Cohousing-L Mailing List: Re: Common House construction sequencing

[Lynn Nadeau (welcome]

Chuck Durrett wrote:

>when the common house goes in late, people give it
>less attention. If people have settled back into the habit of reading the
>paper at home after dinner, forget making the sitting room comfortable and
>cozy and expecting to hang around there after dinner...The common house 
becomes an
>afterthought or looks like it is, attention is pulled away and old habits
>are not altered.

I agree with the thrust of Chuck's full post: that there are many 
wonderful aspects, and use-reinforcing ones, in having a common house 
built first, or simultaneously with homes. It's great to have a haven 
while constructing and moving in. But our experience at RoseWind, a 
lot-development model which necessitated building the CH after two thirds 
of the homes were built and occupied-- years later, in some cases-- 
suggests that doom and gloom is not assured if you need to do a CH later.

At RoseWind we have so looked forward to having a common house, for 
years. For years we built community in programming, designing, and to 
quite an extent building it ourselves. Some of us, with our homes all 
settled, had time and energy to do that work, and with many of us on 
site, it was easy to get lots of volunteers, even on minutes notice, to 
help with construction and finishing tasks.

After only five months' use (in our 13th year as a community) we now have 
weekly potlucks, team-cooked meals, and patio parties. We've met almost 
weekly for discussion circles, as well as having our business and many of 
our committee meetings there. There have been wine-and-cheese tasting, 
singing, political-sharing meetings, communication workshops, meetings of 
member's clubs such as bicycle club, meditation group, Green Party, 
choral rehearsal; birthday parties, family reunions, and other "personal" 
socials; an Autumnal Seasonal Observance; regularly scheduled RoseWind 
book-discussion group; planned Thanksgiving Dinner; a marvelous Sunday 
brunch. Planning-team work for a Town Meeting, speakers and slide shows 
and videos on a range of topics, as well as drop-in use to pick up mail 
and chat, for ping pong, magazine and Sunday-paper sharing, kid play. 
Every month sees more and more uses. It's exciting, even while we still 
are short on big pots, landscaping, and book shelves. It's been easy to 
find people to be on cleaning teams for various areas, and to find people 
willing to try cooking for a crowd. Much of the furniture and equipment 
has been donated from people's homes. 

So yes, by all means build your common  house first if you can. But if 
not, celebrate mightily when you can finally use it and have a ball: we 
are!


Lynn Nadeau, RoseWind Cohousing
Port Townsend Washington (Victorian seaport, music, art, nature)
http://www.rosewind.org
http://www.ptguide.com

_______________________________________________
Cohousing-L mailing list
Cohousing-L [at] cohousing.org  Unsubscribe  and other info:
http://www.communityforum.net/mailman/listinfo/cohousing-l