Cohousing hits RiNo


I met a guy at a RiNo meeting the other night named Ted Pearlman who is heading up a new ‘cohousing’ project in RiNo. The project, which is scheduled to kickoff this year and finish early in 2009, is called DUCCI, which stands for Denver Urban Core Cohousing Initiative. It’s going to be at the Taxi development on the west side of the Platte River. According to the website:

Cohousing is the name of a type of collaborative housing that attempts to overcome the alienation of modern subdivisions in which no-one knows their neighbors, and there is no sense of community. It is characterized by private dwellings with their own kitchen, living-dining room etc, but also extensive common facilities. The common house may include a large dining room, kitchen, lounges, meeting rooms, recreation facilities, library, workshops, and childrens’s space.

Usually, cohousing communities are designed and managed by the residents, and are intentional neighborhoods: the people are consciously committed to living as a community; the physical design itself encourages that and facilitates social contact. The typical cohousing community has 20 to 30 single family homes along a pedestrian street or clustered around a courtyard. Residents of cohousing communities often have several optional group meals in the common building each week.

They haven’t started working on the design of the buildings in great detail, but they have signed on an architect, David Baker, who is also working on the other Taxi projects. According to the site, they aren’t sure how ‘green’ the building will end up being. I guess that’s up to the residents to decide.

Turns out there is an article on worldchanging.com today on this very subject: Multi-Family, Affordable, Urban and Green, written by Sarah Rich.

One thought on “Cohousing hits RiNo”

  1. I’m interested in living in coHousing in the Denver area. I will be needing a place after Dec, 2009. Any info. to share? What will be the price range of the homes?

    Thanks, Sara 719-320-1400

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published.