Cohousing-L Mailing List: Re: Re: self-development vs. partnering with an outside developer

[John Conner (jconner]

I'd like to add a little to Lon's remarks about Wonderland.  I'm a member
of Colorado Springs CoHousing.  One year ago I'm not sure I had any notion
of what it was.  Now I are one - so to speak....

We have used Wonderland as our developer.  And we now have basement walls for
the first three buildings and the common house.  It has been a jouurny.
Wonderland has a good system in place but it won't prevent problems from
arising.

We've gone through a lot with pricing, the city, losing members, the local
neighborhood and on and on and on and on.  Without someone who has a real
development background you will need 10 years.  Wonderland or someone like
them will at least get you to a community of buildings before most of the
early members need a nursing home.  But the they can only help so much with
the 'community' part of it.  And help they do.  But the people in the community
still must make decisions.  And that seems to be really hard some times.

If you do go to a professional like Wonderland, worry about your distance
from them.  They are in Wild Sage's back yard.  For us, Wonderland is just far
enough away to be a problem (about two hours drive).  Early on it is not
that big a deal but now that we are into construction WE (Wonderland and 
Colorado
Springs CoHousing are seeing some scheduling problems.

If your site is urban find someone (developer, construction company, architect)
who really knows the local government and is known to them.  You will be 
dealing
with a lot of little empires.

Good luck,
John Conner
Casa Verde Commons (Colorado Springs CoHousing)
http://www.colospringscohousing.com/

P.S. We have a number of units available and if you hurry you get to pick 
the options
for your home.


 At 11:42 2/24/2002 -0700, you wrote:
> At 12:01 PM 2/24/2002 -0600, you wrote:
> > At present we are grappling with the decision as to whether we want to
> > self-develop or hire a developer (e.g. Wonderland).
> >
> > We would appreciate words of wisdom from those of you who have engaged in
> > this process, your experiences with the pros and cons of the two options,
> > etc.
>
> Dear Ted,
> I can just put a word in for Wonderland here.  I'm part of the Wild Sage 
> Cohousing community forming in Boulder, Colorado.  Personally I can't 
> imagine getting this whole thing going without Wonderland.  The project 
> was started by Wonderland and we've been working with them for about 2 
> years now.  We are hoping to start construction this coming fall.  We are 
> a part of a larger neighborhood development project in North Boulder being 
> run by the city of Boulder.
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