One of Missouri’s largest residential developments, The New Town at St. Charles, selected CertainTeed® WeatherBoards™ FiberCementSiding as the exclusive fiber cement siding to clad most of its 4,300 homes. The first and largest mixed-use community in the St. Louis area, New Town includes a town hall, Marsala’s Market and over 40 live/work units that are all designed to mesh together to create a sustainable and efficient community.

New Town will take 12 to 15 years to complete and will eventually result in 5,700 unitswithresidences ranging from single-family homes and cottages to senior courtyard homes, live/work units and townhomes. Greg Whittaker, President of Whittaker Homes and developer of New Town, worked with renowned urban planners Duany Plater-Zyberk & Company (DPZ) to create the 746-acre community that was inspired by Florida’s new urbanism prototype Seaside.

New Urbanism is a growing design trend that promotes the creation and restoration of diverse, walkable, compact, vibrant, mixed-use communities composed of the same components as a conventional development, but assembled in a more integrated fashion in the form of complete communities.

As the developer, architect, builder and installer, Whittaker’s keen focus on quality building materials led him to build a fabrication complex where he tested all materials being considered for installation. When evaluating siding options he completed side-by-side testing of each product for durability, ease of installation, color choice and siding style. According to Whittaker, he wanted materials that would add value and small-town appeal to the overall look and feel of New Town. In total, the rigorous product-testing phase took six to eight months to complete.