Cohousing-L Mailing List: Urban Mixed Use Development

[Regan Conley (reganconley]

I'm part of a forming urban cohousing group in Washington, D.C.   
Someone in our group suggested we considering partnering with a  
company that owns about 3/4 of a city block and is going to be  
rebuilding on it.  It's a grocery store and the store wants to  
essentially build a new multi-level building with grocery at the  
street level and housing above.  It's a pretty spendy neighborhood,  
but some neighborhood officials are encouraging them to do something  
for moderate income people (one of our cohousing targets).

This is just one location, but we are looking at very densely built  
up urban areas, so it might come up in other places.  Setting aside  
the cohousing design issues (which I admit could be huge -- getting a  
corporation to let us design what goes on top of their building),  
does anyone know about the mechanics of such a thing?

How do mixed use buildings work when the housing is owned condos and  
not rented by the corporation that owns the commercial parts?   
Perhaps I'm not even framing the question properly, but it's  
essentially who owns (and controls) what and how?

I suppose it would be similar to Swan's Way in Oakland.

Regan Conley
Urban D.C. Cohousing
Washington D.C.