From Eastside to Easy Street

Empty nesters happily trade custom home for Daybreak’s Garden Park.
Rich and Toni Kener had some explaining to do. They had decided to sell their home on the 18th tee of Willow Creek Country Club and move to Garden Park, Daybreak’s low-maintenance village just for people age 55 and up. “I was having lunch with some friends I went to high school with. They just couldn’t believe we were moving to Daybreak,” Toni says. “But after our Garden Park home was built, we had them over. Then they understood.”
Of course, the Keners themselves hadn’t dreamed of moving to Daybreak until they saw it.

How many times can you say “beautiful”?
It’s a word that comes up frequently and with great emphasis when Rich describes how he first found Garden Park in Daybreak. Rich had spent months “cruising the whole valley,” looking for a home that would give them less yard work and no stairs. “I’d heard about Daybreak, and I thought ‘I’m going to check it out,’” Rich says. “I was amazed. You see these houses in Daybreak … and they are bee-YOO-tiful.”
Rich felt as if he were back in the Avenues neighborhood where he grew up. “I just had to look at every house in Daybreak, they were all so beautiful. Then I found Garden Park. And I started doing some serious thinking about Daybreak.”
Less yard work. More everything else.
The Kener’s former home in Willow Creek had a large yard and a swimming pool. “Which was great ten years ago when the kids were around,” says Rich. “But swimming pools don’t take care of themselves.” Rich explains that their new Patio Home in Garden Park has no stairs. And although it has a private yard, “the yard work averages out to picking about three weeds a week.”
“But you don’t give up anything when you move here,” Toni says. The private Garden Club, just for Garden Park residents, is a mere block and a half from the Kener’s home. It will open next summer with a swimming pool, fitness facility and meeting rooms. A block and a half in the other direction is SoDa Row, a neighborhood shopping district with boutiques, restaurants, a salon, dry cleaners and other shops and services. “It’s so easy to walk over there for something to eat,” says Toni.
The new University of Utah Medical Center is also being built nearby. So is the TRAX light rail station, which begins service next August. And Toni says she can see Garden Park’s community garden from her window. (Rich has already planned out their crops: “We’re growing corn, tomatoes and zucchini.”)

The real difference: community
It’s clear the Keners love their new home. The European styling. The architectural details. A level of quality that Rich says is some of the best he’s seen. And they thoroughly enjoyed working with Ivory Homes, which offers a wide variety of homes in Garden Park, from condominiums to the impressive Estate Homes. But it took more than a beautiful home to inspire the Keners to move away from their beautiful Eastside home.
“We found other places we could have lived,” says Rich. “But they weren’t comparable to Garden Park. Not even close. They weren’t a community.”
To illustrate, Toni and Rich point to Daybreak’s extensive trail system, which they use daily. “The trails go all over,” Rich says. “And the environment here is so pretty, it’s fun to walk.” Toni adds that Daybreak is a powerful magnet for grandkids. “Ours love to come visit so they can use the paddle boats on the lake.”
And as more friends from the Eastside have become acquainted with Daybreak, more of them have become interested in following the Keners. “It’s not too surprising,” Rich says. “This was a great decision we made.”
You can learn more about Daybreak’s Garden Park Village at DaybreakUtah.com/GardenPark