Cohousing-L Mailing List: RE: SELF DEVELOPMENT VS PROFESSIONAL DEVELOPER

[Eris Weaver (erisw]

Casey from Two Acre Wood said:

> I am a fan of hiring a cohouising professional to help with development,
> having watched and participated in what looked a lot like the 30-years'
> war while our project developed.

My community is about ten miles away from Two Acre Wood, so we are in the
same area as far as land costs, etc. We've been living in our community
almost a year. We watched what happened at TAW and other communities that
self-developed, and decided to use professionals. We partnered with the
Cohousing Company and Wonderland Hill Development. I firmly believe that
we moved in sooner and at a lower cost and with fewer headaches than we
would have if we'd tried to do it all ourselves. There's plenty to do in
the formative stage, with developing process and connections with each
other, as well as the mundane physical design elements. We did do some
things ourselves -- we designed and installed much of the landscaping
ourselves, for example.

Eris Weaver
FrogSong (AKA Cotati Cohousing)
Cotati, CA
...where the city has finally signed off on our final landscaping bond,
and our commercial space is now 75% leased, giving this business a
positive cash flow!