Deerfield is my home. Its beautifully crafted streets, tons of park space, modestly sized lots/homes require minimal homeowner lawn and home care, making Deerfield a great choice for your first starter home or as a wonderful place to retire. Its small town location on the northeast corner of Rathdrum, near the library, shopping, dining, schools, health care, and even car care is a definite plus.
Deerfield was created in 1996 by a man named JB Dodge who was President of the company called JIREH. As an interesting side point, Jireh is part of the name for God (Jehovahjireh – KJV - Genesis 22:14) and seems to mean “the Lord will provide.” It was the intention of this man to design and build not just another generic housing development where people just stored themselves, their kids and their stuff. Instead his vision was to provide his buyers with a well-designed and beautiful place to live. The HOA was created to protect and maintain this special place today, and well into the future.
In creating Deerfield his layout included lots of open spaces. An entirely single family home community where every home faces out on streets featuring single traffic lanes separated by 13 foot wide grassy swales, dotted by street trees. There are oversized swales at both ends. Kamloops Drive, where it meets with Reindeer Drive, and with Basswood Drive. Other places that would normally have been paved cul-de-sacs, were constructed as one way, single lane drive throughs, featuring good sized green spaces in the centers. These are Eden and Darby Courts and at the Basswood-Kamloops connection. They were designed as park type spaces, enjoyable as places that look beautiful and provide space for the kids to play just out your window.
Not only do these green spaces contribute to the beauty of the neighborhood but another really great benefit of having street CENTER swales is that in winter, the snow is plowed into those centers and never toward the homes, or more importantly, towards your driveway. No snow berms blocking your driveway, EVER! In my opinion this is a wonderful feature.
However, the best of the green space features are the THREE parks, beautifully fenced off from the outside world (perimiter fencing is a standard feature in almost every development built today) but also providing lockable, gated park access from the adjacent homes own back yards (a very rare feature indeed).
The western portion of the development centers on Legacy Drive and includes its Eden and Darby Court areas.
Park #1, a more than 92,000 sq. ft. fenced, forested “natural” area, and lies to the north side of Legacy Dr and behind Eden and Darby courts.
Park #2, a fenced, and mainly grassy lawn area of about 84,000 sq. ft. and lies on the southern edge of the development Behind the homes on Legacy Dr.
Park #3, in the center of the eastern portion contains over 76,000 sq. ft. of green lawns, paved access trails and a portion shaded by about 17 mature pine tree; ideal for picnicking.
Every home in Deerfield faces onto the parkway like streets AND about 60% of the homes in Deerfield offer direct access to one of the three parks via individual lockable backyard gates that open right into the HOA maintained, park next door.
The homeowners personal lots in Deerfield are on the small side, averaging around 7,000 sq. feet each and the homes are mostly of a modest size. This, in my opinion, creates a situation ideal for both our busy young people learning to care for their first homes and yards, and also for our older folks looking for a place to retire without the burden of taking on the commitment of caring for a large lawn space of their own.
All of the just over six acres of open spaces were created to be maintained to a very high standard as provided for in the HOAs Declarations documents (aka CC&Rs). This document calls out provisions placed on all the lot owners and unites them into the “Deerfield HOA” for the purpose of maintaining the street centered swales with their trees and lawns, the parks along with their access trails and the Deerfield entry monuments on Legacy and Reindeer drives. Also included are the fences that separate and protect Deerfield from the world outside, and the private back yards from the occasional park user. Also maintained is all the other necessary infrastructure, like sprinkler systems with their associated wiring and central control systems, streetlights, mailboxes, etc. Everything is to be maintained under the watchful eye of this well-managed Homeowners Association constantly making certain any problem, from the inevitable damaged sprinkler component to a dying street tree, gets resolved quickly by repair or replacement. Other provisions prohibit garbage cans from being strewn along the streets for days at a time by requiring them to be stored out of sight. There are also provisions that prohibit the on-street storage of either recreational vehicles or semi-trucks, the conversion of homes into public places of business or garages into something other than garages. In fact, exterior changes to homes along with the look, size and placement of out buildings and fences are subject to architectural approval with the goal of providing a compatible look and feel throughout the development.
These and other provisions in the Declarations document were intended to insure that the Deerfield development as built by Mr. Dodge (JIREH Corp) would continue to provide a beautiful living environment for the enjoyment of each and every owner, and that every person who chooses to purchase a Deerfield home has made an affirmative commitment to keeping Deerfield beautiful. Knowing that by the very act of purchasing a home in Deerfield they are also binding themselves to these (CC&R) as a voluntary action geared to continuing his vision of this beautiful place going on for decades yet to come.