Plan Garden Apartments Built for Colder Climates
Start from a garden community of three-story interior-corridor walkups with room on site for snow storage, fitted to your parcel. You see unit count and parking for northern markets before you commit.
Will Interior-Corridor Garden Apartments Fit My Site?
TestFit is real estate feasibility software that generates site plans on your parcel and calculates what they yield. For an interior-corridor garden community, the answer comes down to three things that are hard to judge from a parcel map.
Corridors change the footprint
Enclosed corridors replace open breezeways. The building gets deeper and the unit layout changes, so the yield differs from a Sun Belt walkup.
Snow needs somewhere to go
Plowed snow needs a landscaped storage area on site. The layout sets aside a block for it, and that land is not available for parking.
Parking still drives the plan
Surface parking competes with the buildings for the same land. Where the stalls go decides how many units the site can carry.
From Your Parcel to a Deal You Can Underwrite
Start from the interior-corridor garden community your team would build, tune it to your standards, and finish with one model for the site, plan, tabulation and pro forma.
Your parcel and its constraints
- Site boundary: pick the parcel from built-in parcel data with current owner info, draw it, enter metes and bounds, or import a KML/KMZ file
- Setbacks and frontage: front, side and rear setbacks set to the parcel edges
- Zoning: FAR, building and impervious coverage, height limits and parking ratios, pulled in for your parcel so you don't have to dig through the zoning code
- Easements: areas the layout keeps buildings out of
- Site conditions: flood zones, wetlands and topography from Site Intelligence
Every layout starts inside your site's real constraints.
Your product, fine-tuned on the site
- Product: 3-story walkups with interior corridors, 10.5 ft floor to floor (31.5 ft), balconies
- Site layout: surface parking courts on fire-access drive aisles, landscaped storage block for snow
- Your edits: unit mix, unit sizes, buildings, parking and drives
You see the building your team would propose, on your parcel.
A source of truth for the deal
- Site plan geometry: buildings, courts, parking and drives drawn to the parcel
- Tabulation for this product: building sf, dock doors, trailer and car stalls against what's required, site coverage and FAR
- Earthwork: cut and fill for the layout
- Financials: the geometry turned into development costs, revenue and returns
- Shareable results: a link or PDF report for your team, partners and other stakeholders
You know whether the deal works, with numbers to back it.
We do initial pro formas and tell clients, ‘Hey, this doesn’t make sense.’ We’ve shown them 10 different schemes in TestFit… and nothing pencils out. Sometimes more is not better… You end up spending more money and getting less return. TestFit helps us and our clients make decisions.
Interior-Corridor Walkups Site Planning FAQ
What is an interior-corridor walkup?
A garden building without elevators where units open onto an enclosed, conditioned corridor instead of an open-air breezeway. It keeps residents out of the weather in colder climates.
Why use interior corridors instead of breezeways?
Open breezeways collect snow and ice in northern markets. An enclosed corridor keeps stairs and entries dry and warm, at the cost of more common area.
Does this layout account for snow storage?
Yes. It sets aside a landscaped storage block on site where plowed snow can go.
How many units fit on my site?
It depends on parcel shape, parking and unit mix. Load your parcel in TestFit with this layout to see the unit count and density.
Can I change the layout after it generates?
Yes. Start from this layout, then edit the unit mix, buildings, parking and drives in TestFit. The site plan and yield recalculate as you go.
Find it in TestFit
Test This Layout on Your Next Garden Site
Load your parcel and get the site plan, yield, and costs in one place.