Two Visionaries And A New Community … Heritage Wake Forest
By Dave Gardner, Publisher

Jud Ammons had a vision for the beautiful dairy farmland.  Andy Ammons had a vision for a new community.  The visions of this father-son team led to the creation of a new community and the introduction of a new lifestyle in Northern Wake County.  Justus “Jud” (the father) originally purchased the land.  Andy (the son) then purchased it from Jud to create Heritage Wake Forest and thus the new lifestyle.

Before I sat down with Andy to write this profile, it was hard for me to grasp the magnitude of the six years of planning and hard work that has gone into creating a new lifestyle community in the Northern Wake County town of Wake Forest. In his recent interview with Heritage Wake Forest Magazine, Andy Ammons, president of Ammons Development Group, described in his own words his “pride ’n joy,” the Heritage Wake Forest Community.

Heritage Wake Forest is one of several Ammons communities across North Carolina. While the number of communities is significant, the Ammons family name is what makes each one special. Andy Ammons is the second generation to carry on the ideals that have established their solid reputation for excellence throughout the years.

Andy’s father, Jud Ammons, founder of Ammons, Inc., is a legend in the Triangle area and is best known for developing Raleigh’s first planned unit development, Greystone Village in North Raleigh. For more than two decades Jud was, and continues to be, a legend in the industry, developing more than 3,000 acres and providing communities that today still bear the family name.

Other Ammons communities include: Lake Park (North Raleigh, 87 acres), Hidden Valley (North Raleigh, 65 acres), Greystone Village (North Raleigh, 650 acres), Eagle Chase (East Raleigh, 600 acres), East Park (East Raleigh, 600 acres), Village at Nags Head (Nags Head, 400 acres), North Chase (Wilmington, 750 acres), and Springmoor Retirement Village (North Raleigh, 30 acres). Andy’s experience in planning, designing, and developing communities began at an early age when Greystone Village was started in the early ’70s. After graduating from the School of Engineering at North Carolina State University in 1982, Andy worked as a project engineer for two Florida-based construction companies, before rejoining the Ammons’ family of companies. By 1986, Jud turned over the leadership of the company to Andy, who began the development of the family’s first coastal resort communities in Wilmington and Nags Head. Andy attributes his personal success to the ability to use all the resources at hand, including growing up as the son of Jud Ammons.

Andy, who subscribes to the same beliefs as his father, will be quick to tell you he doesn’t fit the large corporate mold and has kept Ammons Development Group small. Andy believes in honesty and integrity and being directly accessible and accountable in all aspects of the development process. This ensures that when the job is done, it is done right. Understanding and respecting the area’s history is critical to the development of Heritage Wake Forest and to its future growth. Most of this land used to be a beautiful dairy farm owned by Emmitt Marshall and his son-in-law, Phil Stroud, who farmed this land for over 50 years. They still live less than one mile away and visit Heritage Wake Forest often. Proudly displayed in the Heritage Wake Forest Sales Center is a wall-sized mural of the dairy farm while it was still in operation.

Even in 1986 (16 years ago), Jud and Andy knew that this was a beautiful piece of land, with many natural resources ? but no trees. So they planted trees ? 1.1 million of them ? over a period of four winters to improve the land and accentuate the views. With the added trees, a program was set up to transplant them as they grew. When Andy goes into a new section to develop the building lots, he either brings in the trees to enhance the development’s buffers and streetscapes or allows builders to use the transplanted trees on their individual building sites. These sites instantly look mature. Can you imagine planting all those trees and then spending over $1 million to move or clear some of them for development purposes?

Andy thought about this project for a long time. Coming from a family of small builders, he knew that this community would have a special feel that came about through a multitude of small decisions. Every detail was reviewed and researched, including signs, street lights, landscaping, and marketing. Block by block, the foundation was laid for the community known as Heritage Wake Forest.

Andy, Jan, and the children moved to Wake Forest in 1996 and immersed themselves into the community. Jan has involved herself in the local PTA (Parent Teachers Association) at various county levels and both Jan and Andy have become involved with the Chamber of Commerce, their church, the local business community, and their children’s sports teams.

Andy explained that, “Wake Forest accepted me and trusted me to deliver. I think the whole community appreciates our efforts. Heritage Wake Forest is different from most developments because we have worked very closely with the community. For instance, we provided the land for the Veterans’ Memorial that is located adjacent to the Heritage clubhouse and volunteered to permanently maintain it, and we re-built the Old Well at the Wake Forest College Birthplace.

Heritage Wake Forest has been six years in the making. Our 12-member builder team began designing the home styles that matched the style and personality of the community in the Summer and Fall of 1999 and then began building homes in the Winter of 2000.

We have invested millions of dollars to improve the local transportation system and we are one of the few developers who has ever installed a new railroad crossing to improve transportation plans for the whole area, not just Heritage Wake Forest. We bought that entrance land after we started the project and spent several hundred thousand dollars to develop the crossing. The project design began in 1997, the permits were applied for in 1999, and the crossing opened in February 2002. We also constructed a five-lane road that provides a direct access to U.S. Highway 1-A.”

The Wake County School System has plans to build an elementary, a middle, and a high school in Heritage, partly due to the road improvements that have been made. The Heritage Elementary school is under construction now and will open in December 2002. By 2003-2004 the Heritage Middle School should also be open. All of the land has been purchased, and construction is now being planned for the high school.

Once the three-school campus was committed for and the road system was in, the Wake County Parks and Recreation bought 60 acres to create a regional complex that will provide athletic fields and opportunities and be tied to the school campuses. The Town of Wake Forest provided about $3 million for new ball fields and a Soccer Center that is already on the ground and will be ready for play this Fall. North Carolina’s Division of Water Quality added another 50 acres for a full-size nature park. North Carolina’s largest creek restoration and reclamation project is now underway with about three miles of greenways. The creek that had been diverted years ago for farming will now be restored to its natural corridor.

Along with the elementary, middle, and high schools, the parks, the greenway, and the soccer fields, there will over 350 acres for public use. It was an amazing accomplishment to get five municipal agencies (Wake County Public School System, Town of Wake Forest, Wake County Parks and Recreation, NC Department of Water Quality, and the NC Division of Land Resources) to work together over an extended period of time. It’s taken four or five years to pull all of the agencies together. Everybody is excited about the opportunity to capitalize on the synergy of adjacent coordinated projects to create a community like no other. Heritage Wake Forest is not seen as just a part of the town, but rather the next step of the town’s planned growth and future.

The next segment of the I-540 Outer Loop will be open to Capital Boulevard in mid-July 2002 with the huge Triangle Towne Center Mall opening in mid-August. The Outer Loop and Mall will be only six miles from Heritage Wake Forest. The I-540 Outer Loop is scheduled to open to Highway 401 the following Fall. Drivers will be able to reach Highway 401 or Capital Boulevard in nine minutes by the four-lane US Highway 1. The I-540 Outer Loop will make the Eastern and Western Triangle areas easily accessible from there.

Out of 1,065 acres in Heritage, there are over 500 acres of residential land, 200+ non-residential acres for two retail shopping centers, a 50-acre business park, and a 40-acre service-retail-office park. There are 350+ acres of parks, golf course, greenways, and ball fields. Heritage is zoned for 5,000 homes; however, with the golf course and the public facilities, it will be closer to 2,500 total homes when built-out. Most of the homes in this golf course community are adjacent to or near the course. There will be approximately 1,500 attached family units and 700 single-family homes. Of the 500 acres of residential land, one-third are already under development. The remaining two-thirds will be blended in seamlessly over the next 10 years.

According to Andy, “Heritage has a great builder team. The thing we express the most about Heritage is the fact that we have really worked at having a team approach to everything we do. The teams include the Amenities team, the Sales and Marketing team, and the actual Builder team itself. We have 12 builders here now. We interviewed numerous builders, and we were very selective in getting the personalities and reputations that we wanted. We chose builders from different geographical areas of the Triangle area and some who have local ties to the area. Half of the builder team are builders that we have worked for, with, or beside during the last 25 years. We have a handshake relationship with most of our builders. We trust them, and they trust us. They all share the same visions for Heritage that we have. They understand that Heritage is not just another tract-type subdivision. Together, we make a difference.

At Heritage, our attention to detail is different from what you will see in other developments. We continually have in-depth discussions about the look of the homes to be built, their specifications, and the materials to be used. It’s not easy to build this new environment. It would be easier just to take the same old plans and keep cranking out houses, but we have worked hard not to do that here. It’s starting to pay off, and everyone can see that now.”

Heritage offers different choices of lifestyles. It offers “maintenance free” or “full maintenance” lifestyles. The Heritage builder team has drawn up an architectural guidelines manual, because they looked at all of the communities in the Triangle area and they wanted to promote diversity and historical relevance. A priority is to create a nice community that looks as if it evolved over time but looks natural and fits in with the distinct personality of Wake Forest. Andy spent a lot of time with the architects and building designers acting as an advisor, and the guidelines evolved over a period of 12 months. The builders have to buy into that concept in order to join the team. However, Andy is flexible enough to allow popular floor plans to be included with exterior modifications. Some of the builders’ existing home plans may fit right in, while other plans had to be created from scratch. The guidelines cover a wide spectrum in home design. There are landscaping requirements, so that all new houses have a mature look – not just barren clones like so many neighborhoods start out.

The Heritage Sales Center is not just a fancy garage, and it’s not just another model house. The unique Center has a revolving exhibit that is tied to the history of Wake Forest, the College, Arnold Palmer, and all of the things that symbolize Wake Forest’s “heritage.” It has several touch screen computer workstations that display home designs in various ways that are unique to the sales process. Realtors and prospective home buyers can direct themselves through the sales model or handle sales the old fashioned way ? with one-on-one meetings with buyers and builders. Next to the Center is the Heritage Swim and Tennis Club with a 10-lane competition swimming pool including 18,000 sq. ft. of decking, 103-foot waterslide, children’s play area, and a pool house with a full-service grill. The grill is not your typical snack bar or soda machine. It’s the real thing. The grill offers a variety of salads, sandwiches, and healthy food. It’s a place where members can eat decent food. The prices are very affordable, and the grill provides more of a club atmosphere or a family style atmosphere. Many member families eat there two or three times a week. It’s also perfect for private parties. Heritage has a swim team and provides various programs for the Swim Club members. They did not want to just have a pool and tennis courts. They wanted to have a Swim and Tennis Club. And to do that, it is necessary to have activities for all members to enjoy. The full-time Swim and Tennis Club manager has done a great job of creating activities that both the parents and the kids enjoy, while the tennis professional offers private lessons for members.

The “American Links”?styled Heritage golf course was designed by Bob Moore. Bob is with the California-based JMP Golf Design Group. Andy was very familiar with Bob’s work as Bob had designed the Nags Head Golf Links at the Ammons’ community in Nags Head, NC ? The Village at Nags Head ? in the mid 1980’s. When talking with Bob about the plan for the golf course, Andy knew he wanted a unique course for the Triangle area. The typical area courses they looked at were pretty wide open, flat, bunker left or bunker right, with some outside mounding. They were too similar. For Heritage, they wanted a lot of “movement” in the fairways. “Movement” in the fairway is the feeling a golfer gets when he or she stands on the tee box and looks out at the golf hole and sees moguls, undulations, and topographical changes. Movement is aesthetically pleasing and interesting to look at when playing a golf hole. On most of the golf courses, golfers see only flat fairways. Heritage gives golfers more choices off the tee by providing split fairways that allow for both upper and lower fairway routes to the pin.

The golf course plays to a maximum length of 6,930 yards. It has five sets of tees on every hole, so you can “pick your own poison.” The greens are a blend of A-1 and A-4 bent grass and the fairways are 419 Bermuda. A big advantage for golfers is the generous out of bounds areas consisting of 50-feet wide buffers on each side of every fairway (25-feet golf easement on the residential lots and a 25-feet on the golf course side).  A buffer this wide is more than one normally finds on a residential golf course. The buffer trees have been thinned and trimmed to provide an area that can be easily played out of, off of a thick bed of pine straw. The green, year round buffer provided also serves to hide the homes from the golf fairway, to the benefit of both residents and golfers. There are over 200 acres devoted to the golf course, 30% more than typically found. As the golf course and the community matures around it, the buffer will become more important and people will appreciate it even more as time goes on.

While the Club is professionally managed as a semi-private facility it is operated much like a private club. The Club has a private members’ lounge area with locker facilities upstairs in the clubhouse. Attention to design details such as a dining room and banquet room with a large, double-sided fireplace, and expansive decking overlooking the course ensures that Heritage Club members receive extra value for their money. Heritage Golf Club has a distinctly private atmosphere but offers a semi-private fees structure to keep costs down for members. The Club also provides a great backdrop to host receptions and private parties as well as a perfect place for business retreats and seminars.

The Ammons family tradition of creating masterpieces continues.