Joy & Peace Enter Houston Market: 1620 Acres of

HOUSTON,— Johnson Development, which has developed many large-scale planned communities around the nation, has laid out plans for Jubilee, a joyous new project that will bring almost 5,000 new homes to northwest Houston.

Jubilee will be a 1,620-acre community in Hockley, just south of Highway 290 near the Grand Parkway.

The term “jubilee” is defined as a time of celebration or rejoicing and it’s often used in conjunction with a fiftieth or one hundredth anniversary.

A Community Centered on “Joy” and “Mental Well-Being”

Johnson said its new northwest community will be “centered on joy, with a focus on improving residents’ physical, emotional and mental well-being.”

“We want to raise the bar for how a community can better the lives of the individuals that live in it,” said Larry Johnson, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of Johnson Development. “Every aspect of this new community is being intentionally designed to promote positivity, allowing residents to decompress from the everyday grind and connect with nature and each other.”

This is Not a Hippie Thing

Johnson Development is no hippie organization starting a commune. The Houston-based firm is one on the nation’s largest and most successful developers of large-scale planned communities. Its Houston resume includes Sienna, Riverstone, Cross Creek Ranch, Coles Crossing and Fall Creek. The Johnson organization is credited with popularizing the Pearland/ Highway 288 Corridor as a major home-building market decades ago, purchasing the unfinished Southwyck, changing the name to Silverlake and accelerating sales to a coveted pace south of Houston.

With Jubilee, the Johnson development team says it is “taking a holistic approach to the community’s design, targeting everything from the layout of streets, placement of parks and amenity architecture to spark happiness and surround residents with positivity. Positivity also was a deciding factor in the community’s name.”

Over the years, large-scale planned communities have adopted themes related to terrain or contrived “agrihoods” with a nod to community gardens or tractors.

In But few MPCs, if any, have drummed up a theme related to happiness and mental well-being.

“Jubilee has multiple positive interpretations,” said Trey Reichert, General Manager of the Jubilee community. “It represents joy, is energetic and has nuances of community. These concepts will be well represented in the mindful spaces we are designing for residents. Connection with others is proven to enhance a person’s well-being and Jubilee will be all about helping residents feel happy and healthy.”

Positivity in the Covid Era

Planning for Jubilee started well before the pandemic, but Reichert says its thematic vision is particularly impactful now in the age of Covid.

“The pandemic has turned our focus to health and has shown us just how important where you live can be,” he said. “Imagine living in a home that has all the room you need in a community specifically designed to elicit peace and harmony. It’s something we can all use right now.”

Johnson Development purchased the property, southwest of U.S. Highway 290 and Katy Hockley Road a few miles west of the Grand Parkway, in 2017. It is the developer’s 19th active community and first in northwest Houston. Planned for 4,800 homes, pre-sales are slated to begin in early 2023.

Jubilee appears in the market place as Houston experiences super-hot home sales. Home builders have been unable to keep pace with demand in some cases. Shortages of building materials, labor and lots persist. Land sales are brisk as developers rise to meet the demand for home sites.

Established in 1975, Johnson Development has had more communities ranked among the top-selling projects than any other developer in the nation since 2014.