Cohousing-L Mailing List: Fwd: [All] Article on Telford Farm, an IC in Northern Michigan

[Tree Bressen (tree]

A utopian way of life
Leelanau families share ownership to preserve land and their chosen lifestyle

BY CARI NOGA
FREE PRESS SPECIAL WRITER

April 30, 2006

CEDAR -- Follow the 1983 Mercedes with the biodiesel decal. Follow it
outside the rural Leelanau County town of Cedar. Follow it as it turns
up the hill covered with grapevines. Follow it to the end of the
asphalt, onto the dirt road and into its own driveway, up to the
straw-and-clay house where Bill Queen, his wife, Kate Fairman, and
their two children live.

You've arrived at Telford Farm.

Depending on the day, the residents might be working in the vineyard,
wrapping up an afternoon of homeschooling or preparing for the weekly
potluck picnic. Their kids might be at any one of their four homes,
out at the chicken coop feeding the flock or roaming somewhere else on
Telford Farm's 90 acres.

Located about 20 minutes northwest of Traverse City, Telford Farm is
an intentional community, one of only a handful in Michigan. After
almost a decade in the works, the community is rising on a Leelanau
County hillside. Four homes have been built and a fifth is expected
this year. Eventually, there will be at least nine homes on the
property.

The residents have chosen to live as neighbors and own property
collectively. Life here might be a little too close for comfort for
many.

"People thought this was pretty risky," said Laura Hood, 45, a
resident and teacher at the private Leelanau School in Glen Arbor. She
and her husband, Bruce, 45, moved to Telford Farm from Glen Arbor in
2004.

While residents own their own homes, the remaining 80 acres is owned
collectively, as a limited liability corporation in which each
household has an equal share. The LLC also includes a handful of old
farm buildings and a seven-acre vineyard.

Residents share the labor, from pruning vines to harvesting grapes.
Any profit made from the vineyard is deposited into a farm account
from which expenses such as taxes are paid. The residents drafted and
abide by restrictive covenants like a 3,000-square-foot limit on home
size. There's a monthly meeting -- held out at the barn in good
weather -- where decisions on issues such as vineyard work and whether
to allow chickens to be raised on the farm are made by consensus. If
anyone wants to sell, the group has the first rights to purchase the
property back.

Association dues are $300 a quarter and cover taxes for the collective
property, the farm buildings and road maintenance.

To Telford Farm residents, it's utopia. "It's the best of all worlds.
We get to live in a rural place, but we have neighbors," said Hood.

The making of Telford Farm

Telford Farm was born nine years ago when resident Brian Ursu, 40, saw
a sign advertising 90 acres for sale in central Leelanau County.

"We had been looking, like everybody else, for 10 acres where you
could protect yourself from development," said Ursu, a financial
adviser who was living outside Traverse City at the time.

He and his wife, Joan Cowley-Ursu, 42, couldn't afford that much land
but wondered if they could buy the property, split it up and sell the
other lots -- yet keep most of it rural.

Cowley-Ursu, a lawyer, started talking about it at work. Coworkers
started talking to friends and, weeks later, the Ursus found
themselves hosting a half-dozen couples.

Someone raised the idea of an intentional community.

The group bought the land for $320,000. But then came a protracted
zoning conflict with Solon Township: The residents wanted the houses
clustered on three-quarter-acre lots, denser than the minimum two- or
five-acre lots stipulated in zoning rules. They wanted the roads to
remain dirt and narrow, rather than paved and wide, as required for
emergency vehicles.

In the end, the residents got their smaller lot size. They compromised
on the road. It's paved halfway in. The rest is dirt.

"We eventually walked around with the fire chief and he made a
determination we could engineer (the road) to hold 45,000-pound fire
trucks," said Jeff Anderson, 50, whose home at the farm is going up
this year.

Al Laskey, currently the township planning commission chairman, was on
the commission back in 2002 when Telford Farm got its approval.

"I would probably say it was a learning process for us as well as
them," said Laskey, who's a neighbor of Telford Farm. "They wanted to
preserve open space, and they did that pretty well."

In fact, farmland preservation has become a countywide concern. The
Leelanau County Board is considering ballot language for a 15-year,
0.5-mill tax that would be designated to buy farmland.

The intentional community

During the zoning wrangling, residents continued planning Telford
Farm, using the services of a consensus facilitator, a landscape
architect and an architect and urban planner. The consensus
facilitator was the "single most important thing we did," said Ursu.
She taught them the collaborative decision-making process they
continue to use today, rather than a majority-rule system.

"We're really trying to build community." In a majority rule
situation, "you don't have a chance to really discuss. You're too busy
being political," Cowley-Ursu said.

Using consensus, the group decided to cluster the homes on the
south-facing slope of a hillside, to take advantage of passive solar
gain -- letting the sun warm the houses. They settled on community
bylaws that specify design guidelines, much like the bylaws that
govern condominium associations.

Residents spelled out what they wanted, namely a unified look that
blends in with the county's traditional farmhouses. To that end, each
house has shake shingles and incorporates what Cowley-Ursu calls
respect for the historic rooflines of the area, which are typically
gable or shed types and feature steeper pitches.

Played out in practice, the Ursus went back to the drawing board after
the group expressed concern about the height of their original
two-story home design. They finally built a ranch -- and they're glad.

"We ended up with a better home for us because of that," Cowley-Ursu
said. Though it's a new house, it was built with three different
exterior materials, to appear as though it had been added onto
gradually.

They were the first to build, moving their family of five into their
home in July 2003. At 2,600 square feet, and with four bedrooms and 3
1/2 baths, it's the largest home at Telford Farm. It has a home-school
area where Cowley-Ursu teaches her two youngest children.

The three other homes built so far are straw-clay construction, chosen
for its energy efficiency and minimal impact on natural resources. Two
were built in 2004 and one in 2005.

Real estate risk?

It might seem risky to cede any bit of control over your home to a
group. But if the group shares a mind-set and fits well together, then
in fact it can become utopia, said Rob Serbin, an associate broker at
the Martin Co., a Glen Arbor real estate agency.

"Picking your neighbors. If you get the chance, why not?" said Serbin.
In 1999, he worked with the group on purchasing property for another,
smaller intentional community. That deal fell through.

"It's not all that much different from people buying in a subdivision
where they've got shared benefit, whether it's lake access or a soccer
field," Serbin said. "The bummer would be someone coming in and not
fitting in after all."

Serbin said he didn't think the Telford Farm bylaws would be
oppressive to future residents interested in the community. "People
who have a like-minded philosophy are not going to find those things
at all daunting," he said.

Indeed, there have been four property changes since the Ursus hosted
the organizing group nine years ago. Three couples in the original
group sold their lots, and another household joined. None of the lots
even went on the market. All sales were handled privately.

"People snatched it up," Laura Hood said.

Copyright (c) 2006 Detroit Free Press Inc.

--


-----------------------------------------------

Tree Bressen
1680 Walnut St.
Eugene, OR 97403
(541) 484-1156
tree [at] ic.org
http://www.treegroup.info