Re: COHOUSING AND ZONING | <– Date –> <– Thread –> |
From: mrbouchez06 (mrbouchez06aol.com) | |
Date: Fri, 9 Nov 2007 05:01:35 -0800 (PST) |
Charles, I agree with much of the advice here - a quick question - what sort of acreage are you planning to purchase and how many homes are you planning to place on the site? many localities are very supportive of clustering homes and leaving more open space so that is one route. an excellent suggestion that was made is gaining the ear of your local planning department and find a visionary - planners generally are or should be and there is a good chance one of them is aware of the concept of co-housing. gaining a champion for the idea on your elected board is also a suggestion. my thoughts are that before i would involve a developer as my front man/woman, because "shelter providers" just aren't always loved in the world, i would do some positive public relations work a la grassroots within the community. if you educate people on the idea and gain multi-faceted support, there is less chance of any anti-development/nimbyism etc occurring - co - housing has the ability to win a great many supporters from many perspectives - it's smart growth, community-building, ecologically-sound with low impact development features and presents alternatives for a great many different peoples. preaching to the choir here, but again, i'm a firm believer in utilizing the services of all your freebie (well, not so free as you are paying taxes) sources first - let's call them your "pre-paid" services - without support from the staff that will recommend or not recommend your concept and support from the people that approve ordinances, the best of ideas can go south. this leans more to the concept of rezoning to some extent, however I'm also approaching this from a "building for future communities" concept - getting support/laws/ordinances etc in place from the get go will open the doors for those in the future in your community and in other communities as well - HINT - every community/local government/elected official wants to be known as a visionary - give them the opportunity - i have written articles for innovative government publications and taint nothin' better than to see your county up there on the front page for all the other local governments to see :) - applause applause , we all live for it tricia In a message dated 11/9/2007 12:47:41 A.M. Eastern Standard Time, floriferous [at] msn.com writes: You would be well advised to go to the county records office and look for developments similar to what you want to do in your area. Before you go, make an appointment with one of your county or municipal planners. You can ask a planner questions like, how many rezones have been approved in the past year, what is the rezone process. If there has not been a rezone in that area for a long time, then you probably will not be able to go that route. If there have been rezones and developments similar to what you envision, get the name of the developer and see if there is somebody who will talk with you about the ropes....Offer to pay them, take them to dinner, whatever works. The people who develop land for a living know the local processes best and they can tell you all kinds of valuable, insider info that it would take you years to learn on your own. For example, from a local developer I learned that at the main office there were a couple of people that were easier to work with than others. So we asked for them specifically. At one point we had to go in to the office and take a number, and so we took 5 numbers, then let others go ahead of us, until the person we wanted was free. I have seen planners become very enthusiastic about cohousing once they learn about it, and they can help you a lot. They are public employees, use their knowledge. Rob Sandelin Sharingwood, Snohomish County, WA -----Original Message----- From: Oliveau [at] aol.com [mailto:Oliveau [at] aol.com] Sent: Thursday, November 08, 2007 11:33 AM To: cohousing-l [at] cohousing.org Subject: Re: [C-L]_ COHOUSING AND ZONING Hey Charles, Our zoning was 3 acre minimum. But they has a "Rural Hamlet" option which allowed for closer spacing of the houses in return for a large area of common open space. You should talk to the zoning people and see if they have a clustering option of some sort. The other thing to do is go for a zoning exception, but this involves more legal time and money. A third option is to design the community with 5 acre lots, but layout the geometry so that the houses are close together. I've seen very extreme examples of this where the houses are all on tiny "pipe stems" which run along a twisted path to large acreage far away. Hope that helps, -Kevin Oliveau Catoctin Creek Village In a message dated 11/8/2007 2:25:46 P.M. Eastern Standard Time, balaji [at] ouraynet.com writes: Dear Group: The county where we likely will build has a 5 acre minimum for residences. They have no experience with cohousing. Has anyone out there had experience with this problem? Thanks! Charles Utah Valley Cohousing Community http://groups.yahoo.com/group/utahvalleycohousing/ ************************************** See what's new at http://www.aol.com _________________________________________________________________ Cohousing-L mailing list -- Unsubscribe, archives and other info at: http://www.cohousing.org/cohousing-L/ _________________________________________________________________ Cohousing-L mailing list -- Unsubscribe, archives and other info at: http://www.cohousing.org/cohousing-L/ ************************************** See what's new at http://www.aol.com
-
Re: COHOUSING AND ZONING Oliveau, November 8 2007
- Re: COHOUSING AND ZONING Rob Sandelin, November 8 2007
- Re: COHOUSING AND ZONING mrbouchez06, November 9 2007
-
Re: COHOUSING AND ZONING Joani Blank, November 9 2007
-
Re: COHOUSING AND ZONING Ann Zabaldo, November 12 2007
- Re: COHOUSING AND ZONING Laura Fitch, November 13 2007
- Re: COHOUSING AND ZONING rc3-coho-L, November 13 2007
-
Re: COHOUSING AND ZONING Ann Zabaldo, November 12 2007
Results generated by Tiger Technologies Web hosting using MHonArc.