The Coves at Smith Mountain Lake Design Guidelines

The Coves at Smith Mountain Lake strives to preserve and enhance the natural qualities of the land to ensure our homeowners will be able to enjoy Smith Mountain Lake for generations to come. Site-sensitive development practices such as tree protection and the minimization of street and outdoor lighting enable an unparalleled sense of privacy found anywhere on Smith Mountain Lake.

In order to achieve the goal of long-term stewardship of The Coves community, Optima Properties has established several guiding principles for building construction and landscape design.

Site and Landscape Objectives

To utilize the existing landscape and land forms on each home site as the basis for designing all site and building improvements.
To minimize impact associated with development on the lake.
To preserve, protect and enhance the existing landscape throughout the community.
To promote low-impact development practices on individual home sites.
To minimize view of development from the lake.
To manage selective viewshed enhancement through Architecture Review Board.
To revegetate and rehabilitate areas that may have been impacted by erosion.
To utilize plants, landscape structures and details that draw upon the region’s heritage and respond to the unique climate and setting.
To minimize lighting throughout the property to prevent “pollution”.

Architectural Guidelines Objectives

To create buildings appropriate to a casual, outdoor lake lifestyle.
To design buildings using quality materials and sound architectural standards in order to create structures that seem to “grow out of” and blend seamlessly with the site by responding to the climate, landforms, landscape and natural elements.
To define guidelines that will minimize the view of the homes from the Lake.