Pam Haberman and Kelly Rae say they got the idea watching the city of Reno, Nevada grow outward, climbing the hillsides that surround the valley.
They had a different vision.
“Urban infill is the key to preserving our community and not having our mountainsides scraped away,” says Rae. Housing with existing infrastructure within the urban core of our city.
And with the firm they founded, Haberae Homes, they’ve marched to that different drum beat for years.
The older neighborhoods surrounding the downtown core, are sprinkled with their past projects. Among them an old fire station which now has a salon and bagel shop on the ground floor, residential lofts above.
“Old buildings are beautiful,” says Rae, “and not every new building is pretty, but old buildings, people always look at them and say ‘they don’t build them like that anymore’. And they don’t. That’s why we like to keep them.”