East Bay Cohousing - Berkeley/Oakland/Emeryville/SF Message Board East Bay Cohousing Announcements › Downtown Oakland new-build cohousing initial meeting Friday evening at Swan's

Downtown Oakland new-build cohousing initial meeting Friday evening at Swan's

Betsy Morris
Posted Jul 4, 2009 10:19 AM
CohousingCoach
Group Organizer
Berkeley, CA
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Announcing a new Meetup for East Bay Cohousing!

What: Downtown Oakland new-build cohousing community initial meeting

When: July 9, 2009 5:30 - 7:30 PM

Where:
Swan's Market Cohousing
930 Clay St. (between Washington and Clay)
Oakland, CA 94607
(510) 834-7399

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.632fourtee... .

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 Blank
Cohousing Enthusiast, Resident of Swan's Market Cohousing

Raines Cohen and Betsy Morris
Cohousing Coaches, East Bay Cohousing

Learn more and RSVP here:
http://www.ebcoho.org...
Raines Cohen
Posted Jul 4, 2009 1:44 PM
raines
Berkeley, CA
Post #: 175
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Here's what I just posted on Cohousing-L about this project:

I just wanted to echo Joani in excitement about the cohousing
potential of this new downtown Oakland site.

I was part of Swan's Market Cohousing during the development process
and initial years in residence, before moving to Berkeley cohousing,
and I do miss the larger-community "buzz" and convenience of access to
culture and shopping restaurants and government and job opportunities,
plus being right on an official bike route, near Amtrak with service
to Silicon Valley and Sacramento, not to mention the wonderful ferries
and shoreline parks. It was nice having a shorter commute to downtown
San Francisco than most San Franciscans, and being able to walk over
to Oakland's Chinatown.

No, Betsy and I are not planning on moving from Berkeley Cohousing
(any more than Joani would leave her longtime home in community at
Swan's), but as we've been doing outreach on the Kaiser-Piedmont
"Instant Cohousing" move-in-ready apartment building site, we've found
a number of folks interested in a larger community and some not ready
for an immediate purchase, needing to build savings, repair credit, or
sell an existing home first. When I was selling my unit at Swan's a
couple of years ago, I found many people who needed something larger
than a studio loft, and definite demand exceeding supply, with low
turnover there (mine was the first unit offered for sale in several
years).
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