However, privacy isn’t necessarily the first thing members of a gated community are looking for, Sullivan says. “It’s a sense of security, but it’s also a sense of community and a sense of identification. And that comes from a smaller community,” Sullivan says. “There’s a lot of security in knowing your neighbors.

”Based on the success of Charleston Woods and the early response to Residences on the Green, Cindy Cawley of CBS Home Real Estate, says gated communities are clearly a concept Omahans are ready for. “The community has embraced this,” says Cawley, who has sold a number of homes in Charleston Woods and is selling Residences on the Green, where she says two villas and eight residential lots have already been sold.

When Sullivan moved to Omaha from Dallas 11 years ago, he was coming from a community where gated communities are common to one where they were a novelty. Sullivan kept his eye open from opportunity to develop such a project and found it five years ago when a relative showed him an ad for a three-acre parcel of land for sale near Happy Hollow Country Club. “It was exactly what I’d been looking for,” Sullivan says. “The views were amazing, the ground was amazing, the only question was if (a gated community) was something Omaha was ready for.“ The answer was a resounding, ‘Yes.’”

Besides being near a golf course, the parcel also backed up to a wooded area on the east. The lots near the woods, though smaller, sold first, Sullivan says, illustrating the value of aesthetics in selecting areas for gated development.

The people who moved into the area, Sullivan says, were empty nesters looking to downsize after living in bigger homes within District 66. “It was a rearrangement of space to fit their current lifestyle,” Sullivan says. They were also looking to simply their lives, Sullivan says, and the development suited that need by providing maintenance-free living in terms of providing snow removal and lawn care services. The security of having the gates closed at night to ensure safety and eliminate through traffic also added to the appeal, Sullivan says.

Sullivan is now looking to replicate the success of Charleston Woods at Pacific Springs in a development of a different size and setting. “Pacific Springs has a different feel to it in that it’s not wooded, but the vistas are incredible,” Sullivan says, adding that the close proximity to Village Pointe Shopping Center is another lure to the area.

Sullivan, too, sees opportunity in gated communities and says the future success will hinge upon broadening the appeal, accessibility and affordability of such developments. He’s taken a step in that direction with Residences on the Green, which he says will partly cater to families as well as empty nesters. “You can grow the market by price point and pull in some families and other audiences,” Sullivan says.

As far as growth, Sullivan says then umber of gated communities in Omaha “could easily double in the next five years.” One of the obstacles such growth may encounter is a stigma gated communities are elitist, but Sullivan doesn’t see it that way.

“Some people will look at the gate as a statement,” he says, “but mostly behind the gate are some really understated people.”

One Magazine's entire article can be downloaded here.