Mixed Metaphors

“(Does it worry you to be alone?)

How do I feel by the end of the day?

(Are you sad because you’re on your own?)

No I get by with a little help from my friends”

— The Beatles, With a Little Help from My Friends

First an introduction, besides being the author of this blog, I am a founding member of MESCoH (Madison East Side CoHousing). We are an intentionally-welcoming cohousing community who collaborate to create individual homes with shared common spaces at Union Corners on the eastside of Madison, Wisconsin. Union Corners is a prominent piece of property with a rich history; it is a gateway to the Capitol, the front door to our city in a vibrant, revitalized neighborhood.

This post was written three years ago at the beginning of the dreaming and development stage of creating a new LGBT-friendly, diverse, and inclusive cohousing community. There have been many exciting changes. To learn more about CohoMadison which in the end became Linden Cohousing and how you can become a member of Madison’s newest cohousing community, click here. 

People who come in at the ground floor of building a cohousing community are often referred to as “burning souls” for their passion, vision, and commitment to living in community. I am one of those people, though the following words and thoughts are mine only and not intended to officially represent MESCoH. I’m not speaking for my other community members in this essay though I suspect we share common intentions and values and we align in many ways, which is the essence of living in community.

MESCoH Retreat “North Star”

At the core of cohousing, more precisely, at the heart of the community, members dream, shape and determine how and where they want to live, both individually and together, what their shared common spaces will look like, delineate their shared values, and lastly determine how their home will be managed and maintained. A cohousing community is a family of sorts, a chosen family, one with equal rights and responsibilities.

MESCoH: Living in Community

Members of MESCoH have been meeting with cohousing community partners for over a year, including members of SASY (Schenk-Atwood-Starkweather-Yahara) Neighborhood Association, Design Coalition, Inc. and Design Coalition Institute, members of ARBCO (Arboretum Cohousing), neighborhood alders, cohousing project development consultants and the project manager and architects from Gorman and Company, the Union Corners developer.

MESCoH became a not-for-profit corporation in 2014. We elected a board of directors and meet regularly, often twice a month. The public is invited to attend our meetings and we encourage potential cohousing members to join our community. To learn more about upcoming cohousing workshops, MESCoH meetings, and “Cohousing Coffees” see the Join Us section at the end of this post.

MESCoH developed the following statement to describe who we are to date and our preliminary intentions for the project. Please note however, that the actual cohousing community evolves when the members who make a commitment, both financial and in planning the community, come together.

MESCoH

Madison East Side Co-Housing (MESCoH) is a group of individuals seeking to establish, design and create an intentional community of homes and common spaces on the East Side of Madison at Union Corners, based on the cohousing model.  Members of MESCoH have expressed interest in such features as green building, walkable neighborhoods, community gardens, outdoor common areas, and street design featuring traffic calming.

MESCoH invites like-minded individuals with shared values and a commitment to participatory decision-making to join us as we develop our vision and mission statement and move forward to create a welcoming and diverse community that is affordable, intergenerational, LGBTQ and senior-friendly, and dedicated to preserving the quality of life and vibrancy of our east side neighborhood.

MESCoH is a not-for-profit corporation.

Author’s Note: The content in the next sections was not written by this author, but is a compilation of material from original sources and is included to provide a comprehensive background to cohousing and the Union Corners project.  At the end of each section the source is cited. Readers are encouraged to visit each source to learn more. The sources are live links.

A Brief History of Cohousing

The modern theory of cohousing originated in Denmark in the 1960s among groups of families who were dissatisfied with existing housing and communities that they felt did not meet their needs. Bodil Graae wrote a newspaper article titled “Children Should Have One Hundred Parents,” spurring a group of 50 families to organize around a community project in 1967. This group developed the cohousing project Sættedammen, which is the oldest known modern cohousing community in the world. Another key organizer was Jan Gudmand Høyer who drew inspiration from his architectural studies at Harvard and interaction with experimental U.S. communities of the era. He published the article “The Missing Link between Utopia and the Dated Single Family House” in 1968, converging in a second group.

The Danish term bofællesskab (living community) was introduced to North America as cohousing by two American architects, Kathryn McCamant and Charles Durrett, who visited several cohousing communities and wrote a book about it.  The book resonated with some existing and forming communities, such as Sharingwood in Washington state and N Street in California, who embraced the cohousing concept as a crystallization of what they were already about.

Though most cohousing groups seek to develop multi-generational communities, some focus on creating senior communities. Charles Durrett later wrote a handbook on creating senior cohousing. The first community in the United States to be designed, constructed and occupied specifically for cohousing is Muir Commons in Davis, California.  Architects, Kathryn McCamant and Charles Durrett were responsible for the programming and the design of the site plan, common house and private houses.

There are precedents for cohousing in the 1920s in New York with the cooperative apartment housing with shared facilities and good social interaction. The Siheyuan, or quadrangle design of housing in China has a shared courtyard and is thus similar in some respects to cohousing. (Source: Wikipedia)

What is Cohousing?

Cohousing is a type of collaborative housing in which residents actively participate in the design and operation of their own neighborhoods. Cohousing residents are consciously committed to living as a community. The physical design encourages both social contact and individual space. Private homes contain all the features of conventional homes, but residents also have access to extensive common facilities such as open space, courtyards, a playground and a common house. (Source: Cohousing.org).

The Six Defining Characteristics of Cohousing

1. Participatory process
2. Neighborhood design
3. Common facilities
4. Resident management
5. Non-hierarchical structure and decision-making
6. No shared community economy

To read more visit: Cohousing.org

What is Elder or Senior Cohousing?

Cohousing came to the U.S. 15 years ago from Denmark, where intergenerational communities gave birth to a successful age-specific cohousing model for active elders. The first elder-only cohousing for active adults, 55 and above, are just now emerging in the U.S. Design features include easy access for all levels of physical activity and may also include studio residences in the common house to provide living quarters for home health aides whose services may be shared by several residents. (Source: Cohousing.org).

Cohousing in Madison, Wisconsin

Village Cohousing

Village Cohousing

The Village Cohousing Community is Madison’s first cohousing project. It is located on Mound, South Mills Street and St. James Court in the Greenbush neighborhood. Designed-by award-winning Design Coalition of Madison construction was completed in 1999. There are 18 units in all, 15 in three newly- constructed buildings and three in two existing houses on half of a city block. (Source: Village Cohousing Community).

Arboretum Cohousing

Arboretum Cohousing

Arboretum Cohousing includes 29 new homes in 2 beautiful, multi-family buildings, 3 rehabbed townhouse homes, a duplex built by Habitat for Humanity, and 6 existing single-family homes.

Arboretum Cohousing is within walking distance to the revitalized downtown Madison, University of Wisconsin-Madison, and Edgewood College. To see photographs and read more visit Arboretum Cohousing. (Source: Arboretum Cohousing).

Troy Gardens

Troy Gardens

Community Gardens

Troy Gardens is an award-winning 31-acre project on the North side of Madison which combines community gardens, a working CSA farm, a restored prairie, and a thirty home mixed-income cohousing community. Madison Area Community Land Trust (MACLT) began working on Troy Gardens in 1995 along with a wonderful group of collaborating organizations, and after 12 years, finally completed the housing component in 2007. Future plans include a community common house. (Source: Madison Community Land Trust).

Union Corners, Past and Present

The area now known as Union Corners was originally populated by the Ho Chunk people.  While information about their relationship to the space is limited, there are several surviving mounds along nearby Lake Monona indicating their active presence on the land.  A long-time intersection for several major roads, it’s likely at least one of the roads at Union Corners was built along existing paths used by Ho Chunk people.

During the Civil War era, Union Corners was frequented often by Union Soldiers from nearby Camp Randall.  A tavern at the intersection was the last stopping off place on the road to Milwaukee which soldiers travelled on their long march South.  As Madison grew, Union Corners became a central hub for Eastside commerce, industry and residential development.

Union Corners was the home of the French and Carbon Battery Company which developed over the years into the Ray-O-Vac Battery Corporation.  In addition to Ray-O-Vac, a wide variety of businesses have operated on the site over the years including a popular local diner, grocery store, insurance office and others.  While those business have long since left the site, the intersection is still a center for neighbor business and commercial activity.

In 2004, local developer Todd McGrath purchased and merged multiple separate parcels at Union Corners.  McGrath and Associates cleared the site and worked with the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources to remediate the area previously occupied by Ray-O-Vac.  Proposing a comprehensive development plan for the site, McGrath and Associates began a process of community engagement to solicit neighborhood input and support.

In 2005, the City of Madison contracted with the East Isthmus Neighborhood Planning Council to organize a neighborhood design charette for the Union Corners development.  This Studio Group produced a comprehensive, integrated vision for the property that captured many of the design elements neighbors and city leaders hoped for in the final development.  This Studio Group report continues to act as a jumping off point for many people’s thinking about the future of the site.

Based on the Studio Group’s work, McGrath and Associates created a draft site plan.  It was reshaped significantly through neighborhood input, City review and changing economic conditions.  In 2006, the City approved a site plan, provided TIF financing and re-zoned the property as a Planned Unit Development.

Changing economic conditions, especially in the housing market, doomed the McGrath plan.  While the City proceeded with reengineering the infrastructure at the site, the actual development never got off the ground.  As the housing market worsened, the proposed plan became unworkable but still provides a useful framework for the site in some stakeholder’s view.

In 2008, McGrath and Associates presented a proposal to allow CVS Pharmacy to develop a store on the corner of Milwaukee Street and East Washington.  The neighborhood response was overwhelmingly negative and the proposal was quickly dropped.  With no other options and ever growing debts, McGrath and Associates lost control of the site when it was foreclosed on by M&I bank in 2010.

In the Spring of 2009, renewed efforts by community activists began to refocus development of the site as a center for sustainable living and green enterprise.  In 2010, local Ho Chunk activist Jim Green led an unsuccessful effort to encourage the Ho Chunk Nation to purchase and develop the site.  Other community activists worked with City staff and leaders to develop a process for land banking Union Corners and other similar properties.  In Fall 2010, the City of Madison purchased the property from M&I Bank to prevent it from being broken up and sold piecemeal. (Source: Joe Mingle, Current Projects 2012).

The Project: The Future of Union Corners

Gorman’s Vision for Union Corners (Union Corners Project Developer)

Gorman & Company, Inc. believes that we will be able to transform Union Corners by integrating history and modernization into the development of commercial, retail, and residential buildings and green space for the neighboring community. We have been selected as the developer for UW Health in their bid to relocate their east side clinic to a Union Corners location.

In addition to the UW Health clinic, we have been in discussions with several other potential commercial tenants including a local grocer, restaurant and the relocation of the Hawthorne branch of the Madison Public Library. These major tenants make up the majority of the commercial/retail space that we have planned on the site. These types of tenants will bring positive energy to the area community as they include job growth and reliable income for taxes on the parcel. Gorman & Company believes that the infill of these commercial and retail clients will also help establish a great residential neighborhood.

The residential portion of the neighborhood will include affordable and market rate apartments as well as townhomes and single-family homes. We envision a residential neighborhood that combines an Americanized-Woonerf style with traditional architecture that is compatible with the surrounding residential neighborhoods. Other site amenities include a Union Commons that will function a neighborhood center, sculptures by renowned native American artist and Ho-Chunk member Truman Lowe, community gardens, splash park, bike paths and re-use of the French Battery building bricks to form monument signs and other landscaping features. (Source: Gorman & Company website).

Cohousing at Union Corners

Cohousing is planned for the lower corner of the Union Corners project, adjacent to existing neighbors and to the south and bordering Winnebago Street to the north. Madison East Side Co-Housing (MESCoH) is planning the Sister #1 building, a three-story, multi-family cohousing community featuring studio, one, two and three bedroom condo-style units with 30 to 40 households.  Cohousing partners are gearing up for Sister #2, which is envisioned as a mix of townhouse and apartment-type units. Both projects will include a variety of privately-owned units and commonly-owned amenities. To read more about Cohousing at Union Corners, click here.

Preliminary General Design Plan

In an effort to recruit people interested in cohousing, the Design Coalition Institute is sponsoring two workshops with MESCoH . See details below.

Join Us

To learn more about cohousing, MESCoH, and the upcoming cohousing workshops:

Tune in to the WORT 89.9 FM Access Hour on Monday, October 6 from 7:00 – 8:00 p.m. to learn more about cohousing and the upcoming cohousing workshops at Union Corners. Bill Quigley is hosting guests: John Steines, SASY neighborhood activist, Sue Thering, Design Coalition Institute, Lou Host-Jablonski, Design Coalition, and Linda Lenzke, founding member of MESCoH.

Workshops Scheduled for Cohousing at Union Corners

Learn the facts, meet the neighbors, then roll-up your sleeves!

Cohousing workshops will be held on Thursday evening, October 16 at the Goodman Community Center, 149 Waubesa Street, Madison, WI 53704, from 6:00 to 9:00 p.m. and Saturday morning, October 18 at Bashford Church, 329 North Street, Madison, WI 53704, from 10:00 a.m. to 1:00 p.m. These three-hour intensive workshops will introduce the concept of cohousing and prepare future neighbors for the challenge of creating two complementary “Sister” cohousing communities at Union Corners. Cohousing at Union Corners is attracting potential homebuyers to this intentionally-welcoming site on the near East Side of Madison.

Madison East Side Co-Housing (MESCoH) is planning the Sister #1 building, a three-story, multi-family cohousing community featuring studio, one, two and three bedroom condo-style units. Time has now come to gear up for Sister #2, which is envisioned as a mix of townhouse and apartment-type units. Both projects will include a variety of privately-owned units and commonly-owned amenities.

Discussions about multi-generational and senior-friendly units; affordability; pets; and types of common areas will help you and your future neighbors find the best fit for your unique needs and preferences. This is an opportunity to consider making a vibrant, intentionally-welcoming East Side cohousing community your home.

Join us! Thursday October 16th, 6:00 pm at the Goodman Community Center or Saturday October 18th, 10:00 am at Bashford Church. $10 workshop fee. Light refreshments will be served.

Hosted by Design Coalition Institute, with support from the City of Madison “Futures Fund,” the New Harvest Foundation, and the Evjue Foundation, the charitable arm if The Capital Times.

To join MESCoH: 

Madison East Side Co-Housing (MESCoH)

Are you interested in learning more about co-housing on the eastside of Madison?

Would you like to receive information on how to join MESCoH and become a member of an intentional community?

If you answered yes, email: mescohgroup@gmail.com. To subscribe to our Yahoo Group listserv and learn about co-housing, upcoming meetings, project updates, and opportunities to join workgroups, email:

mescoh-subscribe@yahoogroups.com

MESCoH now has a Facebook page. Click here and LIKE us!

MESCoH Cohousing Coffees in Madison, Wisconsin