MZ Living

MZ Living Is a wonderful "new build" project by Ed Gorman located immediately across the street from The W Hotel in Downtown Scottsdale.

Urban living fans will remember Ed Gorman as the creative spark and developer behind Galleries at Turney. For years he has focused on smaller, in-fill projects with great design and a strong emphasis on energy efficiency and durability.

It's an eight residence town home community in the heart of Scottsdale; literally a five minute walk from Scottsdale Fashion Square and a two minute walk from the Entertainment District with easy access to running or biking the canal and more.

The eight residences are three stories tall and comprised of 1 one bedroom with 1.5 baths and 7 two bedroom homes with 2.5 baths. The one bedroom floor plan has 926 square feet and the two bedroom plans have 1254 square feet. All floor plans feel larger as the layouts are open, the ceilings are ten feet high and the windows are wide and tall.

Each town home comes with a private two car garage. The living and kitchen and Ω bath are on the second floor and all bedrooms and remaining baths are on the third floor.

MZ Living is a ìNet-Zero Energyî Community. You may have heard about LEEDS certified buildings which imply a specific energy efficiency. Frankly, I get confused by the varying certifications. Net-Zero is a lot easier to understand. Simply put, it means that over the course of a year, a residentís energy bill should theroetically be zero dollars. We say theoretically because the residences are engineered for "normal" use so if you go above that standard then you will most likely have an energy bill.

Ed and his architects have achieved this through a keen attention to shading windows from direct sunlight, super high efficiency heating and cooling systems, thicker walls than normal, Energy Star LED and fluorescent lighting, high efficiency hybrid (working off solar panels and then a "reverse" heat pump during high usage periods - Google these, they're very cool) hot water heaters advertised to use 62% less energy than traditional water heaters and a crazy amount of spray foam!

If you donít know, spray foam is that yellowish brown liquid that you can buy in an aerosol can from Home Depot or other hardware store that when released expands very far, very fast and dries quickly and is usually used to fill gaps and holes in walls etcÖ Itís awesome stuff but itís EXPENSIVE. Despite the cost, Gorman wanted to use it at MZ Living, not to fill in small holes but to fill up entire walls and the space above his ceilings!

His contractors said he was nuts because the conventional wall insulation that everyone else uses is ? the cost of spray foam. But after putting pencil to paper, Gorman realized that if he used spray foam everywhere the town homes would be so much cooler that he could install an A/C that is half the size as he would otherwise need. The smaller A/C units help to defray some of the costs of the more expensive insulation AND of course the tremendous efficiencies take the town homes a long way toward the coveted Net-Zero rating.

Even though MZ Living town homes are super-efficient there are still energy needs. These will be met using solar panels. Ed has contracted with a company to design and install the system and the home owners will lease the equipment back from the company. As I understand it the company will maintain the system and guarantees certain performance levels. Solar panels like everything, wear out and become less effective as they age. The company guarantees that such degradation will not go beyond an agreed level.

Heaped on top of all this technology, Gorman is also including smartphone and tablet integration to control lighting, garage doors (MyQ), appliances and heating and cooling system (Nest thermostats and smoke and carbon monoxide devices).

All homes are pre-wired for Electric Vehicle (EV) chargers.

Kitchens and bathrooms are handsomely appointed with Quartz Countertops, Poggepohl European cabinets and Grohe fixtures.

Gang I kid you not, these are very cool. If you have done much reading of We Know Urban blog articles etcÖ youíve probably come to realize that we donít write a lot of fluff. If we donít like something we say so. At the time of my writing this, MZ Living is about two months away from being completed. But as of right now, I truly, sincerely think that it is one of the greatest communities to hit the Valley.

Want to see MZ Living then youíl have to give us a call for an appointment as there is no sales office.