Architect draws up blueprint for baby boomers' backyards.

Denver home builders have had a rough time of late, with new-home sales plummeting 47 percent the first half of 2008. But longtime Denver architect Michael Kephart had his eye on a bigger trend--the aging baby boom generation--when he launched Sidekick Homes early this spring.

Sidekick specializes in ADUs, or accessory dwelling units. They're anti-McMansions, small--sometimes tiny--living quarters built for backyards of existing homes, typically for aging relatives. Hence, they're sometimes called "mother-in-law" or "granny" flats.

"We have probably until 2015 or 2020 before the peak of the baby boomers really has its impact on that side of the business," says Kephart, 69. "As time goes on, it's going to grow exponentially."

Baby boomers, defined as those born between 1946 and 1964, have not so much influenced trends as they have outright created them during every step of their lives because of their enormous numbers, from diaper sales to new-school construction to suburban sprawl.

Boomers have impacted the housing market for decades, but Kephart says they're soon going to impact it in a different way.

"The first boomers turned 60 last year," he says. "They call part of them the 'sandwich generation.' They're the ones who still have children at home--albeit 'children' who may be adults--and they are caring for their parents at the same time. Therefore the 'sandwich.' They're squeezed between these two things."

Two years ago Kephart sold the firm he founded in 1974, Kephart Community Planning Architecture, to his employees. He spent the next year writing a book, "Building for Boomers," published by McGraw Hill and due out early next year.

Kephart had been focusing on the over-55 market for 10 or 15 years, but he became even more attuned to the pending housing demands of boomers while doing research for his book.

One complication for the backyard ADU business is that zoning rules vary among municipalities and neighborhoods. Kephart rattles off a number of cities that he says allow ADUs: Arvada, Lafayette, Boulder, Fort Collins, Grand Junction among them.

"They're promoted by cities like Arvada as a way to help with the affordable housing issue and the issue of housing the aging population, which are both coming together pretty strongly right now," Kephart says.

In Denver, ADUs are allowed only in neighborhoods zoned for mixed use, such as Stapleton, according to Julius Zsasko, spokesman for the Denver Department of Community Planning.

Sidekick units range in price from $75,000 to $200,000 and in size from about 400 square feet to 1,160 square feet. They're modular homes, prebuilt and trucked from the factory to the home site with everything from the ceiling fixtures to the kitchen counters intact. But Kephart says he's not locked into the modular home concept.

"We're going to change and evolve as we go along," he says. As an example he points to a Sidekick unit going up at West 42nd Avenue and Quitman Street in Denver's Highland neighborhood. It is a "Marion" model, at 1,160 square feet the largest unit Sidekick offers.

"I had decided that model was too big and we were going to discontinue it, and suddenly somebody wanted it," Kephart says. "So I'm learning every day by getting inquiries from people about what they want and what they don't want."

The unit on West 42nd and Quitman is a departure from the Sidekick concept in that it will be the dominant structure on the property and connected to the existing unit. "Essentially the ADU is already there," he says. "There was a little alley house, and we've connected the Marion to it."

Along with Kephart, Sidekick Homes' principals are his wife, Jaye, who handles the accounting, and Renee Babkiewich, who handles marketing.

The Kepharts have lived in the same house in Washington Park for 30 years. At one point in this interview, there's a noise in the background and Michael Kephart explains that he's got his 11-month-old grandson, Phoenix, with him.

"Maybe he'll build you an ADU some day," I say. "A Sidekick home."

Kephart laughs. "There you go."

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Mike Taylor is the managing editor of ColordoBiz. He writes about small-business money issues and how startups are launched. Read this and Taylor's past columns on the Web at cobizmag.com and e-mail him at [e-mail].