Cohousing-L Mailing List: Urban cohousing: Common house on roof?

[katie-henry (katie-henry]

There's a site for sale in Maplewood, NJ (NYC metro area) that may be suitable 
for cohousing. The township just approved plans for a small condo building with 
underground/ground floor parking on the site, and now the owner is looking to 
sell the site. The building would occupy the entire lot, so there's no room for 
a courtyard or other ground-level outdoor space. 

The owner was able to get a height variance for the elevator machinery on the 
roof and thus he has included several common areas (party room, exercise room, 
resident storage) on the roof, surrounded by large open patios/roof gardens on 
all four sides. This space would be perfect for the common house, especially 
since it couldn't be used for units. The views would be spectacular. 

The building is small enough (the current design only has 15 units, but they 
are huge) that it would be undesirable to sacrifice unit space for a CH on the 
first floor by the entrance.

Conventional cohousing wisdom says that you should have cars on the periphery 
and funnel foot traffic into the CH to maximize interaction. In this building, 
people could (and probably would) take the elevator from the parking garage 
directly to their unit floor and bypass the CH entirely. Would people tend to 
use the CH if it were up on the roof? Is this a bad idea? Or is it something 
that might work? Maybe we could put the mailboxes in the CH on the roof. 
Anybody have any thoughts?

Katie
Eastern Village Cohousing
Silver Spring, MD