Announcing a new Meetup for East Bay Cohousing!
What: Downtown Oakland new-build cohousing community initial meeting
When: July 9,[masked]:30 - 7:30 PM
Where:
Swan's Market Cohousing
930 Clay St. (between Washington and Clay)
Oakland, CA 94607
(510)[masked]
You could be a future resident of a
new-build cohousing community in
downtown Oakland close to BART, City Hall, The new "
Uptown" neighborhood, and then First Unitarian Church of Oakland (
FUCO).
It takes
time,
energy and
money contributed by the future-resident group to get a cohousing community built. Finding suitable sites at a reasonable cost in the Bay Area has been very difficult for many years... so when a site like the one described here becomes available, we're inclined to jump at the chance to see if a future resident group (
as well as some outside investors) can be assembled.
It has come to our attention that a downtown Oakland development site
already entitled with planning approvals for 40 market-rate residential condominiums is for sale at a
very reasonable cost. The site is on 14th Street, between Martin Luther King and Jefferson Streets, just five blocks away from Swan's Market Cohousing. The approved plans are available for your viewing at:
http://www.632fourteenth.com/ .
When looking at the floor plans, right away we started to think about how, with some relatively minor design changes, the square footage currently planned for 2 or 3 units on either Level 1 or Level 7 could be converted to a common house including 715 square feet of outdoor space on either level.
We sent Cohousing Partners (the development arm of the former Cohousing Company) this info, and Katie McCamant responded "
......I'd love to work with a group that is ready to take advantage of this opportunity. .
. but need someone else to initiate the community." That means:
a community ready to jump in and put up some money to tie up the site.
So we decided to call a meeting to bring together those who would like to explore starting a future-resident group for this site, 5:30-7:30 PM at Swan's Market Cohousing in Old Oakland. Persons not wishing to live in cohousing, but who might consider investing such a project are also most welcome.
Due to the economic downturn there are now more East Bay sites available at reasonable cost than in the past couple of decades. And there is good reason to believe that another suitable site would be significantly easier to find now than it would have been as recently as a couple of years ago, if for some reason the site we'll be looking at on the 10th doesn't work out.
Joani BlankCohousing Enthusiast, Resident of
Swan's Market CohousingRaines Cohen and Betsy MorrisCohousing Coaches, East Bay Cohousing
Learn more and RSVP here:
http://www.ebcoho.org/calendar/10796927/