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Service area · Highland, UT
Highland is a large lot city by design, and that shapes almost every project in it. The house is rarely the only thing going on the property. Blackbird is a Provo based design-builder, and Danny Bird has been building since 2001.
The local picture
Highland exists the way it does because of water. Christian Beck homesteaded a hundred and sixty acres out of Alpine in 1869, but without water rights the bench was good for spring grazing and nothing else, and that is what Lehi, American Fork and Alpine used it for.
So while the valley floor below was being farmed and then cut into house lots, the bench sat. When it finally developed, it developed as large lot residential, and the zoning locked that pattern in. The R-1-40 district allows one home per forty thousand square feet with a minimum lot width of one hundred thirty feet.
The practical result is a city of substantial houses on substantial ground, most of it built from the eighties onward. The houses are now old enough to want real work. The lots have almost always got room for more.
A finished Blackbird project in Provo. We have no completed project photos from Highland to show yet.
Planning a large lot
Most Highland owners end up building three or four things over a decade. The cheapest version of that is the one that was planned as a whole.
Shops, detached garages and RV parking are among the most requested structures on a Highland lot. Where they go decides where the driveway goes, and the driveway decides everything else about how the property works.
Water has to leave an acre somewhere. Setting the finished grades, swales and hard surfaces once, in one plan, is far cheaper than re-grading around each new project as it lands.
Power, gas, water and drainage out to a shop, a pool house or an outdoor kitchen are long runs on a lot this size. Trenching once for future stubs costs almost nothing. Trenching three times costs three times.
If a wing, a garage bay or a second story is even a maybe, say so early. A roof line and a foundation can be built ready for it. Retrofitting is where additions get expensive.
Ground and paperwork
The bench is built from material shed off the Wasatch and reworked by Lake Bonneville into deltas and terraces. That means gravel and cobble in places. Excellent bearing, excellent drainage, and slower, costlier excavation and trenching than the finer soils out on the valley floor. On a long run across an acre it adds up.
Dry Creek runs through the area and the Wasatch fault zone runs along the base of the range just east of town. That is not a reason for alarm. It is a reason to spend a little on a site specific geotechnical look before designing a foundation, and to check your parcel on the Utah Geological Survey's public geologic hazards map, which anyone can do for free.
Highland reviews applications once they are complete, with all required documentation. A plan submittal deposit is due when construction plans go in. The fastest permit is always the one that did not have to come back for missing structural calculations.
Everything Blackbird does
On an acre, most owners end up doing more than one of these. It is usually cheaper to plan them together than to do them one at a time.
Working out what the whole property is going to become, before the first piece of it gets built and boxes in the rest.
A line-item budget covering the house and the site, which on a Highland lot are two different projects sharing a driveway.
Independent review of bids, contracts and work in progress, for owners who want someone technical on their side.
One contract for design, budget, permitting and construction, and one person accountable for all of it.
New homes on Highland's remaining acreage, designed around how the whole lot is going to be used.
Build-outs, renovations and light commercial work in Highland and across Utah County.
Townhomes and multi-family projects, which in Highland go through site plan and architectural design review.
The most common Highland project. Large houses from the eighties, nineties and two thousands, now due for real work.
Big footprints mean big basements. Layout, egress and mechanical planning matter more at that size, not less.
Covered patios, outdoor kitchens, sport courts and the hardscape and grading that make an acre feel designed rather than empty.
Questions
Nearby
Highland sits between Alpine and American Fork, with Lehi just west.
House, shop, addition, back yard, or all of it in the right order. The first conversation is free and it is with Danny.
Or call or text (801) 735-7186