Cohousing-L Mailing List: Re: car access to a site

[Cascadia Commons Cohousing (cccoho]

Hello Kate,

Cascadia Commons has a very tight site also, a requirement to give emergency
vehicles access to the interior of the site, and a "wetlands reservation"
down the middle.  Check our site plan at  cascadiacommons.com to see how we
did it.  Each parking area is required to have an asphalt access strip to
its southern extreme for access by heavy vehicles, but the parking areas to
the sides are "grass pavers" -- large, very tough sheets of connected
plastic cylinders, about two inches in diameter, open on each end.  They are
filled with a combo of sand and soil and seeded with a very tough type of
grass.  We have only had them in place for about a month and haven't started
parking on them yet.  Right now they look like lawn, and we hope they will
continue to do so.  A big advantage is their permeability, so instead of
toxic runoff from more asphalt the rain goes down to the water table fairly
clean.


At 01:30 PM 9/16/00 -0500, you wrote:
>I have two questions which have to do with access to the center of the site. 
>Are there any cohousing sites in which cars & trucks do not have access to 
>the interior of the site?   Here at Bellingham Cohousing we are trying to 
>decide whether or not the central walkway should be maintained as a driveway 
>or a pedestrian pathway. We have a tight site and the central pathway is in 
>front of several homes & their porches. But there is no roadway around the 
>back of the property so some of the interior homes have no car access.  
> If you do not have a driveway into the interior how to you move goods and 
>materials into the interior of the site for maintenance.  Thank you, Kate N. 
>Nichols, Bellingham Cohousing, Washington  
>
>