Two Years Ago the Largest Housing Development in New England Lost Its Technology Access Provider, So The Pinehills Went into the Technology Business for Itself, and Has a Valuable Lesson to Share.
As John Judge walks along the sandy soil of this Eastern Massachusetts landscape, his excited voice betrays widely contrasting emotions as he ponders the lush hills and forests stretched out before him.
Judge talks of the beauty and opportunity to be found by those who chose to stake out a new life and build a new home here, and become part of this new Plymouth community.
Judge also reflects back on an often-trying first year—full of dashed hopes and promises, a shortage of equipment and experience, a brutally cold winter, and—perhaps most of all—urgency.
But Judge is not giving a tour of the historic Plimoth (the original spelling) Plantation and the English community that took root nearby in 1620. He is speaking of the new Pinehills, a massive housing development that when finished will be the largest in New England, and one of the largest on the east coast.
He is reflecting on the state-of-the-art design, construction, and merchandising available to his new homeowners. And he is recalling near-disaster on the home technology front, when the project's technology access provider decided to pull out completely after ground had been broken for the first homes.
"Two years ago, Verizon Corp. wanted to do all the data and fiber wiring at Pinehills, as they were launching their new fiber-to-home initiative," Judge recalls. Verizon was partnered to handle the entire development as it unfolded in different stages. The company would bring fiber optic to Pinehills, build the head-end building to serve the neighborhoods, cable the streets as they were constructed, and bring networking, email and cable television service to each new homeowner as they opted for various home tech packages.
Everything seemed perfect. Until approximately 40 housing starts into the new venture, that is, when Verizon had a change of heart. They opted out of the project, leaving Pinehills unplugged, Judge explains.
The inevitable result: panic. The Pinehills partnership was suddenly faced with a looming deadline to provide technology services to the first homeowners. After all, these were custom homebuyers, and many on the high end of the price scale. They expected to have everything waiting in their new homes when they took possession.
But no one was in place to bring service to the development, let alone to individual homes. Further, there wasn't a single large player in the region that could step in as an immediate understudy. All of which forced Pinehills to make the unusual decision of going into the technology business itself.
"This gave us 90 days to design a head-end site, design the equipment needed for video and data, purchase the equipment, learn how to use it, deploy miles of cable, create a rate structure for data and video for our customers, and launch the new Pinehills Connection company to handle it all. This simply wasn't in the business plan," Judge stresses.
But that was then, and what a difference a year can make. Technology quickly took center stage in the business plan. The Pinehills immediately sought local outside partners that could help them make the leap into the fiber optic and cable television service market. Remarkably, The Pinehills pulled it off with nary a hitch.
The first families are now comfortably settled into their new community. The developer was able to successfully step into the role of high-tech access provider and home technology integrator. The final offering in technology services, HDTV, became available to homeowners last month. Judge is now able to gauge good fortunes, and to truly give thanks.
Learning from Forefathers
The Pinehills offers a valuable lesson to homebuilders who want to be their own technology service providers. The process starts with finding local players who have done fiber cabling and network access on other smaller developments, and helping them scale up to large projects as part of your new team.
That was the route taken by The Pinehills, when it quickly partnered with three outside firms: The Broadband Group (which helped with planning), Gatehouse Network Systems (which helped design the head-end equipment), and New England Broadband (which did the deployment of equipment into individual homes, and did the fiber optic connections throughout the development).
This partnering allowed The Pinehills' employees to learn the process of providing home technology, literally from the ground up. The company offers a full slate of technology access options to homeowners, who deal directly with the new Pinehills Connections for all broadband, networking and email services they desire. Other home tech features, such as distributed audio, lighting control systems, security or HVAC, can be obtained from each builder involved with Pinehills, who in turn have their own home tech packages available for those options.
"Approximately 90 percent of homeowners are working with Pinehills Connections for video, data, or both," Judge says of the effort one year later. There are currently 300 occupied homes in the development, with another 200 under construction.
The sudden pull-out of Verizon could have posed major problems for individual builders working in The Pinehills. Nine different builders are involved with the project, each with a variety of home styles, and each working in different price ranges. The intent is to give homeowners a wide range of choices in house styles, sizes and prices.
But the impact was minimal on the first wave, thanks in large part to quick and candid communication from Pinehills ownership to the builders.
"Pinehills did a very nice job of letting us know the break-off date, and when the new vendor was stepping in," says Tim Porter, vice president and principal at Whitman Homes, one of the original builders to sign on to the project. "They were very upfront with what was going on, and kept us in the loop, so that we could keep our homeowners informed." Whitman Homes will build very high-end custom homes in the development, ranging in price from $600,000 to $1.5 million.
Other than the delay in receiving HDTV service, Porter says he doesn't recall homeowners being limited in any other technology services through the first and second years of construction.
Another high-end custom homebuilder who wasn't negatively impacted by the event was Kistler & Knapp, which is currently working on the Stone's Throw neighborhood within Pinehills. According to partner Dennis Kistler, "It seemed that at every turn the management was stellar. They really rose to the occasion, and did the right thing ."
Still, Kistler acknowledges that the Pinehills move was truly exceptional.
Pulling off such an effort obviously requires talented help. To do it, Pinehills brought in New England Broadband, from the neighboring state of New Hampshire.
William J. Trembly, head technician with the company, says the delay in providing HDTV service was due to where and how the development had to receive its signal—an aerial signal from Boston, pulled in by satellite, then sent by cable to homeowners.
Trembly says the Pinehills project has been as much of a learning curve for his technicians as it has been for Pinehills staff, since New England Broadband had never attempted a project anywhere near this size.
"We're laying the groundwork for what works and what doesn't work for something of this size," he says of the initial efforts. Keys to success include paying very close attention to detail, and future-proofing all technology services as they are installed.
A Long Way from 1620
Within the homes, Pinehills customers have the full slate of home technology features available to them from each builder. And the key to selling home tech features is to involve the homeowner early in the process.
That is especially true when you are building close to 100 homes at one time, at various steps in the process. That is the case with The Green Company, the largest builder represented in The Pinehills.
Project manager John Daly says homeowners can see the full slate of home tech options available to them at the company's model homes and sales center within Pinehills. Home technology is bundled into a variety of packages, depending on how many rooms a homeowner would like to include, and how many services they desire.
The biggest challenge, Daly says, is matching home technology options to the homeowners' real needs, and not going overboard with installing wiring and drops beyond what is necessary. For example, if a homeowner asks for a Cat-5 drop on a wall other than where the builder would normally run it, they'll get it there, plus the traditional spot as well.
And when it comes to selling packages, it can be difficult to really measure the homeowner's needs versus wants. "I sometimes worry we are trying to create a bigger market than we should," Daly says.
The solution to that is to get to know your customer's lifestyle as best you can, according to Dan Green, principal with The Green Company. "We have to fully understand it to sell to them. We want to sell them something that gives them value, and to do that you have to know how it impacts their life," he says.
Green also feels that the extra touches with wiring and drops pay off in the long run, regardless of the immediate cost to the builder. The payoff comes in ease of living within the home, and that is hard to put a price tag on.