Cohousing-L Mailing List: Re: Need Marketing Ideas

[Chris Blaisdell (Chris_Blaisdell]

Hi,

Thank you to all who have responded to my query.  Though I was the one who 
posted it, it was done for our 'Membership Committee' which I am not on.  I 
have forwarded your replies to those who are, though.

So.... a little more info about us.  Yes, we are (were) Cumberland County 
CoHousing.  It took us a *long* time to consense on a name.  We ended up 
with 'Two Echo' because at one point in our lands history it was known as 
'Two Echo Dairy'  So, to keep a sense of continuance......

We are not a 'base model' CoHousing Community (to bring up an old string) 
in that the community is not building the living units.  A member gets a 
'lot' (Limited Common Element) on which to build their house.  There are a 
mix of single family and duplex 'lots'.  The 'lots'  vary between 50' to 75'
wide 
and are 110' deep.  The houses will end up being between 25' to 50' apart. 
We have 'House Design Guidelines' members must follow in designing and 
building their house. (with a... you guessed it.. 'traditional New England 
Village'  theme)  The household will own their house but the 'lot' is owned 
by the community.

One of our problems is that we ended up pricing ourselves out of the range 
of a lot of interested people.  Our land is 94 acres and though relatively 
cheap per acre, it is a big piece.  We looked long and hard before we found 
*anything* we could work with and this is what we ended up with.  We find 
that our 'lots' are priced at about what other 'middle to upper middle 
class' developments are costing

We have been at this for over five years now.  When we first started out 
there was interest from the newspapers in what we were doing and we had a 
few stories written about us.  But now we are told that we are 'old news'.  
We won't be news again until we actually start building or are even living 
there!

We also have the additional burden of the Kennebec Valley CoHousing having 
just 'gone under'.  They were attempting an 'all low income' community and 
were very dependent on promised federal money which, upon the election of 
Mr. Newt and his cronies suddenly failed to materialize.  They lost a lot 
of their members who couldn't afford the new 'market' prices.  They 
struggled along for a couple of years and just a couple of weeks ago the 
last remaining 'committed members' were called into the bank and they were 
foreclosed on.  *Major Bummer*!  I hear a couple of the members had put up 
their own land as collateral for the mortgage of the CoHo land and the bank 
seized both pieces of the members land as well as the CoHo piece.  The bank 
did let the two members keep their houses and, I think, like, five acres 
but took the other 50 or so.  This is one of those "I heard from.. who 
heard from..."s, so what I've related may not be totally factual, but it is 
essentially what has happened to KVCH.

So, guess who gets the media attention?  :-(

Gee, I got awful depressing, didn't I?  Anyway.... We will have 27 
households.  The community will be built in two phases.  Phase one is 18 
units, though we can start infrastructure at only 15.  At the moment we 
have 10 committed phase one households.  And we have, maybe, three who are 
right on the verge of joining.  But we need these 15 by Dec. 1.  Hence, our 
anxiety.  A couple of people on here pointed out that we needed to start 
looking outside our local area.  Interestingly enough, most of the recent 
interest has come from people 'from away' (as we say up here).  We've had 
couples from Mass., Virginia, and one couple (a really good prospect) flew 
out here from the L.A. area to meet us and see the land!  All of these 
people heard about us through our Web page. (God! Aren't the '90's great!)

So.. this has gone on *much* longer than I had intended. I am going to try 
to send an attachment of a site map.  I'll send two.  One BMP and one GIF.  
If you see any attachments with this or as another post from me, that's what
it is.  If not, well..... maybe the '90's aren't all they're cracked up to 
be after all......  ;-)
--- OffRoad 1.9n registered to Chris Blaisdell