Cohousing-L Mailing List: RE: Re:common house as public building

[Rob Sandelin (floriferous]

Every use that Lynn listed you can do in a condo multipurpose room, and you
probably won't have to:

Put in an elevator
Buy an expensive grease trap
Buy an expensive stove hood
Have expensive  panic hardware on the doors
Have an expensive roof drain system installed
Have special glass on any doors

Being a public building often adds  a great deal of unnessarily permit
overhead and expense that you can avoid by just calling the building a condo
multipurpose building. Most condos have such things and the banks and such
are totally hip to them. The requirements for public buildings can add as
much as 15% to your cost.

Rob Sandelin


-----Original Message-----
From: cohousing-l-admin [at] cohousing.org
[mailto:cohousing-l-admin [at] cohousing.org]On Behalf Of Lynn Nadeau
Sent: Monday, April 16, 2001 12:12 PM
To: cohousing L
Subject: [C-L]_Re:common house as public building


>Rob wrote "I can see no advantage to having a commonhouse as a public
>building and see all kinds of potential disadvantages."

A building can be less than totally private without being full of
graffiti and vandalism! At first I was resentful of the building
department's requirements, but have come to see many advantages to our
construction as a "public" building.

How much public use we have is a decision we can evolve based on our
experience, to balance the benefits with the negatives. Our building
classification doesn't force us to do anything in particular.

In our case, I see the negatives as wear and tear, insurance increases,
and the potential for some dishonest person to note that we have all
sorts of good stuff in this usually unlocked building. I assume if we
charge for use of the building, we will charge more than enough to offset
the wear and tear and additional insurance. Theft and such is almost a
nonexistent problem in Port Townsend, where many people proudly tell you
they don't own a key to their house. (I have a key, somewhere, but in 5
years have never used it.)

Degrees of "public" use:
= guests at RoseWind functions (at our common house opening party, we
included our building subcontractors)
= socials and meetings hosted by a RW member, almost all of whom are
active with local organizations such as the Food Coop, Land Trust,
Women's Center, Credit Union, salmon and forest groups, Artist's Way,
Democratic and Green parties. Meeting space is sometimes scarce in town.
Birthday parties and such by members, for nonmember friends
= eventually, events like weddings? contra dances? yoga classes?
= if we can figure out that it's legal (we're a nonprofit corporation,
but not a 501c3), renting to someone like a caterer, who could use our
fine kitchen when we are not.

Benefits of public use:
Community building in our town - not being an enclave, but enriching the
existing community.

Raising awareness of cohousing in general, and RoseWind in particular, to
increase our chances of community-minded people buying in, when we have
resales. This is VERY important, since we are otherwise vulnerable in
this regard.

Responsible sharing of the resources invested in this large building -
all the materials used to build it, for example- when we may average only
a few hours a day of use ourselves.

And by building with public use in the code requirements, we have ADA
accessibility for any of us or our guests who will benefit from it, and
we have the benefits of a commercial dishwasher (about a minute a load:
wow!).

I would suggest that this is an issue which will involve unique factors
for each group, depending on their surrounding community, financial
resources (though who can't use more money?), and membership usage of the
building.

Lynn Nadeau
RoseWind Cohousing
Port Townsend WA
http://www.olypen.com/sstowell/rosewind
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