Cohousing-L Mailing List: Re: Cohousing-L Digest, Vol 52, Issue 6

[Ruth Hirsch (heidinys]

> Ana, et al,

I am not up-to-date on this List, so please excuse if this is not  
timely/redundant.  When we built, we were required to put in a path  
so that firetrucks and other emergency vehicles would have access.
We were able to put that in as a bed of rock/gravel,  thinly covered  
w enough soil to be a growing medium for grass/shallow rooted plants.

I wonder if there is any chance of their allowing similar elsewhere.


> best,
Ruth  Hirsch
Cantines Island, Saugerties, NYS
> ---------------------------------------------------------------------- 
> ----------
>
> Ana M. Sweet said (in part)
>
> If this were the only problem, we'd work with it. But then a second  
> very large issue presented itself: roads.  Less than two years ago,  
> Durham enacted requirements that every new house built in Durham  
> County must have a full-blown asphalt road, forty feet wide (!) in  
> front of it. This is in order to prevent land-locked houses. (We  
> didn't know about this when we started.)
>
> Clearly, this is not the cohousing model, which strives to minimize  
> paved surfaces and separate pedestrian and auto traffic. Current  
> estimates put the road cost as per Durham requirements somewhere  
> above $1.2 million. And since asphalt is a petroleum-based product,  
> its cost is increasing every day. So we were facing an  
> unpredictable and ridiculously high cost to build tons of highly  
> expensive road in a community that prefers to have little to none.
>
> Our experienced and trusted team of civil engineers, architects,  
> lawyers, and builder each felt that the road situation would be  
> very difficult to overcome. However, if the huge, expensive road  
> were the only problem, we would have tried very hard to work with  
> it somehow.