Montgomery County to add 5,200 homes

The company behind Aliana, a 2,000-acre master-planned community in Fort Bend County, has launched its next residential project. Airia Development Co., which announced the Conroe-area development on Tuesday, will join other developers adding thousands of new home lots to the north Houston region.

The project, Artavia, is expected to be in development for the next 12 years and could have as many as 5,200 homes when it is completed, the developer said.

Given its location south of Texas 242, midway between Interstate 45 and U.S. 59 about 35 miles north of downtown Houston, the new community is slightly off the beaten path. The property, which covers close to 2,200 acres, is some six miles from Interstate 45.

“Out where we’re at, there’s some pioneering going on,” said Travis Stone, president of Houston-based Airia Development.

Airia Development, formerly known as Aliana Development Co., is a relatively new company. But the team behind it has decades of experience in the Houston market. Stone helped shaped several projects for Newland Communities, including Greatwood, Seven Meadows and Telfair, before joining Aliana in 2010.

Artavia is one of several residential developments that represent a new frontier of the north region’s housing market.

The Howard Hughes Corp., developer of The Woodlands, has started anew project north of Con-roe in the Willis area and Johnson Development is building a community north of The Woodlands.

“There’s always been a continual demand for new homes in a master-planned community type of environment up on the north side of Houston, whether it was Champions Forest in the ’60s and ’70s or The Woodlands, Spring and portions of Klein after that,” said housing analyst Lawrence Dean, regional director of the Houston market of Metrostudy.

As more established communities run out of land for homebuilding, activity has pushed farther north. In Artavia’s case, toward the eastern part of Montgomery County.

“That’s really just the next layer where land is available to develop,” Dean said.

West of Artavia, an even larger tract is being primed for development.

Early this week, Conroe City Council put its support behind three municipal utility districts proposed for more than 3,000 acres primarily north of Texas 242 near FM 1314. The land falls within Conroe’s extraterritorial jurisdiction. MUDs are used to finance the development of roads, water and sewer lines and other improvements — typically paid for by a city — through the sale of bonds. Residents pay property taxes to the MUD.

“This is one of the largest one I’ve ever done,” Nancy Mikeska, the city’s director of community development, said during a presentation to City Council Monday, noting that the the land could yield more than 10,000 rooftops once developed.

One of the reasons for the increased activity is development of the Grand Parkway, which opened up new commuting routes and access to land that previously was though of as too far.

Annual housing starts in this far north Houston area grew by 28 percent last year, according to Metrostudy data.

“Over time, we’ve observed the north side homebuyer is willing to move continually and incrementally further out,” Dean said. That’s likely due to large employment centers in and around The Woodlands and the proximity to the international airport.

Airia Development purchased the property for Artavia about four years ago. Construction has started on some of the streets, as well as a community center, and model homes are expected to be up by summer.

While Houston’s housing market has softened recently, that’s not likely to have played amajor role in the timing of the project.

“A developer that does that scale of communities, they last so long from conception to building the last house that they’re almost cycle-agnostic,” Dean said. “You just have to go do it. The market’s going to be great, it’s going to be terrible and it’s going to be in between over seven or 10 years, or in the case of The Woodlands, 40 years.”

Stone said many of the homebuilders in Aliana, its community in Richmond, will also come to Artavia. The homes, at least initially, are expected to range price from the $280,000s to the $500,000s and zoned to schools in the Conroe Independent School District.

Plans also include more than 120 acres of mixed-use, commercial and retail development. The centerpiece Artavia will be a 13-acre community complex overlooking a five-acre man-made lake with paddle boats and an area to launch kayaks. In all, the developer said the project’s estimated value at buildout is $2.4 billion. nancy.sarnoff@chron.com twitter.com/nsarnoff

Catherine Dominguez contributed.