Helping communities plan for the future

The Cottage Company® began as a direct result of the adoption of the Cottage Housing Development (CHD) Code, first implemented in Langley, Washington in 1995. At the time, most cities didn't have single-family land use codes that would allow for the visionary pocket neighborhoods that The Cottage Company®, wanted to create. Rather than contributing to the sprawl taking root in the suburban areas of the Pacific Northwest, our choice was to utilize existing urban areas and infrastructure in a better way.

The bucolic Whidbey Island town of Langley wound up being the ideal location for our first development. Not only had the town adopted a code that would allow for this type of infill in single-family areas, but was actively encouraging developments that would retain and enhance the village's charming intimate character and foster strong communities, while providing a more-sustainable housing option. The response was overwhelmingly positive. Both industry and national press praised our pocket neighborhoods of compact homes.

Our pocket neighborhoods are often built as the first new community that showcases a new land use code, and are then used as models for other similar 'smart growth' neighborhoods.

"These small houses are nostalgic in appearance only - in concept they are another step in the growth of new urbanism."
- Metropolitan Home Magazine