Re: housing options | <– Date –> <– Thread –> |
From: cynthia . e . carpenter (cynthia.e.carpenterus.arthurandersen.com) | |
Date: Mon, 14 Feb 2000 08:59:14 -0700 (MST) |
<< I don't think the cost of private unit design... the economic, social, community, and emotional costs... provides us as individual households with anything close to the benefit that we romantically imagine. It certainly does nothing positive for the community. In fact, it can be argued that it is often destructive. >> Chris' argument has a lot of truth in it. We, too, found that many (or even most?) people did not end up moving into the unit they had originally planned to buy. Costs changed, ideas about what was important changed, and common and site design changes affected the merits of various units. But we are all romantically attached to the idea of building our dream home, and I think that completely eliminating member input into unit designs would be very tough. An alternative is to keep other communities' track record in mind, and realize that you need design input from a diverse group of members, not just the ones who think they will buy a unit with that design (because it probably won't be them). I think that some of our best unit designs had input from several families in the community with varying sizes and needs who saw themselves as future owners (whether or not they eventually were). On the other hand, one of our unit designs clearly didn't meet the end owners' needs (both buyers reworked the design at significant cost to themselves). That unit design had originally been conceived for one particular type of family (with > 2 kids, of which we were the only representatives at that time) and didn't have input from any member (not even us, due to some failure in process). Rob suggested: >>Well just to play the other side of the idea, you could just build spaces, and let each individual do whatever they wanted in terms of finishing it out. Seems like a lot of the passion goes into stuff like bathtubs, kitchens, etc. So you build a shell and let people fill it in to their taste and budget. The shell framework is the same, the plumbing is set, but the cabinets, sink, faucetts, bathtub, carpet type, paint, colors etc are chosen by the owner. >> We did a modified version of this approach at Cambridge Cohousing which I think worked fairly well. Our design committee put together a book of "options." There were three to five types each of kitchen and bathroom faucets, kitchen and bathroom cabinets, floor options (e.g. wood, carpet, linoleum, slate), hall lighting, bathtubs, refrigerators, stoves, etc. The book had pictures, specs, and additional costs or credits to your base unit price for each choice. We chose, for example, to not have a garbage disposal (which resulted in a credit), to install a standard color and countertop material for our kitchen (no change to our unit cost), and to have an extra large bathtub (which cost us extra). Each unit buyer got one meeting with the architect to go over their choices, decide where to put overhead lights and cable outlets, where to put the kitchen appliances, etc. and discuss the overall effect and pricetags. We also all paid a bump on top of the specific options costs to cover the administrative work on the part of the builders and contractors. - Cindy *******************Internet Email Confidentiality Footer******************* Privileged/Confidential Information may be contained in this message. If you are not the addressee indicated in this message (or responsible for delivery of the message to such person), you may not copy or deliver this message to anyone. In such case, you should destroy this message and kindly notify the sender by reply email. Please advise immediately if you or your employer do not consent to Internet email for messages of this kind. Opinions, conclusions and other information in this message that do not relate to the official business of my firm shall be understood as neither given nor endorsed by it.
- Re: housing options, (continued)
- Re: housing options Ann Zabaldo, February 13 2000
- Re: housing options Lydia & Ray Ducharme, February 13 2000
- Re: housing options RodLambert, February 13 2000
- Re: housing options Fred H. Olson, February 14 2000
- Re: housing options cynthia . e . carpenter, February 14 2000
- Re: housing options Ann Zabaldo, February 14 2000
- Re: housing options Fred H. Olson, February 14 2000
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