Post by Rebecca Rollins on Mar 5, 2012 18:36:14 GMT -6
General Meeting Minutes 3-3-12
Site Committee
West Nashville
There is an interesting new site in West Nashville on that we are looking at.
It is 24 acres, has a pond, a log cabin. Owned by a family who likes the idea of it becoming cohousing. Still need to look at land engineering issues. See Brad or Diana if you want to know more.
Hermitage
Making progress. The land trust has applied for grant money, to buy their part, Diana has met with investors about our part of the money. Maybe we'll know by April about the grant and the investors and how much owners are willing to sell the land for.
Germantown
The owner has accepted the amount of money we are offering for the land; we are in the process of forming an LLC (which will cost $600) and writing up a contract.
Business Model (for raising money)
Diana has been discussing the business model with Katie McCamant (one of the workshop leaders) and she handed out “the Cohousing Business Model” handout. This model has been used by over 50 communities that the McCamants have built. Diana explained that when we lay out money now, for example $1000 for a workshop, we would get both $ 1000 of equity on our homes, and a $1000 discount on the price of the house. The discount is only for early investors, to encourage early investing because we’re going to need money on the front end to pay for various things. At some point this discount goes from 100% down to 25%. If somebody wants to get their money back, they can get their equity back (the actual money the put in) with probably 2% interest, but they cannot get the discount back, i.e. we will not give them back twice what they put in. And they can only get their money back after all the units have been built and sold. This will encourage those who have a lot of money to put it in all at once at the beginning, so that others who have less can pay a little bit over a longer period of time but the group will still start out with a hefty cash flow.
She also explained that usually developers get 20% of the profit, but since we are acting as our own developers, we won’t pay that.
Next Workshop
The next workshop offered by the McCamants (which we need to take so we’ll know what to do) is on group goals and site design (placement of homes and community house; do we want a bicycle rack and where should it be). It will be $25,000. Diana explained that if we get 25 participants, this will only be $1000 each. Right now the suggested price is 1,250.
Site Design Workshop dates:
April 7-10 (Easter weekend)
Or
April 22 (Sun)
Then April 23-26 6pm – 9pm
Or
May 5 Sat
6 Sun
7 6-9pm
8 6-9pm
If you haven’t already filled out the email survey, see Linda Ray.
Diana passed out a list of the things we’ll need money for in the first 60 days (see handout), it totals about 19,000.
Committee Structure for the Germantown site:
Since we need to get started on this project quickly, the present group went on and assigned all the people who had previously expressed an interest in the site to various committees. If you don’t like the committee you’ve been assigned to, please talk to somebody (Diana, Linda Ray, Rebecca, Brad) and it will be changed.
It will felt that it is important to have professional expertise on all of our committees. If we don’t have any people on the committee who are knowledgeable about the field, maybe we should hire outside consultants.
Committee assignments:
Development/ construction
Diana Sullivan
Brad Norris
Gwen Griffith
Bill Wolfe
Jay Bollinger
Marketing and Communication
Rebecca Rollins
Kaki Fell
Deborah Wilbrink
Membership
Jan Clanton
Liza Moore
Janet Pierce
Process and facilitation
Jack Blair
Standing Bear
Sara Rodenfeld
Finance and Legal
Dot Dobbins
Stuart Spencer
Liz Williams
Thelma Kidd
Social
Thaddeus and Sara (married couple from out of state)
Dan Kappus
Jenny Murphy
LJ Ratliff
Susan Dyer
Site Committee
West Nashville
There is an interesting new site in West Nashville on that we are looking at.
It is 24 acres, has a pond, a log cabin. Owned by a family who likes the idea of it becoming cohousing. Still need to look at land engineering issues. See Brad or Diana if you want to know more.
Hermitage
Making progress. The land trust has applied for grant money, to buy their part, Diana has met with investors about our part of the money. Maybe we'll know by April about the grant and the investors and how much owners are willing to sell the land for.
Germantown
The owner has accepted the amount of money we are offering for the land; we are in the process of forming an LLC (which will cost $600) and writing up a contract.
Business Model (for raising money)
Diana has been discussing the business model with Katie McCamant (one of the workshop leaders) and she handed out “the Cohousing Business Model” handout. This model has been used by over 50 communities that the McCamants have built. Diana explained that when we lay out money now, for example $1000 for a workshop, we would get both $ 1000 of equity on our homes, and a $1000 discount on the price of the house. The discount is only for early investors, to encourage early investing because we’re going to need money on the front end to pay for various things. At some point this discount goes from 100% down to 25%. If somebody wants to get their money back, they can get their equity back (the actual money the put in) with probably 2% interest, but they cannot get the discount back, i.e. we will not give them back twice what they put in. And they can only get their money back after all the units have been built and sold. This will encourage those who have a lot of money to put it in all at once at the beginning, so that others who have less can pay a little bit over a longer period of time but the group will still start out with a hefty cash flow.
She also explained that usually developers get 20% of the profit, but since we are acting as our own developers, we won’t pay that.
Next Workshop
The next workshop offered by the McCamants (which we need to take so we’ll know what to do) is on group goals and site design (placement of homes and community house; do we want a bicycle rack and where should it be). It will be $25,000. Diana explained that if we get 25 participants, this will only be $1000 each. Right now the suggested price is 1,250.
Site Design Workshop dates:
April 7-10 (Easter weekend)
Or
April 22 (Sun)
Then April 23-26 6pm – 9pm
Or
May 5 Sat
6 Sun
7 6-9pm
8 6-9pm
If you haven’t already filled out the email survey, see Linda Ray.
Diana passed out a list of the things we’ll need money for in the first 60 days (see handout), it totals about 19,000.
Committee Structure for the Germantown site:
Since we need to get started on this project quickly, the present group went on and assigned all the people who had previously expressed an interest in the site to various committees. If you don’t like the committee you’ve been assigned to, please talk to somebody (Diana, Linda Ray, Rebecca, Brad) and it will be changed.
It will felt that it is important to have professional expertise on all of our committees. If we don’t have any people on the committee who are knowledgeable about the field, maybe we should hire outside consultants.
Committee assignments:
Development/ construction
Diana Sullivan
Brad Norris
Gwen Griffith
Bill Wolfe
Jay Bollinger
Marketing and Communication
Rebecca Rollins
Kaki Fell
Deborah Wilbrink
Membership
Jan Clanton
Liza Moore
Janet Pierce
Process and facilitation
Jack Blair
Standing Bear
Sara Rodenfeld
Finance and Legal
Dot Dobbins
Stuart Spencer
Liz Williams
Thelma Kidd
Social
Thaddeus and Sara (married couple from out of state)
Dan Kappus
Jenny Murphy
LJ Ratliff
Susan Dyer