Cohousing-L Mailing List: Re: self-development vs. partnering with an outside developer

[Fred H Olson (fholson]

louaine elke, Westwood Cohousing  <louaine [at] msn.com>
is the author of the message below. 
It was posted by Fred the Cohousing-L list manager <fholson [at] cohousing.org> 
because the message included HTML ;      PLEASE do not post HTML, see
   http://csf.colorado.edu/cohousing/2001/msg01672.html
--------------------  FORWARDED MESSAGE FOLLOWS --------------------


Dear Ted,

I cannot emphasize the importance of your decision enough. DO NOT DO
SELF-DEVELOPMENT no matter what talents that you have in your group.  
After 5 years, we are still stumbling into the pits of broken trust, miss
communication, poor physical designand craftsmenship, to name a few.  
Forming community and maintaining the experience to an approximation of
the original intensions is difficult enough without a millstone of the
many problems that can and will collect during the planning and building.  
Believe me, you don't need those extra problems.  There will be many
challenges as the cohousing experience provides a steep learning curve. As
always, the most difficult thing for a layman to do is to select a
professional. There are some very talented professionals out there.  
Choose carefully and wisely. Anything I have heard about Wonderland
Company has been good. Good luck,

Louaine
Westwood Cohousing

----- Original Message -----
From: Ted Ryle
Sent: Saturday, February 23, 2002 10:07 PM
To: cohousing-l [at] cohousing.org
Subject: [C-L]_self-development vs. partnering with an outside developer

I am a memebr of SouthSound Cohousing in Tacoma, WA.  We are Currently 8
member families, with a few additional families riding the fence, and a
large list of friends.

At present we are grappling with the decision as to whether we want to
self-develop or hire a developer (e.g. Wonderland).

We would appreciate words of wisdom from those of you who have engaged in
this process, your experiences with the pros and cons of the two options,
etc.

Thank you in advance for your help.

Peace

Ted Ryle

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