Two of my favorite lists are: (1) wonderful things happening in the City of Brunswick these days (list is long), and (2) things in the works that will soon move from this list to the first list. Keep an eye on Forward Brunswick’s Reynolds Cottages project. It’s scheduled to jump from list 2 to list 1 in January 2026, when construction of the 46th cottage adorning a two-acre parcel in the New Town district of Brunswick is completed.
The project plan shows a variety of cottages: studio, one-, two- and three bedrooms; a mix of one and two stories. Twenty-one will be sold and 25 rented. As American housing goes, the cottages are on the small side, appropriate for many budgets and right for a walkable neighborhood. The style is a perfect fit: an older, simpler design, each equipped with both charm and front porch, each exactly what you’d expect a cottage in Brunswick to look like.
Designers know some optics tricks. A neat one is placing buildings of particular sizes and shapes in particular ways to make a neighborhood appear much less densely populated than it actually is. To see the trick executed masterfully, visit old neighborhoods in an old city. Or wait a year and visit Reynolds Cottages, where 46 front porch-equipped cottages, two lots of green space and an alley with parking will appear cozy yet comfortable on two acres.
Lance Sabbe, Executive Director of Forward Brunswick, hopes Reynolds is the first of several cottage projects in Brunswick. City workers, first responders and folks who enjoy genuine neighborhood living are target Reynolds residents.
Reynolds Cottages is a type of residential housing that city planners and housing industry people call “missing middle housing.” Urban designer Daniel Parolek came up with the term in 2010. Fourteen years later, ‘missing middle housing’ also functions as the most accurate three-word description of the country’s current housing problem that one can imagine. That’s no coincidence. What inspired the term also caused the current housing problem: local zoning laws.
Local use- and density-based zoning laws were unknown in the U.S. until 1904, widespread by 1940, ubiquitous by 1970. The result is that we have restricted ourselves from building little housing other than detached single-family homes and large apartment buildings – the two extremes of housing density. The housing we built plenty of before 1940 are the types between the two extremes: stacked duplexes, stacked triplexes, stacked fourplexes, courtyard apartments, cottage courts, rowhouses and townhouses. Because we build very little middle-density housing, it’s missing from the housing stock. Hence the name, missing middle housing. And hence the crux of the current housing problem.
The country’s current housing problem goes beyond home prices and rents, which are through the roof. No less a problem is the mismatch between the housing that’s available and the budgets, living space preferences and lifestyle preferences of a large and increasing number of American households. The characteristics and circumstances of American households vary a great deal more than their housing options, which are limited to the variety in budget-feasible detached single-family homes and the variety, to the extent there is any, in apartments in large complexes.
Middle density housing, such as Reynolds Cottages, economizes on land and building materials. It comes in great variety. It specializes in getting the most out of smaller spaces, a blessing for smaller budgets. It provides the density necessary to draw local entrepreneurs to open their one-of-a-kind shops that make for a walkable neighborhood. It’s the housing our country lacks.
It takes a good organization and a good community for a development such as Reynolds Cottages to happen. We are fortunate to have both.
Reg Murphy Center