Birth of a Community
The birth of our group, as told by Barbara Lynch
1993
Our cohousing journey began in the spring of 1993. In
Context magazine featured cohousing as their cover story. We
(my husband Ted and I) totally resonated with the stories cohousing
residents told of the richness that this type of community life brought
to their lives. The article also conveyed many of the environmental
benefits of building in a way to use less land, sharing resources such
as tools and appliances not everyone needs to own (such as a sewing machine,
drill press, and waffle iron) and exchanging skills.
1994-1995
Finally, in the summer of 1994 we visited Winslow
Cohousing on Bainbridge Island, Washington. Winslow was featured
on the cover of the In Context article and at that time conducted
tours of their community every weekend. We were enchanted by the place
and the people and asked a lot of questions. One of those questions
led to a detailed explanation of how their community used consensus
to make decisions and a system of colored cards for discussion and decisions.
We left there convinced that these were invaluable tools.
When we came back home to Walnut Creek, we learned of a group called
Bay Area CHuG (Cohousing Umbrella Group). This group was made up of
a few cohousing residents and many cohousing wannabees. Their purpose
was to support and nourish cohousing in various ways. Ted and I attended
several of their events including a tour of the two cohousing communities
in Davis,
N Street and
Muir Commons, and
Southside Park in Sacramento.
1996
Over the next couple of years we continued our gradual self-exposure
to cohousing by subscribing to
CoHousing
journal, attending Bay CHuG meetings at
Doyle
Street Cohousing in Emeryville, and attending an open house at
Berkeley
Cohousing on Sacramento Street in Berkeley. On a trip to visit friends
in Seattle in January 1996 we tracked down
Pudget
Ridge Cohousing, with no more information than that it was near
a community college on the south side of Seattle. (Exactly a year later
we spent the night at the cohousing community in Chico, California,
Valley Oaks Village.)
By this time we decided to "get serious." Retirement was
in the near future for both of us, and we knew that we'd be ready at
that time to move out of our roomy home; the move might as well be right
into the cohousing community of our dreams. The problem was that it
didn't exist yet. We had to face that we love it here in Contra Costa
County and weren't ready to give up our friends (women's group, men's
group, couple's group, etc.) and spiritual community at Unity
Center of Walnut Creek.
During this period of exploration we heard that there was a professor
at Diablo Valley College (DVC) who had been trying to get cohousing
off the ground in Contra Costa County. One day my son Brady came home
from school at DVC with a flyer he'd received from his electronics instructor.
Bingo! The elusive professor was made apparent. We contacted Bruce Koller
at DVC and he shared his experience. He'd spent a lot of time trying
to get students interested but they had no money. He'd cultivated his
neighbors hoping to interest them in the Davis
N Street idea of tearing down adjoining fences but no go. So, shortly
after we made contact with him, he and his family moved from Pleasant
Hill to Muir Commons cohousing
in Davis.
1997
Ted and I spent months agonizing over what to do. In March of 1997
we decided that we'd give it one big effort to start a new cohousing
group locally. At the end of March we had dinner with our minister
and his wife to share our idea. They were enthusiastic
and agreed that Unity would sponsor our cohousing presentation as a
special event. That meant a lot of free publicity. The presentation
was advertised in the Center's monthly newsletter and was mailed to
5000 households. A Unity friend offered to design flyers.
The date was set for June 25, 1997.
We spent the latter part of May and much of June distributing flyers.
We posted them at churches, pre-schools and daycare centers, Mt. Diablo
Peace Center, libraries, JFK University, and natural food stores. We
had 1000 put in staff mailboxes at DVC, and I hand-carried 300 to staff
at Los Medanos College where I taught.
We mailed letters to friends and acquaintances who had no idea what
we were up to. By this time Bay Area CHuG had merged with the newly
formed Cohousing Network and
they gave us around 125 mailing labels for Bay Area folks who'd made
inquiries about cohousing.
In early June we spoke with Yvonne at the CoHousing
Company about borrowing cohousing books for the date of our presentation.
She suggested the wisdom of having a group attend a
"Getting It
Built" workshop early on and considered some fall dates. I also
spoke with Katie McCamant about the workshop. She suggested goals for
the first organizational meeting which was to follow our presentation,
and types of data to collect from interested folks.
During this planning and preparation, we made a previously arranged
overnight visit to the site of the
Tierra
Nueva group in Oceana, California. We were most graciously hosted
by Patty Mara and Bruce Gourley who, by the time they would move in,
had devoted 10 years to the creation of their new community. We came
away still enthused about cohousing, but determined that our group would
proceed much faster and more easily.
On June 17 I picked up the cohousing books we were borrowing from the
CoHousing Company and met Katie McCamant in person for the first time.
She encouraged us to have a successful launch of our project.
Our goals were to get at least 50 people to the presentation, 20 people
to the first organizational meeting, and have at least 5 households
to form a core group to proceed to creation of the new cohousing community.
The rest is history, as they say. Even though we charged $10 for the
presentation in order to cover our expenses (something of an
anomaly in cohousing land), exactly 50 folks
came. We showed the cohousing video which we purchased through an ad
in the Cohousing Journal and presented our vision. Bruce Koller graciously
came down from Davis to talk about his experience living in cohousing.
Then Ted, Bruce and I answered questions. At the end of the evening
we passed out interest questionnaires and invitations to the first organizational
meeting.
To my utter amazement and delight, my son Brady Mahler declared his
intention to join with us. On July 9 we met for the first time, at our
home, with 22 people in attendance. Much enthusiasm was expressed and
9 people committed to attending a "Getting It Built" workshop.
Yvonne penciled us in on the CoHousing Company's schedule. Over the
next few months people came and went as we met, but one person who showed
up at the presentation and never left was Sue Ferro.
Sue, Ted and I set off for the North America Cohousing Conference in
Seattle September 19-21. There we met Ellen and Michael Schwartz who
became (for a time) part of our group.
At the conference we met Katie's husband and partner, architect Chuck
Durrett, who already knew who we were. We also met developer Jim Leach
(Wonderland Hill in Colorado). We
were impressed by these professionals and, after hearing numerous unsolicited
recommendations from individuals in existing cohousing communities,
decided that when the time came we would hire these professionals. At
the conference we spread ourselves out and attended as many sessions
as we could. We soaked it all up.
We came back to our group bursting with information and ideas. The
group accepted the notion that we hire professionals and that they be
the CoHousing Company and Wonderland Hill if at all possible.
During this period Jay Magid joined our group thus completing the small
group of four households (Sue Ferro, Brady Mahler, Jay Magid, Ted and
Barbara Lynch) who would remain with the group and actually move in.
Late 1997-1998
On October 25, 1997, 13 of us attended a "Getting It Built"
workshop at the CoHousing Company office in Berkeley. A required 15
people had paid the $150 fee but 2 left the group by that time leaving
their fee with the group. That was the start of a pattern - folks continuing
to support our effort even though they would not be actively participating
with us.
With that workshop under our belts and a set of agreed upon site criteria
in mind, we started our site search in December of that year. During
the next 18 months, we worked with a series of 4 or 5 realtors. We saw
sites that had no water and no sewers. We climbed up steep hills in
95-degree weather and slid down other hills in pouring rain. Sue and
I spent many hours at the County Assessors office in Martinez looking
at site maps and tracking ownership of parcels that looked interesting.
We sent letters to owners inquiring if they were interested in selling
(never got any responses).
Several times we had Katie come trek with us when we were excited about
a site. She saved us the trouble of going down a hard road, pointing
out for example that the neighbors in million-dollar homes weren't
going to let us build this type of development in their neighborhood;
heck, the neighborhood didn't even need to hire an attorney as there
were a slew of them as residents! She told us if the slope of the hills
on a property would lead us down a slippery slope prohibitively costly
to build upon. We only twice rejected sites because of the personal
preference of some of us - once because we would have displaced residents
in low-cost housing and once because of proximity to an oil refinery.
On April 26, 1998 we had a booth at the Earth Day celebration at the
Concord Pavilion. We built a mock 3-sided house frame from 2 x 4's in
the driveway of our home. A couple of angels who were friends of group
members directed the construction as none of us had the expertise. This
was our first experience of hiring "professionals" - even
though they came for free. We loaded up our creation in the wee hours
and were in line at 6 AM to enter the Pavilion. By this time we'd declared
ourselves to be "Central Contra Costa E-Z Cohousing" and had
a large yellow banner to fly over our booth to proclaim this. Eight
of us worked that day and went home exhausted and very practiced at
explaining cohousing.
By early 1998 we'd worked with 4 different realtors and didn't seem
to be making much progress. All these folks sold residential or commercial
property but we needed a land person. We'd had one big disappointment
with a beautiful site in Lafayette - we even had Katie and Jim Leach
come out to see it. In the end the owners weren't serious about selling.
So, we hired Chris Scott-Hanson who was an experienced land acquisition
person. We had a presentation at the Unitarian Church on May 3, 1998
where Chris presented a variety of sites he'd identified and we visited
several of them. In the end none of the sites worked out.
We actually started to get discouraged...but then a marvelous thing
occurred.
1999
We located a realtor who sold only land. This service of finding the
realtor was provided by Trish Harrison. Trish and her husband Ron Leonardi
came to the group as a result of our Earth Day booth. She went online
and found a Walnut Creek realtor, Ron Carter. (Sadly, Ron and Trish
left the group but we owe her a big thank you.)
Sue, Ted and I met with Ron Carter that week. We gave him a copy of
Katie and Chuck's book and talked with him about our vision for this
community. He was receptive and said he'd be in contact. We did hear
from him shortly and he had 3 possible properties in mind, even though
this Lisa Lane one wasn't exactly on the market.
Ted and I happened to mention that we were going to Maui for vacation.
Ron suggested we look up his real estate pal Mitch Jenkins who had retired
there. Ron explained that he used Mitch as a sounding board and that
it would be useful all around for us to talk with Mitch. So we went
off to Maui with a gift copy of the Cohousing book in hand. At lunch
with Mitch we learned that he knew of us from Unity which he attended
when he lived here and that he was one of 6 owners of the Lisa Lane
property. Imagine our surprise! He asked us plenty of questions, especially
how we would ever get the money to purchase a million-dollar-plus property.
Apparently our answers were satisfactory enough because when we returned
home, Ron called and things started happening. Seems that previous prospective
buyers had been unsuccessful in gaining approval for their projects
so the deals fell through. The owners didn't want that to happen again
so before they'd even give us an option on the property they insisted
we meet with some Pleasant Hill city officials to see if they thought
the project would fly. The end result was that Katie's presence gave
us credibility and the sellers decided we were worthy buyers who might
actually succeed in getting the project approved and built.
At that point we entered into the feasibility stage. Our group had remained
fairly constant with only 6 full member households and a couple of associate
members. We'd just spent most of our money putting down $10,000 for
the option. Katie had told us all along to not be concerned with our
small membership, that once we chose the site the people would come.
So we needed to find the people and ascertain if the project was economically
feasible, all within the 90-day option period.
We decided to hire the CoHousing Company to usher us through this phase
- we hadn't yet paid them a cent. Katie set about working the numbers,
Chuck did a very preliminary site plan, and we all geared up for presentations
and site tours. On July 11 and 25, 1999, we hosted two events to attract
new members. Not only did we attract enough new folks to get our membership
(which required an initial investment of $2,000) up to 15, but we also
got nice coverage by Channel 5. In the meantime various group members
and Katie started meeting with neighborhood homeowners' associations
in order to share what our dream was, to hear their concerns, and to
enlist their support.
Ultimately this all added up to a "GO" for the project. The
Site Planning Workshop with Katie and Danny Milman from the Cohousing
Company was held at DVC in September 1999. Other workshops followed,
additional folks joined, and on December 22, 1999 our application was
submitted to the City of Pleasant Hill. Around that time we experienced
another landmark event - the first family with children, Robin Bach and
her twins, joined us. Soon
others followed. (Sadly, Robin didn't end up moving in with us; however, we
appreciate her leap of faith.)
2000
Jim Leach and his company Wonderland Hill came on board as our developer.
He required that we be 75% subscribed before he would start construction.
So in March 2000 we put on one last promotional event and jumped beyond
the 24 (of 32) member households that were required to start construction.
During that summer we decided that we wanted to get construction underway
before the winter rains started. That necessitated not only using Wonderland
and the CoHousing Company's "streamlined model," but proceeding
on a fast track. So, for the entire period up until we started to move
in, everything felt like a rush.
Groundbreaking occurred on September 17, 2000. Earth moving equipment
was on site. Local dignitaries, some neighbors, our professionals from
CoHousing Company, Wonderland Hill, and our general contractor S. D.
Deacon Construction Company, and friends joined us on this momentous
occasion. The Contra Costa Times featured our story on the front
page.
The next week site work began. Because Walnut Creek used to run through
the site, the entire middle of our site had to be excavated, 10 feet
deep. Any organic material was to be removed (so no buildings would
settle in as it decomposed) and then the newly trenched area refilled
and compacted. Instead, all that was uncovered was a bunch of boulders
which we decided to keep and which now enhance the landscaping and provide
rock climbing material for the kids.
2001
Throughout 2001 construction proceeded under the direction of Deacon's
site superintendent Robert McCullough and the CoHousing Company's project
manager Danny Milman. Twice a month we had site visits during which
we could actually go look at our homes under construction. The rest
of the time we peered through the construction fences.
Finally (it felt like "finally" even though it had been only 2-1/2
years since signing the option on the property), in September 2001 the
first household moved in. Before the end of December, all 32 households
were in. Major construction was still underway. Those of us in the first
buildings to be occupied were totally surrounded by construction fences
while construction activities surrounded us. We were awakened at 7 AM
6 days a week by construction sounds and occasionally on the 7th day
as well.
Even as some folks were moving in, we held our Grand Opening on November
17, 2001, exactly 14 months to the day after breaking ground. The weather
was perfect, some 300 folks turned out, the food was terrific, many
of our homes were open for viewing, and spirits were high.
And now life goes on...
Top of Page
Back to About Us --> History
|
