Regrouping and dates of Meetings

[Alan VanEss]

Members,
.............Partly due to moving and personal necessities....but
mostly due to the recession / melt-down of the financial system, we
are altering our long-time pattern of monthly meetings.

Please write your perceptions and ideas on this Google Group.
Watch for e-mails for future coordination of Meetings. We encourage
the discussion of everyone's ideas on making our project truly viable,
starting in 2009.

Keep in mind that some upcoming Meetings will be held at ( 1400 /
1406 ) Creekside Drive in Walnut Creek CA 94596. Call Alan with Q,
at 925--979--9360

Negotiations with the developer were severely affected by the
worsening markets and general recession. It is hard to say exactly
when we will become sufficiently strong to initiate a project with
that developer or another one. Amazingly good ideas, concepts and
piles of investment capital....welcome and priceless, in their impact
on this venture !

Cheers !

Alan VanEss

[Raines Cohen]

Alan -

Sorry to hear about your needing to move and "personal necessities", but we're eager to help you and SF LGBT cohousing however we can, and we think the economic downturn represents a time of opportunity for cohousing creation in the area.

We have a new East Bay Cohousing Clubhouse in downtown Berkeley near BART where we could host at least one meeting, possibly more, and some powerful outreach tools including a 700-member MeetUp group full of people interested in cohousing in the area, definitely including LGBT folks and many supporters/friends. We have a bunch of process tools including a "sticky wall" with methods useful for action planning, and training in several facilitation methods and cohousing experience that we can share.

We would be very interested in hosting a conversation with the group soon around a potential central Berkeley site where a developer has approached us with an already-approved 25-unit condo project, "ready to go" and we believe reasonably adaptable to cohousing designs.

Raines Cohen, Cohousing Coach and East Bay Cohousing organizer

with Betsy Morris, at Berkeley Cohousing

(510) 868-1627