Cohousing-L Mailing List: Developers touring cohousing

[katie-henry (katie-henry]

I posted the following message to my community (Eastern Village), then thought 
it might be of interest to other cohousers as well. Don is Don Tucker, the 
developer and architect for Eastern Village and Takoma Village, both in the DC 
area.

Katie
Eastern Village Cohousing
Silver Spring, MD

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Last week I gave a building tour to some people from KSI and a couple 
architects from Don's office. KSI is one of the biggest multi-family developers 
in the country and a huge presence in the DC area. They wanted to visit the 
building because Don's architecture firm (EDG Architects) is trying to get a 
piece of a project that KSI is doing on the site of the old Lorton Prison. 

The KSI people just wanted to see our green roof and a couple units. They knew 
nothing about cohousing and I don't think they were particularly interested. 
But they were absolutely blown away by the place. KSI has built countless 
thousands of condo and apartment units and planned communities, with the usual 
showy lobbies and fitness centers, but evidently they have never seen a 
building being used like this as a home by its residents. 

For example, I could hardly drag them out of the library. They were marvelling 
that you just walk around a corner and here's this empty space being used for 
an amenity that's maintained by residents for the benefit of the other 
residents. Ditto for the kids' rooms. I was busy making excuses for the grubby 
elevator carpeting and banged-up walls ("We're still under construction!"), but 
that didn't bother them at all. They saw right past that. They asked a ton of 
questions and said they'd like to come back. It was really an eye-opening 
experience for them. 

The architects from Don's office were getting a little misty-eyed during the 
tour. This was an incredibly challenging project for the architects and the 
builders, given the tight timeline and the nature of the building, and they are 
delighted to see people using and enjoying the building. 

Katie