Cohousing-L Mailing List: Dinner Coops: Pittsburg (URL) and Minneapolis

[Fred H Olson WB0YQM (fholson]

Minneapolis Cohousing wannabees have now tried
developing cohousing on about 3 different sites in South
Minneapolis without success.  Most recently a 'retrofit cohousing'
proposal (converting a block of existing housing) in the Seward
neighborhood that I was hopeful about at the Colorado Conference
has failed to get started.  The only house we could buy on the
block we were interested in was more of a compromize (over priced
and undesireable) than we were willing to make.

We have decided to try something different - a dinner coop.
Sort of the common meal part of cohousing despite that we dont
live on the same site.  A great WWW site describing a long
running dinner coop in Pittsburg has been very helpful.  URL:

 http://gs216.sp.cs.cmu.edu/dinnercoop/home-page.html

Here is Fred's  summary of (our) Dinner Coop idea:
o People generally interested in cohousing.
o Meals several times per month (4-20)
o Generally only a meal would be held. (one hour or less
  so that the time spent would be comparable to the time spent
  cooking and eating at home and maybe timed so people would
  have a chance to get to a 7:00 event afterward if possible.
o Cooking would be rotated among members
o Announcements of menus, cost, place etc for upcoming meals
  would be announced a few days in advance by email and reservations
  by reply email taken.  People without email would use fax, voice mail
  and take on more responsibility for keeping in touch (details to be
  worked on...)
o There is a relaxed assumption about how many of the members will
  get to any given meal.  This combined with more frequent meals
  than many people could get to results in easier scheduling
  and still hopefully members will dine with everyone over time.
o Most members are expected to live in the Seward neighborhood
  and northern Longfellow community to facilitate logistics.
  We may eat (and cook?) at least some times at a church basement
  and / or at a park building.

We are in the preliminary organizing and have had 2 weekly meals so far.
To date 10 households, 13 adults and 3 kids have participated. Several
others have not attended yet but are on our mailing list. All but 3
households are within about a mile of the church we will dine at
next time.

Fred

--
ADDRESS CHANGE   ADDRESS CHANGE   ADDRESS CHANGE   1/25/96

Use this address: fholson [at] tc.umn.edu
DO NOT USE THIS ADDRESS: fholson [at] uci.com   
Fred H. Olson (612)588-9532  Amateur radio: WB0YQM 
1221 Russell Av N, Minneapolis,MN 55411  
List manager of Cohousing-L (which will be moving soon) & Nbhd-tc