Cohousing-L Mailing List: Developer-driven cohousing

[John Major (jmajor]

And in response to a somewhat less old post by Zev Paiss:

> In response to an old post by Mike Mariner, the idea of developer driven
> CoHo does not mean in my mind at least, that a developer goes out and
> builds a coho project and when the units are completed puts up a sign and
> begins to sell units.  A more realistic version is what is currently
> happening with the Nomad group in Boulder.  The property was located and
> an option placed on it by the developer.  Word was put out locally to see
> if there were any people interested in cohousing at this location? 
> Presales are still a key in making a project happen.

I'm surprised that none of youse old-timers pointed out that the *first*
CoHousing development built in the US was developer-driven - Muir Commons, in
Davis, CA. The developer was Virginia Thigpen, someone who had done a lot of
work in the early 70's on Village Homes in Davis. She was the one who really
drove the thing through to completion, and they all got to move in a lot
sooner as a result. 

Anyhow, the Muir Commons folks got a tremendous boon from Virginia, who
admittedly is a visionary in a pretty conservative occupation. I wish
sometimes that Wasatch CoHousing had a developer doing a lot of this stuff for
us, even though we're still having a ball. It sounds like there are some
developers around the country that are dissatisfied with the current
pave-it-over-three-car-garage development model - try and find one in your
area!

John Major
Wasatch CoHousing
jmajor [at] dayna.com