Cohousing-L Mailing List: Repurposing Buildings for Cohousing [was MANUFACTURED HOUSING]

[Sharon Villines (sharon]

On Sep 27, 2013, at 12:41 AM, Matt Lawrence <matt [at] technoronin.com> wrote:

> I have had similar thoughts about older hotels.  It would be easy to take 
> a pair of single rooms and convert one bath into a kitchen (all the 
> plumbing is there).  Three rooms in a row would make a nice 2 bedroom 
> unit.  Whatever common spaces, could of course continue to be common 
> spaces.

What are the purchasing requirements for doing this? For probably illogical 
reasons, this seems like a huge investment upfront. But then I think, if a 
group got together with this in mind, they could actually move in right away 
and thus would not have 2-3 years of carrying costs before move in. How long 
would the upfront period of saying "we want to buy this hotel, give us a bit of 
time to get it together" be?

Each household could stake out their rooms and live in them before renovating 
them or renovate and then move in.  Or renovate the kitchen while living in the 
bedrooms. AND wonder of all wonders, if there was already a restaurant on the 
first floor, they could keep it in operation. O blessed day for people who live 
in cities and work 10 hour days, eating most of their meals in public already.

Some rooms can be designated as common rooms. I use "common rooms" purposely 
because it might be better to have separate rooms. Eastern Village has separate 
spaces in their renovated office building for different purposes. They don't 
have one floor that is all the common space.

Sharon
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Sharon Villines, Washington DC
"The truth is more important than the facts." Frank Lloyd Wright