Aspen Community [was: Community Now! in Rochester, NY
From: Fred H Olson (fholsoncohousing.org)
Date: Wed, 27 Jun 2007 03:46:43 -0700 (PDT)
Ann Zabaldo (zabaldoearthlink.net) wrote on cohousing-L:

> In re: cohousing community in Aspen. I'm almost 100% sure that Raines
> visited there not that long ago and wrote to the Coho-L that contrary to
> popular opinion the Aspen group was alive and well and living in their
> community. Am I making this up?

Ann is probably thinking of Raines' message (in the archives at:
http://lists.cohousing.org/pipermail/cohousing-l/msg25389.html
but her memory of "alive and well and living in their community"
apparently needs some qualification.

Raines wrote ( in part):

> Common Ground [in Aspen] , the ONLY U.S. cohousing "failure" that I've
> ever heard of (i.e. project getting past the site-optioned and
> planning-approval and construction-financed stage and not getting
> built/sold as cohousing), may be less illustrative of issures around
> "developer- driven" cohousing and show us more of gaps in the model when
> applied in a different context, which Rob identifies in passing.

My take on this is that community comes in many forms.  What may be a
failure from one point of view is great from another point of view.
All things are relative.  We do what we can.

My community - variously called "Homewood Cohousing" or "Russell Av N
Block Club" or whatever ( http://mn.cohousing.org/homewood/ )
is not cohousing (yet at least) but we like it.

Community anecdote: Yesterday the extended community member, Mike, who is
renovating the house next to us ** mentioned that Lute and Ruth would be
back in the wee hours of Wed so I promptly went and got the clean sheets
to their bed from from our laundry basket and made their bed with a note
"clean sheets Tue 6/26 - Welcome home".  I had the sheets and their house
key since my inlaws stayed there a couple weeks ago around my son's
high school graduation.

** House next to Fred almost done and still available.

I wrote recently here about this (see
http://lists.cohousing.org/archives/cohousing-l/msg26086.html ) The house
is getting close to completion and we are still looking for community
oriented folks to live there.  The sanded and finished floors look great.
Mike is starting to think about putting a for sale sign up ( and engage a
realtor.)  We'd like to save that expense and find someone first...


Fred

--
Fred H. Olson  Minneapolis,MN 55411  USA        (near north Mpls)
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612-588-9532 (7am-10pm CST/CDT)   Email: fholson at cohousing.org


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