, which are available at Harvest Market.

Community Matters

Placemaking and the integration of all these commercial elements is one thing, and how they live is another. Grover is quick to explain that what he is doing at Fox Point would not scale — which was never his goal — but there are elements of it that are replicable, and lessons to be learned for developers and builders in all markets.

Post-war suburban sprawl has led to isolation and keeping up with the Joneses where everybody’s amenities and private things are in their private backyards, and now, after 40 or 50 years of that, we’re seeing the negative impact on our social interactions today,” he believes.

Local relationships are crucial to making a hyper-local ecosystem work, and when developing a community in an existing neighborhood — such as Fox Point Farms — Grover says intense outreach and listening to neighbors is a top priority. When initially designing the entry points for Fox Point, for example, neighbors on an adjacent street noted they were opposed to any traffic from the new community passing by their homes. Grover heard those concerns and closed off one of the planned entries. In hindsight, those neighbors now must walk ¾ of a mile around the edge of the community to enjoy the market, farm, restaurants, and live music.

Fox Point Farms is a reimagined way of living the way we used to live.

Most, maybe all, of the people buying here are buying into the community concept, not just buying a home,” Grover notes. “They want to be able to walk to a café. They want to interact with each other. They want to feel like they are in a semi-urban environment while being in the suburbs, and that’s what we are providing.”

Judging by the pace of home sales, the families and neighbors who gather daily on the community green, and the cars and e-bikes parked throughout the development every weekend, Grover’s vision for this former agricultural land is a success.