Cohousing-L Mailing List: Its official - new cohousing forming in Durham, NC (River Rock)

[Paul L. Della Maggiora (paul]

Hello everyone.  We have reached a verbal agreement on the purchase of 18
acres of land in Durham, right next to Eno Commons cohousing.  We're very
excited about this because as early members of Eno Commons, we have wanted
to help preserve the beautiful land between Eno Commons and the Eno river
and prevent the hungry McMansion developers from leaving their mark on our
pristine view.  Gabrielle (my wife) and I will serve as developers for this
new cohousing effort.

Given the quick availability of the land, we are just now getting our
bearings as we organize the details and begin planning.  At this point, we
have a website (www.riverrockcohousing.org), and are talking with engineers,
city folks, builders, and others to determine where we stand.  We're quite
lucky in that previous developers already prepped the land (city water, city
sewer, surveying, rezoning, documented feasibility).  The website will
always contain the latest updates on our progress.

For those of you that are familiar with Eno Commons (www.enocommons.org), we
plan on using quite a bit of the designs and approaches for the building of
both the physical and communal aspects. We would also like to try out some
new ideas and take advantage of recent green technologies that were
unfeasible when we built Eno Commons.

Tentatively, we are planning 32 houses of three sizes, including smaller
single story handicapped accessible houses, 2 story houses similar to Eno
Common's "B" style house, and a few larger houses to support shared living
or larger families.  While we are still looking at what is feasible, we are
planning to build a commons house, a work house, a shared garden, paths and
trails.  We are also trying to facilitate a design that allows all houses to
face each other and the commons house.  

We're just now putting together pro-forma budgets and scouring books and
websites and tapping experienced folks to help build out our plan.  If you
have any advice or thoughts, please let me know, especially helping to build
a solid budget.   I'm hoping that with good planning, we can prevent any
surprise overages and need to go back to community members for money.

We are very excited, and already have had tremendous support both from the
folks in Eno Commons and others who are interested in helping us get this
rolling.  We feel lucky to have been part of such a positive experience in
Eno Commons and apply what we learned to a new community.

Thanks!