Excitement is in the Air!
By Susana Michaelis
Spring has sprung and there are fragrant purple violets blooming in profusion down by the river bank! Fawn lilies and trillium will be joining the colourful show. Fluorescent green tree frogs add their chorus to the birds that are singing their spring songs. Trees are budding and there is excitement in the air!
Pacific Gardens is a beehive of activity with a multitude of contractors, a robotic machine that seems to drive itself, lots of trucks, and a huge crane that has been lifting skylights into place on the atrium.
Every week as owners and guests visit the site, we see our dream becoming reality! Natural light streams into the atrium, even on cloudy days. We look forward to being warm and dry when visiting neighbours or dashing down to the Common House for a community meal or movie.
Instead of talking about plumbing, we now get to have fun picking out appliances, furnishings and curtains! Plans for our ribbon-cutting are getting us in the mood for celebrating our successes. In the meantime, we are enjoying going to concerts, singing, plays, films and many other community events.
Our potlucks have become deluxe, as we practice ethnic cooking. From the Great White North, to Africa, Mexico, and last weekend we enjoyed a fabulous Easter turkey dinner and Aries birthday celebration! Accompanying these great events were story-telling, drumming, dancing, a slide-show and fascinating accounts of the adventures several of us had during recent vacations.
We would love to have you visit and see why we are so excited to be Pacific Gardeners!
Big News – Pacific Gardens Cohousing changes its structure
Up until recently joining Pacific Gardens meant becoming a shareholder in the development company, 553080 BC Ltd., which was formed to plan, finance and oversee construction of the project.
With the project nearing completion, the owners will no longer be seeking shareholder partners. Instead, new owners will make a deposit on the unit they wish to purchase, complete a standard Agreement of Purchase and Sale based on a Disclosure Statement, and take ownership of their condo on the closing date. The documents are being drafted by our lawyer so watch for this exciting change coming soon!
Once completed the Pacific Gardens Cohousing Community becomes a Strata Corporation and as such owners will have the right to rent and sell their units. A Strata Management Company has been hired to guide us through the maze of administrative and financial requirements leading up to the first Annual General Meeting of the Strata Corporation. The interim budget developed by them indicates our strata fees will range from $93.00 to $202.00.
All owners will be members of the Strata Council and decisions will be made using the Consensus Decision-Making Model.
Tour the Property and Meet the Owners
Our Open House and Site Tours take place every Thursday beginning at 2:30 from our office in Port Place Mall. An owner will answer questions you have about the project and take you on a tour of the building and the land. The site can be muddy so be sure to wear appropriate footwear.
If you are visiting from out-of-town and can’t attend this event, we’d be happy to arrange another time to tour. Please let us know as far in advance as possible.
Interested in a co-ownership at Pacific Gardens?
Maureen Brown, one of our owners, is working out of the country for a few years, and would like to find someone interested in a co-ownership arrangement with her. Her proposal is unique in that she is offering exclusive use of the condo to someone for the first 2-3 years, not a shared living space. She proposes that:
- Both owners would secure a mortgage for one-half of the price of the unit plus closing costs (including legal fees to draft the contract).
- After an agreed-upon period of time (2-3 years) she would have the option to buy the other person out. If she chooses not to, they could buy her out, or both parties could continue co-owning.
- She would not live there at all during the first 2-3 years. In exchange for that, she would want the co-owner to pay property taxes, strata fees and other expenses related to maintenance of the unit.
If you are interested in exploring the possibilities of this arrangement with Maureen, please contact her at maurbrown@gmail.com.
Ongoing Consensus Workshops
From April 23 – April 26, 2009, two of our owners will travel to Creekside Commons in Courtenay to participate in a workshop that is part of an Intentional Community Facilitator Intensive Series. Over a couple of years, quarterly workshops will rotate amongst cohousing groups and other intentional communities in British Columbia. During each workshop, students will practice by facilitating real meetings of the host community. Through this series of joint workshops, the cohousing communities in BC intend to build local capacity in meeting facilitation and consensus decision making.
Pacific Gardeners participated in an introductory workshop in September 2008. The two-year intensive series is designed for those owners who are particularly interested in learning facilitation and consensus decision making, who want to hone their skills, and who later want to share those skills with others in cohousing circles.
Since our complex still is under construction, we at Pacific Gardens Cohousing Community will take our turn at hosting one of the intensive workshops later in the series.