Cohousing-L Mailing List: Re: participation in decision making

[Emilie Parker (emilie.v.parker]

On Thu, Jan 8, 2015 at 8:10 AM, John Beutler <jabeutler [at] comcast.net> wrote:

Non-profit? Not sure how that supports development of a property.


​Hi John,

I'm following the topic closely about consensus and blocking.  Our group is
not at that point.

Thanks John, for asking the question.  I'd like to see what people think.
The non-profit will not support the actual homes or common house areas.
Since we are all artists in addition to cohousing, we are building a
separate shared studio building to set up artist studios, music practice,
art-making equipment and to work cooperatively in on art works -- including
a gallery.

Our sustainability model for the studios is that we will allow cohousing
artists and local community artists to be members of the shared studios for
a small fee.  Even though they may not be living in cohousing they will
come in to use the studios and be trusted studio members and have a key and
24/7 access to that building.  Local artists membership fees will pay for
the overhead and management of our shared studios, with a gallery and art
education/performing arts center.  The art center is already a successful
non-profit partner and a legal relationship with them has not been
crafted.  For now we're legally 100% separate from the art center but their
director is on our new board.

Our plan is that the studios will be run as a non-profit and we haven't yet
figured out exactly how the governance of that dovetails with our cohousing
governance  Our flegling board for Synergy Arts just met for the first time
this week, so even though the sun is shining, we are knee deep in slush.
At the Boulder cohousing conference this year they highlighted a cohousing
community that runs a tree farm but I don't have contact info for them.
I'd like to collaborate.  If I remember correctly several members run it
and hire cohousing members to keep funds in the community and cover some
expenses.

We currently have an LLC that we started a year ago and that's our legal
entity for creating our cohousing community for now.  We started the
non-profit in addition because we wanted to have an option of offering
financial participation in the shared art studios to local donors and
philanthropists to enable their participation in the development of the
studios.   Shared art studios will be a community service for local artists
and others will want to be part of supporting that.  Shared studios is part
of our plan to incorporate a new-urbanism model with cohousing.

And the property we are going to build on is zoned commercial and has to be
rezoned for live/work and commercial so that's a big push right now --
getting that all figured out, timed out, negotiated out and paid and
planned for.  It's a bunch of puzzle pieces.

We have 43 artists and they all want to know if they can afford it and what
the homes will look like but we're not there yet.

Thanks for asking,
Emilie
Louisville Artists Cohousing, LLC
Synergy Arts Creative Community, Louisville, CO


-----------------
Emilie Parker
emilie.v.parker [at] gmail.com
303-317-4558 main
240-350-8533 cell