Cohousing-L Mailing List: Re: Co-developer

[Sherri Zann Rosenthal (76671.1561]

A somewhat late point of information: Rich Lobdill wrote that every cohousing
project to date has been co-developed with either a public or private entity
that took part of the risk. 

This was not true of Arcadia Cohousing, our neighbors in Carrboro, NC. Arcadia's
members were the developers, in a monetary sense, with total risk. In fact,
Arcadia internally raised most of the capital needed to constuct the
infrastucure and develop their neighborhood. The members also did a great deal
of nitty-gritty work, too. In large part, this was accomplished because of the
efforts of Giles Blunden, an architect who was the keystone of the group. Giles
has had a great deal of experience founding and working in cooperatively-run
businesses and other groups, including a design-build company called "Space
Builders." After a lot of unpaid work, Giles was eventually hired by Arcadia as
the Project Manager. About 14 of an eventual 33 homes are already built and are
being lived in at Arcadia. Giles and his wife, Ginger, have been doing
significant work helping build their own home, now that all the community's
infrastructure is complete, and Giles has hung up his "project manager" hat to
again become just another member.

I write this to give credit to our sister community, but not with any stake in
advocating that other groups *should* go without a co-developer. In fact, I
think some person or organization is needed to play the coordinating role Giles
did for Arcadia, and that I am providing for Eno Commons.

Sherri Zann Rosenthal
Eno Commons CoHousing, Durham, North Carolina
Where our Commons House watercolors are lovely, and the first iteration of the
home designs has plunged us into a whole new level of wrestling with happy
choices.