Brooklyn's flexible design options, layout woo first-time buyers

Leroy and Ashley Stevens have always enjoyed a good wander through the latest show homes.

But two and a half years years ago, that changed. It was just before COVID hit and the couple, who was renting a furnished townhome in Redstone, set out on a show home outing. They ended up in the northwest community of Livingston.

“We went to the Brooklyn show home and drove around the community, and I said to Leroy: ‘You know what? I feel like I want to live here,’ ” recalls Ashley, a microbiologist.

They were intrigued by Livingston’s connected sense of community — one that centred around the HUB, the resident recreation centre.

“It’s just different in Livingston. There’s something about it, an energy. It’s very family-oriented and there are lots of young people about,” says Ashley. Although the neighbourhood turned their heads, it was really the Brooklyn laned home by Morrison Homes that stopped them in their tracks.

“I fell in love with the kitchen and the layout. I was like, this is it,” says Ashley.

At the time, the couple wasn’t in a position to purchase a home, so they tucked away the experience.

The Brooklyn is one of Morrison Homes’ best-selling models and for good reason. The two-storey floor plan offers 1,750 square feet of living space with three-bedrooms and 2 1/2 bathrooms. An upstairs bonus room and an optional main floor office/flex room complete the plan.

It’s also a laned home, meaning that the garage is not attached to the front of the home. “That’s one of the things that I really liked; you can see outside, because you don’t have a garage covering everything. It’s just so much brighter,” says Ashley.

Michelle Doucet, Morrison’s laned home area sales manager in Livingston, says that laned homes offer all of the same benefits as a front-attached garage home, but at a lower price point.

“They also offer great curb appeal,” she says.? Buyers in Livingston can choose from four exterior elevations: contemporary, craftsman, prairie and farmhouse.

Fast forward to the summer of 2021 and the couple, who are in their 30s, was ready to take the plunge. They hired a realtor and toured resale homes, just to confirm that a new build was the best option, but couldn’t find anything that they liked.

“We really wanted our kitchens and bathrooms done in a certain way, and we just couldn’t find that in a resale home,” says Leroy. “So, we came back to Livingston, to the show home we loved, crunched the numbers and pulled the trigger.”

The couple reconfigured the floor plan and made a few adjustments in the kitchen, replacing the ?range with two wall ovens and a gas cooktop. They both love to cook — Ashley is from Puerto Rico and Leroy is from Pakistan and often they find themselves whipping up traditional dishes.

“We experiment a lot,” says Ashley. When asked what their favourite dish is, she didn’t have to think. “Leroy’s beef Wellington is incredible,” she says, adding that the couple is looking forward to hosting their first dinner party in their new home.

They also added walls to the open-concept flex room to create greater privacy for a home office and moved the bonus room from the front of the home to the middle to separate the owners’ suite from the two secondary bedrooms.

“Both our families live outside of Canada. We are hoping that they will come and visit — everyone now will have their private space,” says Leroy.

Having the opportunity to personalize the floor plan is just one of the reasons that Morrison Homes has earned a spate of top awards, including BILD Calgary Region’s 2021 Builder of the Year and most recently, BILD Alberta’s coveted Pinnacle Award for Best Large Volume Builder.

The couple moved into their home in July, nine months after they signed the paperwork.

“It was just such a great process,” says Ashley. “We had so many options and selections available to us and most of what we chose was standard, so we didn’t have to pay extra,” says Ashley, adding that Pinterest became the couple’s best friend.

“We had things in mind that we wanted and we were able to make it real with Morrison,” says Leroy.?

Because the two have slightly different likes, Leroy chose the bathroom and ensuite finishes, while Ashley choose the kitchen’s colour scheme — white cabinets, white countertops, a navy blue island and gold hardware. Throughout the home, the couple settled on matte black fixtures and LVP flooring.

Developed by Brookfield Residential, Livingston offers a convenient location in the city’s northwest, close to Stoney Trail and the Deerfoot. Plenty of open space — the community boasts 101 hectares (250 acres) of it — as well as the Livingston HUB, a 35,000-square-foot amenity centre, make the community stand out. Future plans include a town centre that will offer more than 1 million square feet of offices, retail and services space.

One of the bonuses of the community is that buyers have the option of building a legal secondary suite.

“There are a lot of benefits — it can add additional income and help pay down a mortgage,” says Doucet. The cost to add a suite runs approximately $62,000.

“It’s really an up-and-coming community,” says Leroy, who works in marketing for an oil and gas distribution company, located just 10 minutes away from the couple’s new home. Ashley works in the south, but says, “the commute isn’t a hardship.”

THE DETAILS

COMMUNITY:?Livingston

DEVELOPER:?Brookfield Residential Properties

BUILDER:?Morrison Homes

THE HOME: The Brooklyn, a two-storey, 1,750-square-foot, three-bedroom, 2 1/2-bathroom laned home with upstairs bonus room and optional main floor office/flex room. Elevation choices include contemporary, craftsman, farmhouse and prairie.

PRICE:?The Brooklyn starts at $575,000, including GST. Buyers have a choice of laned lots, including walk-out lots.

SHOW HOME: The presentation centre for Morrison Homes in Livingston is located in the Kinsley laned show home — 18 Lucas Heights N.W. It’s open Mondays through Thursdays from 2 to 8 p.m. and Saturdays, Sundays and holidays from noon to 5 p.m. It is closed on Fridays. Two new Brooklyn show homes have recently been unveiled in the communities of Glacier Ridge and Wolf Willow. The Glacier Ridge show home is located at 55 Edith Terrace, N.W. The Wolf Willow show home is at 122 Wolf Creek Rise, S.E.??

INFORMATION: experiencelivingston.com; morrisonhomes.ca