Residents arrive in ones and twos, chatting at the buffet or wondering in from the kitchen where Dorothea is still putting finishing touches on a salad, picking up their plates and heaping them with spaghetti. "Which sauce is the one without spices?" asks John. His question answered, he finds a spot next to Scott, 13, and Brianna, 5, who have become best buddies and allies as the only two children since move-in day 16 months ago.
As other adults fill up the spaces around the two long oak tables, Carol stand up to make an announcement. "We got a letter from Don at the City Planning Department today. The staff is going to recommend against granting the variances we requested on our site plan. I think we need a crew to plan a strategy for our presentation at the Planning Comission meeting on April 20. Who is interested in working on this?" Loud groans, and an "I thought this was going to go straight through!" were heard, and then "I can do it" and "Are you free tomorrow night?" It's just another day in the life of the Monterey CoHousing Community in Minneapolis--better known to its members and friends as MoCoCo.
Dealing with growth and change is part of the onging existence of every CoHousing community, but MoCoCo is among a handful of projects in which residents must balance the demands of daily life with the challenge of completing a major portion of the physical development.
The eight households now living at MoCoCo have been in the middle of a whirl of activities since October of 1992: creating a legal structure, selling their individual houses, buying a mansion and moving in, and then starting the rehabilitation process that will eventually turn the structure into eight independent apartments plus 6,000 square feet of common space. Simultaneously, they are working with other committed households to design and develop the 15 new units that will be built on the 3-acre site.
MoCoCo is located on Monterey Avenue in St. Louis Park, an older inner suburb of the Minneapolis-St. Paul metro area. The gracious three-story Georgian brick building on the site was built in 1924 as a retirement residence for the elderly, with 26 sleeping rooms and 14 bathrooms. The apartment units created in the rehabilitation process range from small two-room units of less than 500 sq. ft. each, to a three-bedroom unit of over 1500 sq. ft. The building also includes an elegant formal living room, a cherry-paneled library, three fireplaces, an existing institutional kitchen and large dining room, plus a family/TV room, child care room, and laundry and shop facilities. The site has a sloping wooded hillside to the north, with an adjacent city park and playing fields. Neighboring property includes a mixture of single family houses, apartment buildings and townhouses, so the CoHousing density is consistent with land use in the immediate area.
Laying the Groundwork
The story of the development of MoCoCo is one of perserverance. Many of the members had initially worked together to establish the Twin Cities CoHousing Network (TCCN) beginning in 1989. Judy Baxter, Mark Deziel, Rick Gravrok, Susan Anderson and Michelle Schutt were five of the early members of TCCN, whose unflagging enthusiasm and commitment have also been instrumental in the devleopemnt of MoCoCo . From TCCN's work several core groups emerged, and met for about a year before any were able to begin the site selection process. The first potential site identified turned out to be a false start, but was the boost needed to move from discussion groups into establishment of a truely committed, well-functioning working group. Memers from several previous core groups merged, committed funds to hold the property, began the task of identifying and selecting professional assistance that would be needed, and eventually worked with an architect and engineeer to pursue the feasibility of development. The site did not prove feasible, and by the fall of 1991 the group was quite discouraged when it became apparent that we would lose our initial $10,000 investment. At that point Michelle spotted a real estate ad for the property that is now MoCoCo.
Persistence and preparedness paid off in the property acquisition. Our initial purchase offer in December 1991 was rejected in favor of the local chapter of the American Youth Hostel Association (AYH), who hoped to turn the building into a hostel. AYH had several hurdles to leap however, and we decided to proceed on the assumption that the site would again become available. We kept the earnest money that had been assembled, hired an architect, developed a busines plan and began to talk with lenders so that we could move quickly if the property did become available again. During this time we also familiarized ourselves with local development resources. The many housing co-operatives for seniors in the area became a valuable resource, both for information on cooperative living and decision-making, and in our early identification of professionals who might be available to work with us. The similarities between senior housing with congregate dining, and CoHousing, became an easy analogy to which bankers, lawyers and the city planning department could easily relate.
We also got lessons in the city approval process, as we attended all the planning commission and City Council meetings where the Youth Hostel proposal was being heard. Meanwhile we also began looking at other potential sites. One important relationship that was developed at this time was with the St. Louis Park city planning staff, who were very encouraging about wanting a CoHousing community in the city and assisted us in identifying several other possibilities. Looking at the few open spaces left in this older suburb, MoCoCo members became more convinced than ever of the value of the MoCoCo site.
On October 16, 1992 we got the phone call we had been waiting for: the Youth Hostel's purchase agreement had run out. Would we be interested in making a bid? There was only one catch: the owner wanted to close on the property before the end of the year. Thus began a mad flurry of finishing up legal documents and incorporating as a cooperative, securing an acquisition loan of $234,000 from a local bank friendly to cooperatives, and finding supplemental financing for the rehabilitation activities in the form of a $70,000 line of credit with a local co-op development organization. Being ready for the opportunity paid off: we closed on the property on December 18. The lenders required a 30% equity position, so the twelve households active at that point invested a total of $100,000 in the form of down payments by residents and loans from the nonresident households.
Moving In
We had no external financing for soft costs or holding costs, and mortgage payments were due to begin in February. This meant that the eight households who intended to live in the building needed to sell their houses or give notice to their landlords and move in as quickly as possible. These were our real pioneers-willing to move in and then live in the middle of rehab work. There was also a level of risk, as we had only a rough feasibility study rather than a detailed development plan for the additional units.
The first half of 1992 was filled with both elation and a high level of stress. In order to keep the project affordable, we decided to do much of the rehab work ourselves, paying one self-employed member who was experienced in rehab and doing the rest for "chits", our group's informal system of credits for volunteer hours. Initial rehab work included removal or addition of walls and doorways to create the eight units, but installing kitchens for the units is being delayed until city approval of the overall development and construction financing is obtained. As a result the residents have needed to live in a more communal fashion than most had envisioned when they chose to live in CoHousing. One member who had experienced culture shock in moving to Japan and then in returning to the U.S. stated that the experience of moving in to MoCoCo was equally traumatic. Now there were 12 adults and 2 children to consider whenever a decision needed to be made about living issues as mundane as who would take out the garbage and how to get rid of the dead appliances we had inherited from the previous tenant, or as central as whether our investment in the property would turn out to be inspiration or folly.
In addition to the rehab work and adjustment to community living, there were also weekly meetings that generally lasted four to five hours. Our pre-purchase committee structure was no longer functional, and it took several months of large group meetings before we could again subdivide the tasks that now needed to be done. We were spending money for a very diverse set of activities and had not yet have a reliable budget for all the development, rehab, and ongoing maintenance and operating costs we were incurring. Everybody's money was at risk, residents and nonresidents alike, and so the whole group made decsions on major expenditures as well a a myriad of other issues large and small.
A major problem arose after the development consultants who had advised us during the property acquisition had informed us they were no longer available. This created the group's first real crisis, as we wrestled with the issue of how much developement assistance we really needed and then went through the search process for our current development consultant. Diffferent values regarding paying "experts" versus self-help, different levels of available free time and levels of income, and varying trust levels in the group members' expertise led to an intense period where development work needed to be put on hold until we could sort all this out.
Eventually we selected Glen Olsen to provide development consultation to us. He and his family had recently learned about the group and had expressed interest in joining us. A major concern of his in agreeing to take on the job was that it not eliminate the possibility of living at MoCoCo. The Olsens now have "special associate member" status, meaning that they have priority for a unit and participate fully in all discussions, but do not have a decision-making vote in the consensus process. The arrangement has worked out well for all concerned. As a participating member, Glen is much more aware of how to use the group's strengths in areas where work can be done on a volunteer basis, and where we need his expertise. His role is primarily to work with the architects and the city approval process, while other group members take on the search for financing and the legal work. He and other group members have done most of the conceptual design work. Most of the hours he spends attending meetings are done for "chits", just as is expected of other members.
Life at MoCoCo has not been all work-- we've celebrated a wedding and several births, had retreat weekends where the nonresident households joined in the community life as residents shared rooms and we filled all available guest space. One of the joys of owning the property from the nonresidents' point of view, is the ability to have meetings in our own space. Collective ownership of a good copy machine , and a functioning office with files and storage for the volumes of paper we produce has also been a boon. Friday evenings are designated as all-community time, when nonresidents frequently join the residents for dinner. Since December of 1993 we have also been actively publicizing the project and recruiting for the additional members who will be needed, so Friday evenings are standing open house nights. At this point we have committed members for all but 5 of the new units. Two of the current units will also be available, as two resident households will be moving into the new space.
Life at MoCoCo has become somewhat more relaxed these days, as the development process moves along at its own pace and people are more aware of our need to take care of ourselves and eachother. Having faced burn-out from several members recently, we realized we needed to do things differently if we were going to be able to keep a viable group. Job layoffs and health crises affecting several members also have made us more aware that we can't put the rest of our lives on hold indefinitely. We've had to let go of the ambitious timeline we were hoping to maintain, and put more trust in the financial projections that show this won't appreciably increase our final costs. People spend more time sitting and relaxing after dinner, sharing the day's activities. Work days/fun days have become an important antidote to the feeling that the only way we relate to eachother is in meetings. And we keep reminding eachother, "We won't always be in the middle of a development process. One of these days CoHousing will mean less work, not more-- won't it?"