Cohousing-L Mailing List: Fw: Response to Public Walking Trail Request

[mikearnott (mikearnott]

Dear Susana,

Our Cornerstone Village Cohousing community in Cambridge, Mass is
adjacent to a public bike path, the MBTA subway is underground. We went
through a different wrenching issue that the City engineer "asked" us to
put in a detention basin holding roof water runoff and site water. There
is no regulation on the books requiring us to do so, but in an old city
with combined sewer and new EPA regulations, the City is trying to comply
with we decided to go green and do the right thing. Even though it took
up our only green space in the center of our urban development.We thought
if we did not do it,  they would have delayed our project and giving us
our building permits. We had high carrying costs and other legal fees and
needed to move ahead so we settled and built it.

As for the public path issue. We decided to keep the existing 20ft-high
chain link fence with barbed wire on top which came with the property,
after deliberation. We would remove the barbed wire and trim the vines
that had grown through it, and experiment with it. I think we are glad we
have the fence. We discussed putting in a gate and no one has moved in
that direction. To access the path, we have to walk about a block to the
end of our property and we are on it. We have had unlocked bicycles
stolen on our property. There are periodic episodes of homeless or young
people drinking and making noise when our windows are open in the summer,
so we call the police. Luckily it is accessible to the police and they do
patrol it.  We are also quite active, have one resident who is a board
member, the other is the paid staffer to the North Cambridge Crime Task
Force. We participate in neighborhood watch programs and have special
programs/ holiday parties for Halloween and December and a large fair in
the summer aimed at the kids in the housing projects but also for all of
us to get to know each other.  So you must also do outreach to explore
the issues of your community, so you do not become an isolated gated
community. 

We have a duplex, a parking lot and town houses whose front doors open to
the main street and one driveway that leads to the apartment building we
have in the back. Our common house doors are locked and our entry way is
all glass so we can see who is there and we also have a speaker to ask
who is there before we buzz someone in. We do not have people wandering
in. We do have social barbecues combined with the Crime Task Force funds
where we flyer the entire neighborhood. We are only 3 years old so many
of the people are strangers in the neighborhood. These have all been
successful and not invited unwanted individuals. We also have two people
in our community who are especially assertive in identifying an
unfamiliar face and finding out who they are and why they are there.

As an environmentalist, I would be concerned that you are inviting people
to walk on a fragile ecosystem that will need specific care and
appropriate monitoring and maintenance. I hope they have strict
regulations as to what they would propose you put in. I would recommend
they or you study it over a few years, measure water elevations, record
wildlife and plants inhabiting the site and how they are using the site,
note any erosion issues, trash, water quality problems and come up with a
comprehensive plan for protection. Building a trail may not be the best
for the environment.

Good luck

Mary White
Cornerstone Village Cohousing
175 Harvey St. 
Cambridge, MA 02140  

Our City would like us to build a public walking trail through our
property and dedicate the land we own beside the river as public
parkland. This is part of what they consider a "Community Contribution".
We have balked at this request (which is more like a demand) for the same
reasons that Roberts Creek is now having problems. Response from the City
is along the lines of 'you say you are community-minded; what's your
problem?'

- How many other Cohousing Communities have public pathways on their 
property or immediately adjacent? 
- Have Cities required dedication of land for public use?
- How safe is the Cohousing Community  from vandalism, theft, children 
being at risk, without creating a fenced, gated community? None of us
want to barricade ourselves in and others out!
- How do we identify un-authorized people on our property, given that the
public has easy access?

I look forward to the responses to this and Stacia Leech's posting.

Cheers,
Susana Michaelis
Pacific Gardens Cohousing Community
www.pacificgardens.ca