Festival of Homes kicks off in Moore, Norman
MOORE — Homebuilder Jesse Jennings well remembers when the only signs of life in this part of Moore, south of SW 34 and west of Interstate 35, came from the wildlife living in the brush along the roadway.
“When I was going to high school — I graduated from Westmoore — nothing was south of 34th Street,” he recalled. Now, neighborhoods have cropped up, along with shopping centers, restaurants and other amenities residents used to have to seek out in Norman and Oklahoma City.
Standing in the still-in-progress kitchen of a home in the Sendera Lakes neighborhood, Jennings puts it in easily understood terms.
“Within 1 mile of this neighborhood, there’s anywhere you’d want to eat, shop and play,” he said.
Jennings, along with his father, John, brother Justin and mother Dawn, all form Canterra Signature Homes, which built this farmhouse-inspired home at 1925 Carmona Lakes. It’s one of two show homes and 41 new open houses in this year’s BASCO Festival of Homes this weekend and again June 9-11.
Riverside Homes built the second show home at 2109 Brookhaven near Rock Creek and 36th Avenue NW in Norman’s Brookhaven addition. It will be featured next Saturday in The
Oklahoman’s Real Estate section. All homes will be open 1 p.m. to 7 p.m. on festival days.
The BASCO festival — BASCO stands for Builders Association of South Central Oklahoma — is designed to appeal not only to potential home buyers, but to design and tech fans, as well.
The Canterra home includes LED lighting, but quaint metal light fixtures play to its farmhouse aesthetic. That’s carried through the whitewashed kitchen with what appears to be an artfully weathered backsplash. That’s actually tile.
Visitors, in fact, should pay attention to the tile. A lot of it they may not see anywhere else.
“All the stuff we have in the house for tiles — most of the tiles — have not even hit the stores yet,” Jesse Jennings said. “Our flooring company brought us a bunch of stuff they found at market, and this house has a lot of the first shipments: the floor tile, the backsplash, the powder bath tile. We’re one of the first ones to get it.”
The Canterra show home has 2,670 square feet of space with three bedrooms, two baths, a half-bath and a bonus room upstairs. The mother-in-law floor plan puts the master bedroom on one side of the house, two other bedrooms on the other, and the living-kitchen-dining area between the two.
High-end granite and marble is used throughout, including the Jack-and-Jill bathroom joining the two front bedrooms. The home also features a business center, with vertical cabinetry to offer the same amount of space as a traditional home office, but in a smaller footprint.
Moore has proven itself over and over again to be a city not only able to recover, but grow in the wake of adversity. A massive 2013 tornado left parts of the city leveled, but “We Are Moore Strong” signs were going up even as images of the disaster were beamed around the world.
Four years later, retail and business moves along at a brisk pace, and new schools have opened as enrollment continues to tick upward.
“What’s been amazing to us is no matter what happens — unfortunately, we have tornadoes — but people want to be here,” Jesse Jennings said.
“They want to be here because it’s a good community.”
Proceeds from the sale of the festival homes will go toward funding the BASCO student chapter at the University of Oklahoma and to scholarships at Mid-America VoTech and Moore Norman Technology Center for students interested in careers in the construction industry.
BASCO and the Moore Home Builders Association have joined together for the festival, which has grown since the 23-home inaugural festival in 2003.
“It’s been exciting to watch our festival grow over the last few years, said Dana Kelso, executive officer at BASCO.
Free, full-color festival guidebooks are available at participating 7-Eleven stores and 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. weekdays at the BASCO office, 210 36th Ave. SW. For more information, go online to http://bascofestival.com/here.