Options, options, everywhere: forming communities selecting sites left and right

As a cohousing professional who sometimes plays matchmaker between cohousing groups and community-seekers, I like to keep my ear to the ground. I subscribe to lots of groups' announcement or "friends" email lists, so that I can make relevant introductions and connections.

Over the past week I've picked up from these lists some exciting news that gives me new hope for the cohousing movement as a force to help lead the country out of the current economic downturn. There's big steps happening in Brooklyn, Chicago and Southeastern Pennsylvania, sites or development partners secured for at least three communities, with hints that others are following in their footsteps, including in the San Francisco Bay Area. Read on for more about the announcements, with a little Cohousing Coaching interwoven, some Monday-morning quarterbacking about how they broke the news to some of their best prospects on their lists.

Most of the time, the traffic on these lists is pretty mundane: meeting announcements, orientations, potlucks, slideshows, tours, visiting speakers, and the like. I follow the lists so I can make connections: "oh, you're going to be in St. Louis this weekend? There's an Aging In Community author talk there at Culver Way EcoVillage," or "If your group is looking for ways to integrate affordable rentals into the project, you might talk with ElderSpirit community, which has some experience with that."

I sometimes worry that a group is running on autopilot so much that it may lose its focus on its ultimate goal: creating a cohousing neighborhood. If the emphasis and group activity is centered around the routine procedure of scheduling meetings, potential members who come to the group will pick up on this energy (or lack of it) and will not step in with their fresh energy to do something useful like find a site or professional... and they may not even come back at all, becoming another lurker who says "I'm busy, call me when you've got something built" rather than an active participant in the process, adding their own voice to the chorus. When you say "we've been searching for a site for a decade," that doesn't instill confidence as to the maturity of the group, it begs the questions: is this a just a social club? Will it take another 10 years? Should I put my time and money into this, when the people who did so in the past have nothing to show for it?

In short: most cohousing groups that don't have land secured fail. Most that do get site approval proceed to succeed. Getting a site "optioned" is the first big step on the path to change from the former to the latter category.

So it was a delightful surprise to get notices of several groups across the country going public in the last week with sites secured -- three in forty-eight hours! The groups are in:

• Brooklyn, NY: Brooklyn Cohousing
• Chicago, IL: Prairie Onion Cohousing
• West Grove, PA: Three Groves EcoVillage, spinning off from Concord EcoVillage

And there's another group in the heart of Silicon Valley in the San Francisco Bay Area, working to create senior cohousing, that had announced a public meeting recently but is postponing until all the i's are dotted and t's are crossed on its site option.

Preliminary details are below. In most cases, the groups disclose only the basics, and share specifics with people who show up at their meetings and/or go through their membership process, and without knowing what construction prices will be over the next couple of years, or what bumps and fallen trees are ahead on the path to approval.

Of course, there's no guarantees that they will all proceed to the point of building and move-in - all of these are subject to approvals and finances working out, as well as recruiting enough members with enough borrowing power to convince the developer and/or construction lenders. If they don't see the pieces coming together to reduce risk and increase profit, they won't green-light the project. Fortunately, in the current state of Real Estate development, profit in the open market is less easily found and risks are perceived as high, so cohousing is looking better every day in comparison.

What gives me increased confidence that we'll see more cohousing get built out of this round is that at least two are groups that previously had a site optioned but let it go when it became clear that the first site did not "pencil out" to meet their needs at the right price. The first site turned out to be a fire drill, a learning experience in which they sorted out priorities, capacities, values, and process, so we can take their second-site choice more seriously.

Here's what the groups are reporting, with my unsolicited Cohousing Coaching comments (worth what they paid for 'em, no doubt) in italics.

---

Brooklyn Cohousing reported last Thursday that it is 'in contract' on a new site at 19th Street and Eighth Avenue the South Slope/Greenwood Heights area of Brooklyn, close to Prospect Park and Greenwood Cemetery
(where else but in New York City would the proximity of a graveyard be touted in a Real Estate ad?)

in the P.S. 10 school district
(very important for urban groups seeking families: given the cost of private schools, being in the "right" school district amounts to a savings of $30,000-$100,000 on unit prices).

The group says the property is a former warehouse
(a good sign: it is working within the shell of an existing building rather than trying to get new construction approved and financed)

which the group will renovate into 31 apartments ranging from studios to three bedrooms (always nice to see diversity of unit types; many non-cohousing developers would carve it up into more, smaller spaces and market to DINKs -- Double Income, No Kids -- for maximum profit).

To learn more about the group, its new home and processes for becoming a member, go to www.brooklyncohousing.org.
(I like it: simple, to the point, and if the website is current and well designed to get people excited and engaged, they'll move folks to the next action step, be it coming to a meeting, getting on an email list, or simply forwarding the note to their friends.)

---

A longtime Chicago searching group, Prairie Onion Cohousing, shared this announcement late Wednesday, starting off with a gentle reminder of what the heck cohousing is, for those that may have forgotten since they came to a long-ago orientation:

At some time during the last months (or years) you expressed an interest in Cohousing.
(Always good to remind people that they requested this information, it is not unsolicited spam. However, starting with something so generic using this wording may look too much like spam and trigger some manual or automated filters, meaning that some of the group's longtime fans and best prospects may never see the message. Another reason to always get a phone #, not just an email address, and keep the list active and updated with regular contact, to preserve your investment in the prospective member pool.)

This type of planned community is designed to encourage strong ties among residents and foster interaction with the surrounding neighborhood.

Although more than 100 communities exist in the United States, none are currently in Illinois. We are on track to change that!
(It's always great to localize your message and make it exciting and relevant.)

Please mark your calendar for Saturday, May 30 from 1-3 p.m. We'll gather at the Hall Public Library in Bronzeville, 4801 South Michigan, to introduce you to our developer (Yay! A professional is involved -- and since time is money, anyone coming to the group will have greater confidence that fast action lies ahead)

and announce our proposed site in Bronzeville
(presumably locals know where this is -- but leaving a little mystery may get us outta towners engaged, by forcing us to go do a search.)

More information will come to you the week of May 18
(In other words, this is just a "teaser" announcement asking people to "save the date" -- but it may generate some buzz in its own right).

Questions? Call (773) 854-6879
(Sometimes a group doesn't include the website because it isn't updated yet, or because it wants to control how the information gets out there, giving first dibs to its members or longtime supporters or fans - it also makes the connection more personal. I don't know which is the case here, but I do generally recommend creating at least a single "placeholder" page that people can link to, so the group can see how many people have clicked on the email, and in some cases which particular people to follow up with.)

---

The members of Concord Ecovillage were all excited when I visited last November about a particular site the group had optioned -- I got to go on a site walk and participate in a community meeting with a mortgage broker and a presentation to the town council, which indicated strong support for the project; "how can we help you?," is always a nice thing to hear from the folks who can approve or deny your project.

It was so disappointing when, a couple of months later, the group decided that, in the declining real estate market, people wouldn't be able to afford the ultra-green homes it envisioned for the community. But last Friday they sent an info-packed announcement so long that I'll just excerpt it here:

Concord Ecovillage is very pleased to announce that 7.5 acres has been secured
(passive voice? who's doing the securing? I can understand wanting to get right to the point, and I don't want to pick on these folks in particular, but too many of these announcements don't have any people's names in them, throwing away the unique competitive advantage of cohousing -- it's about people, not just property.)

for an ecovillage
(Note that for some people, this term has more appeal or resonance than "cohousing" - perhaps it takes less explanation)

a half mile south of downtown
(always lead with your key relationship to what matters in Real Estate: Location, Location, Location)

West Grove, PA at the northwest corner of Prospect Avenue (Rt. 841) and State Road
(excellent, they're able to identify it sufficiently that people can go look at a satellite view on the internet and start calculating commute times. Having walked around the town, I gotta say that this will hardly be an urban location -- it is a very small town)

We are extremely enthusiastic about this property! It has a perfect southern to southwestern exposure for harvesting solar energy and is directly across the street from the new 85-acre London Grove Community Park! It is a walkable half mile to the Library, post office, five restaurants, and other businesses in downtown West Grove, and also about a half mile to the public middle and high schools.
(OK, they've got the basics, and make it very appealing)

This property is a much better fit for us, in nearly every respect, than the property we considered this fall on the corner of Willow Street and South Guernsey Road.
(Perfect language to get people who visited or rejected the previously-considered site to take a fresh look, or a fresh smell in this case - the odor of composting mushrooms from an adjacent farm was a marketing challenge with the previous site.)

The announcement goes on to name the community with a link to a new website with details (Three Groves EcoVillage), and notes that the original Concord EcoVillage group will continue to move forward, searching in some other area locations.

When an SF Bay Area cohousing group I help organize, East Bay Cohousing, was in site-search mode, we came up with a process in which a core group with suficient doallars and members could go forward, rather than trying to find consensus in the entire group. With a couple of seemingly viable sites, this caused much anguish within the group, as people became convinced that they would be separated from their friends, with one going forward on the site and another not. However, typically it became clear within a week or two that the site owner was not interested or it was otherwise infeasible, so it was back to square one. It sounds like a similar dynamic is going on here.

The Three Groves site announcement goes on to list several upcoming events including a booth with tours at a fair at the park across the street, a regional bus tour not connected to the site but good for getting people to better understand community living, and public/planning commission/council meetings.

I like that they come right out and ask for help; they had accumulated lots of leads over time, without capturing data about who is interested in what:

Help us refine our contact and email distribution list. Over the last year our contact list has expanded to over 550 email addresses. To help us communicate with you more effectively, please respond to this email by letting us know to which of the following groups you belong:

• Potential Residents/Homebuyers in Ecovillage
• Municipal Officials/Staff
• Building and Design Professionals
• Local press
• Just interested

---

So: in just 48 hours, 3 communities taking big steps, getting serious, with sites and developer partnerships. Is this just an anomaly? A sign of market shifts? Coincidence? Time will tell. But we can hope that all this excitement and signs of progress is more contagious than the flu, ready to spread to your community, if you let it. Please share your predictions, reaction, excitement, and more in the comments.

Raines Cohen is a Cohousing Coach and Northern California Cohousing community organizer, living at Berkeley (CA) Cohousing. He is author of the "Aging In Community" chapter on cohousing in the new book, Audacious Aging.