The Estates At Thornbury

Redmond

1988

The Estates At Thornbury was a 350-acre high-end residential subdivision development project in Redmond, Washington.

The Estates At Thornbury subdivision (later renamed Broadhurst) is located in Redmond, Washington near Microsoft’s main corporate campus. The topography of the site offered spectacular Pacific Northwest territorial views. Although the site already had its preliminary plat approval prior to purchase, Walsh Investment drew upon its many years of residential plat design experience in Alaska to dramatically increase the value of the project.  We redesigned the layout of the entryway and relocated several of the roadways through the subdivision in order to increase the number of view lots, and avoid a few tough-to-develop areas of the site. In a deliberate nod to the high end buyer, the minimum lot size was 1.5 acres. We also reserved 13 acres of the site as a common park for the residents. 

Our project was chosen as the site of the 1988 Street of Dreams event, a multi-day home tour event which was a very popular annual event at the time and brought approximately 40,000 visitors to the site during the week long event. The Estates At Thornbury was later renamed Broadhurst by the Homeowners Association. 

Investment Thesis

Microsoft was still a young company at the time but its rapidly growing campus nearby was already driving significant demand for new high-end homes in the area. This property was attractive because it already had it preliminary plat approval which saved us several months of time working with the city on the permitting process.

Lessons Learned

Today it is well-known that home values can vary significantly based on school district boundaries in many markets; at the time this was still a new a less well understood phenomenon. High-end home buyers can afford to be picky and our site was in the "wrong" school district. We had to work through a time consuming process of petitioning to have the subdivision included in the "right" school district but it paid off in the end.