Cohousing-L Mailing List: Re: Coho impact on neighborhood ?

[Thomas Lofft (tlofft]

Excerpted from Cohousing-L:
On Sun, 10 Apr 2016 09:34:11 -0400, Liz Brown <clzbrown [at] rochester.rr.com> 
asked:

Does anyone have research or stories on how cohousers help improve their 
neighborhoods, especially urban?
Liz Brown
Flower City
On Mon, 11 Apr 2016 10:54:06 -0700, Tiffany Lee Brown <magdalen23 [at] 
gmail.com> asked about Corollary 1: i would also be curious to hear about 
negative impacts?
I offer Corollary 2: Did anyone ever say 'thanks'?
As an example, The Frederick Cohousing Partnership  spent five years planning 
for our future community in Maryland to be a pedestrian scale cohousing 
community in a convenient location with community sewer and water systems to 
avoid community health risks and also avoid any ecological contamination. Our 
final site selection in 1995 was a 27 acre farm on the edge of a rural 
community, Libertytown, coincidentally next door to a 105 acre Regional Park, 
planned for County ownership and operation for active recreation. Neither had 
public sewer or water. However the 35 home subdivision across the road did have 
a limited use community water system based on three local wells and a small 
chlorinated package water treatment plant with inadequate pressure to meet the 
peak demand of the existing subdivision.  The County also had a local sewerage 
treatment plant which had sewer lines located too high in elevation to serve 
either the low lying park or our site of choice. The Parks & Recreation 
Department had capital funds to develop recreation facilities, access road and 
parking but none for sewer or water and planned to operate indefinitely on 
port-a-johns. How can I fit a 3 year story into two paragraphs? We planned a 
water system extension to serve Liberty Village from the existing subdivision 
wells by designing, funding and building a 22,000 gallon pressurized standing 
water tank to be established in the existing subdivision which optimized the 
available water supply by providing reserves to meet peak demands for both the 
subdivision and our newly planned community. We also planned, designed and 
funded a sewerage system with a lift station and force main and located it 
adjacent to the park property line with an easement so the Park Department 
could connect a gravity sewer into our system extension. The park completed a 
new concession and restroom facility with the funds that otherwise would have 
only funded restrooms and a sewer treatment lift package of its own. The beauty 
of working out a resolution of mutual problems with a neighbor is that both 
parties may become better off at less expense than working on two parallel less 
satisfactory alternatives. To the best of my knowledge, no one in the older 
subdivision, the Parks Department, or county government ever said, "Thanks." 
Tom LofftLiberty Village, MD