Touring The Estates

As we continue our tour around the Ranch, our next stop is Higley Estates, which pretty much finished up construction in 2006. I saw a couple of houses still working on installing landscape, and there are no doubt still folks putting in pools, but for all intents and purposes, the 162 homes in this neighborhood are complete. Here is the entry at Morrison Ranch Parkway off Higley Road:


The west edge of the community sports a trail that is smaller than the greenbelt in Higley Groves West, but a very pleasant walk nonetheless. It will eventually connect to what we call the backbone trail system throughout Morrison Ranch, connecting with Lakeside Groves, and if you follow the ditch all the way, you can get to the Town of Gilbert trail system. This, of course, means that it goes past the Circle G neighborhood that is immediately south of Higley Estates. If you are wondering how the Circle G folks ended up in the middle of Morrison Ranch, the explanation is quite simple; we did not own that land, and that community was built before we were very far along in our process. There is a road connecting the interior of the Circle G development with the interior of Higley Estates, which is both a blessing and a curse: a blessing when folks are able to access their houses, and a curse when drivers go speeding along through Higley Estates. Here is a picture of the trail looking north toward Elliot Road:



If you visit the archives of the Front Porch during the time that Higley Estates was being built, you will see that I have serious tot lot envy. I still think this is one of the best tot lots in Morrison Ranch, and the park is nice and green at the moment:



Higley Estates went up during the height of the housing frenzy, with lotteries and harried salespeople; it was built more quickly than Higley Groves because of that. It was also our first project where we were overseeing the final plat process and therefore able to ensure that things were built according to plan. It was well worth the work, as this peek down Morrison Ranch parkway proves: