This building serves as the "common house" for a co-housing community. Co-housing promotes sustainability through a higher tendency towards an environmental ethic, using less land, fewer resources, and lower energy-using buildings.
Co-housing neighborhoods tend to cluster, and usually attach the homes together, and have shared facilities such as playgrounds, gardens and workshops, thus leaving more of the land for open space. In this case, the 10.6 acres was originally approved for 102 condominiums. Much of the land was in a flood plain, which would normally make a site like this unfeasible for a production builder. But with clustered housing and lots of open space, it worked very well.
There are 27 townhouses clustered in two to four unit groups on three acres giving a density of 9 units per acre. Another two acres were taken over by the developer for a more conventional townhome design. The rest of the property (more than half of the total acreage) was dedicated to open space such as picnic areas, gardens and wildlife sanctuary. Care was taken to preserve the mature cottonwood trees and to continue the connection of the waterways that run through the site. This attention to detail supported the xeriscaping that was added.
Cars are kept to the perimeter of the neighborhood and the 10’ wide street is primarily for people!
After construction was completed, the homes were independently test and analyzed and the owners were told to expect a 30-40% energy savings over homes that are just built to code. This would save about $250 a year and reduce carbon emissions by 60 tons a year. (Please keep in mind that these particular figures are from 1997, so the intervening rise in energy prices would make these savings even greater).
The concept of living in such a close community is more attractive than you might think – there is a waiting list to buy a home here.