TRI-COUNTY — The new El Cosmico isn’t the only real estate development in the Big Bend region utilizing emerging 3D printing building technology. Much smaller-scale plans are also underway to construct nine new homes, coined “The Lumen Villas,” in Marfa’s Sal Si Puedes neighborhood and to revamp the Overland Trail Campground and RV Park in downtown Fort Davis.
Crews from ICON, El Cosmico’s 3D printing company, began work printing a model home and hotel room — the first of 20 homes and just under 100 hotel rooms — on the undeveloped 61-acre property north of Antelope Hills this summer. The three-and-four-bedroom homes were listed for sale for $2.29 to $2.69 million in the fall.
“The printing is now complete and these structures are in the process of being finished out,” Hotelier Liz Lambert told The Big Bend Sentinel on Wednesday. “Hotel construction is still anticipated to begin in 2025.”
Lambert said there are no new updates on the old El Cosmico site, which is planned to become affordable housing for hotel staff, also 3D-printed by ICON.
Crews from a separate company, Hive 3D builders, have recently begun printing concrete walls on another site in Marfa, located on E. Washington Street and N. Ave C just East of Alamito Creek in Sal Si Puedes, outside of the city limits. The Lumen Villas site is 10 lots, or a full city block, sold to developers by Gary Oliver before he passed away.
Hive is currently working on constructing the first of nine planned homes, ranging in size from 1,700 to 1,900 square feet, for sale in the mid-$300,000 range. Homes will be delivered turnkey, and layout options vary from a three-bed, two-bath to a two-bed two-bath with an optional one-bed one-bath apartment.
Heading up the project in Marfa on behalf of Hive — a Houston-based start up company with projects around Texas — is Robert Spiegel. Spiegel, who also works for an independent mortgage banker, lives part time in Houston and in Marfa, where he’s owned a home since 2005.
Spiegel said “in a perfect world” Lumen Villas buyers are locals who may be tired of renting, seeking a larger space, or more move-in ready housing. “I think that there is demand here for newer construction that doesn’t need a bunch of repair or updates or renovation, that’s at maybe a slightly lower than the norm price point, which is what we hope to achieve,” Spiegel said.
Before foundations could be laid, crews hauled off tons of trash littering the site, initially hidden by brush, Spiegel said. While the Sal Si Puedes neighborhood has become populated by more trailer homes and individual building projects over the years, Spiegel said Lumen Villas is the largest-scale development to pop up in the area ever, as far as he was aware.
For the most part, construction projects in Marfa are custom jobs, often renovations rather than new builds. City Permit Specialist Ann Dunlap said she’s issued a total of 130 permits for various construction activities this year, 14 of which were new builds. New properties added to the tax rolls help bolster the city and county budgets.
Because it is outside of the city limits, Sal Si Puedes has no zoning laws, building permits are not required and residents pay an increased fee for water and sewer services. The Lumen Villas building site does have access to city utilities, Spiegel said, and neither the city nor the county has approached him with concerns about adding more water and sewer hookups to the system.
He said Hive is planning to build and sell the homes three at a time so as to not flood the real estate market with nine homes all at once. “Now, if we sell all of them, then we’ll build all nine,” Spiegel said. “But I don’t want to build three and discover the market’s not there. I don’t need to be stuck with nine vacant houses. We’ll build three and then we’ll hopefully get orders for the next six.”
While the definition of “affordable” housing is largely subjective, depending on where you are and who you ask — two recently surveyed tri-county residents offered $85,000 and $250,000, for example — it is generally defined as housing that costs no more than 30% of your annual income. The average median household income in Presidio County is $38,205, according to the U.S. Census.
Spiegel said that due to lack of local data, it’s unclear how exactly Marfa stacks up to the rest of the state — which is undoubtedly experiencing an available and affordability crisis. (There is no local requirement for realtors to list properties on a multiple listing service (MLS). Many homes currently listed for sale in Marfa have languished on the market. He said he’s fielding inquiries, but if none of the new 3D-printed homes attract a buyer they’ll reassess their pricing and plans.
“The market will tell us. Hopefully we get it right, at least for the first couple units, and if not, we’ll revise the plan and build differently if we have to,” Spiegel said. “We can make them cheaper, we just have to make them smaller. But I think we have enough two-bedroom one-baths that are 800-square-feet. People want some space.”
Spiegel said the homes’ floor plans vary so that the development does not resemble “a tract home community in the suburbs of a big city,” and so that Hive can accommodate different types of buyers, like someone who wants a separate living space for a parent or relative. “If somebody has an interesting need, then we’ve got an actual solution that works, which would be really cool,” Spiegel said.
Homes will also have outdoor space, he said, and will likely be painted assorted colors. “Nothing obnoxious. No hot pink,” Spiegel said. “We want them to fit into the environment. We don’t want them to stand out.”
The homes will have slightly curved corners — a byproduct of the 3D-printing process, and necessary to achieve adequate strength and resilience, Spiegel said. But, for the most part, the buildings will more closely resemble a traditional home versus the round silo-inspired new El Cosmico homes. “It’s really hard to furnish a round room,” Spiegel said.
Hive prints with a proprietary mix referred to as “cementitious fiber,” that contains a product taken from landfills, allowing it to have a net zero emission. Spiegel said their 3D-printed structures are well insulated and energy efficient due to the fact that there is both an interior and exterior wall filled with concrete foam in the middle.
Hive is partnering with a firm based out of New Zealand to help execute its projects, due to the fact that they work with similar machinery, Spiegel said. Those crews, in addition to Hive’s Texas crews, will be at the Lumen Villas site.
Spiegel said prospective buyers often ask him about the differences between 3D printing and traditional construction methods. 3D-printed builds still involve traditional trades like plumbing, electrical and roofing. Some sheet rock walls may be installed to ensure plumbing is accessible, Spiegel said. But one of its advantages is affordability, he said, due to the fact that the printing machines, while temperamental, are more efficient at getting a wall up than human workers.
“It is faster. It is less expensive,” Spiegel said. “Because we don’t need all the components of a wooden-built home. There’s so many layers to that, and a lot of times those each require different trades. We eliminate a lot of that.”
That efficiency helps get the price per square foot on construction costs down, he said, in theory creating more affordable homes. “I’ve been looking at building new construction homes here for 10 years that were like solid family homes that could convert people to homeowners,” Spiegel said. “The problem is that until this technology, it was impossible.”
But building in Marfa is expensive, he said, and 3D printing comes with its own specific cost challenges. The price of the printers, for example — some of which are shipped from overseas — the research and development required to customize them to a locale, and the higher costs associated with transporting a heavy material like concrete long distances if building in remote locations.
Spiegel said Hive’s 3D printers are roughly 40% customized. But there’s been some hiccups; a machinery expert with their printer’s manufacturer had to come down to Marfa from Michigan recently to rebuild a faulty computer panel. He said the small company learns something new every day dealing with the emerging technology, but he’s optimistic that the Lumen Villas can add something valuable to Marfa’s real estate offerings.
“In general, I do think that a new construction family home with a normal bed and bath count at the price points we want to achieve, I feel like that’s definitely better than most,” Spiegel said. “No one else is selling at that price point, so hopefully it makes a difference.”
“That’s the exciting part for us,” he added. “We’re either gonna hit the nail on the head or we’re not. Let’s see what happens.”
The forthcoming 3D-printed homes at Lumen Villas and El Cosmico 2.0 will present a new challenge for the Presidio County Appraisal District (PCAD), according to Chief Appraiser Cynthia Ramirez.
Because the 3D-printed homes are the first of their kind in Presidio County, the PCAD will have to create a special schedule in order to assess the value of the unique homes, like they’ve done in the past for a rammed earth and hay home in town, she said. “Those are going to fall into a completely different category of homes,” Ramirez said. “This is going to be a completely new type of construction for the area.”
Determining the schedule — assessing home size, materials, labor and more — will be up to the PCAD and their new consultants, Pritchard and Abbott Inc. “We’re gonna have to do our research,” Ramirez said. “We’re gonna have to find out exactly what it costs from top to bottom, exactly how much money we’re looking at. That large machinery and equipment that is being used, how much they pay the actual construction company that’s going to come in and do it.”
How many 3D-printed homes sell and for how much will start to build the local market, she said. And in that sense the 3D-printed builds may impact each other more than their direct neighbors. Ramirez said it is possible that the Lumen Villas will cause the appraisal values of vacant lots in the neighborhood to increase, but not likely the homes, because they are made out of totally different materials, even if the 3D-printed homes have higher valuations.
“In my opinion, those will not impact that neighborhood in Sal Si Puedes, because it’s a different type of construction,” Ramirez said. “If it were maybe, adobe, then those sales would impact the homes in that area.”
Fort Davis’ Overland Trail Campground and RV Park
In Fort Davis, Steven Dillingham and Chris Myers, a couple who moved to Fort Davis from Austin this summer, are in the early stages of a project to revamp the Overland Trail Campground and RV Park, a defunct property on State Street in the center of the town.
The site, around 1.75 acres, has been out of operation for a number of years. In addition to RV spots, the site contains two cabins — transported from Fort D.A. Russell in Marfa — with nine guest rooms. The couple said they initially saw it as an interesting property in need of some TLC.
“The property definitely caught our eye because it was sitting there, and it wasn’t vacant, but it sure looked it,” Myers said. “We just thought it has such a view of the mountain. It’s positioned right in the middle of town, and we thought this could be so cool.”
Recently, they elected to tear a couple of buildings down on the site that they originally wanted to save but were too far gone due to termite damage and neglect.
While the project is still largely in its planning phase, Dillingham and Myers envision adding new 3D-printed structures — more cabins and a community space — in addition to renovating the existing cabins on the property.
They are working with local architect Lilliana Fields to design the buildings, which are inspired by the historic military structures at Fort Davis. The couple has a longstanding relationship with Spiegel and will use Hive for the 3D printing. Construction may begin as early as January 2025.
Dillingham and Myers are hoping to achieve a “modern interpretation” of fort structures that incorporate features like long porches and hipped roofs. Buildings will have rounded edges, a naturally-colored exterior, and the grounds will incorporate native landscaping, they said.
“We want our place to be deeply rooted in Fort Davis’s culture, and have a sense of place that doesn’t stand out as something garish,” Myers said.
Incorporating 3D printing into their historic-influenced new builds has allowed them creative freedom with forms and shapes, Myers said, and it will speed up an otherwise drawn-out construction process.
“We have a fort-esque [design], these long porches that are covered on the front and the hipped roofs,” Myers said. “I like the idea of having terminated corners that are curvy. We don’t have to just mimic [the fort] exactly. That’s the whole creative license that we have using this technology is making it relevant but interesting.”
The couple decided to add structures as opposed to keeping the existing RV spots due to the fact that there are already three active RV lots in town, and given the size of modern RVs and their power demands it just didn’t make sense on the existing site, they said. There will likely be two glamping options in addition to the cabins, they said.
The community space — a rental venue, space for pop-ups, or bar are ideas they’re currently considering — will serve as a common space where guests and locals can interact. Dillingham and Myers said they want to “add something substantial” and aesthetically pleasing to downtown Fort Davis, an already naturally beautiful place with a lot of potential to continue to attract tourists and young families.
“We never anticipated doing this. But I would say the town was what really — the people and the community — is what really drew us in,” Dillingham said. “We like resurrecting things and building on old things too, and it just seems appealing to us.”