Longmont to get first cohousing community
Development slated for site of dairy farm

A six-acre tract south of Third Avenue and Francis Street in southwest Longmont, which had been a dairy farm, will be the site of the Bohn Farm Cohousing Community. Photo courtesy Wonderland Hill Development Co.

Valerie Gleaton
LONGMONT —Boulder-based Wonderland Hill Development Co. hopes this year to move forward with Bohn Farm Cohousing Community, a new project in Longmont.

As the largest cohousing developer in the nation, Wonderland Hill, founded by Jim Leach, already has developed 22 cohousing communities, mostly in Colorado and California, including communities in Denver, Colorado Springs, Golden, Lafayette, Littleton, Lyons, two in Fort Collins and three in Boulder (with one more, Washington Hill, in development in central Boulder).

Bohn Farm will be Longmont’s first cohousing community. Located on six acres at the site of the old Bohn Dairy Farm, the development will include approximately 32 individual units. The exact number of units and their cost will be determined by the community members as the project progresses.

Peter Spaulding, Wonderland Hill’s marketing director and project manager for the Bohn Farm development, estimated that the development will open sometime during the fall of 2015.

The Bohn Farm location has been of interest to cohousing advocates for some time, but Spaulding said the economic timing hadn’t been right until now. However, he said the chances of success this time around look good.

“The landowner would like to see cohousing go onto that land, and he would like for the history of the area to stay on that site,” Spaulding said. “Hence the name, Bohn Farm Cohousing Community.”

Using a database compiled over the past decade by Longmont cohousing advocate Christina Hildebrandt, Spaulding sent an email in early May to gauge interest in the project. He said that within two days he received approximately 35 responses from potential community members interested in investing in the site.

“We’re just starting from ground zero to build the community now, but so far the response has been very strong,” Spaulding said.

On the housing spectrum, “cohousing” falls somewhere between “communes” and “condominiums.” Although the specifics of Bohn Farm have yet to be decided, in a typical cohousing community, tenants live side by side in individual units, sharing common areas such as laundry facilities, dining and gathering spaces, parks, and gardens.

“When we design for cohousing, we’re really trying to optimize these homes so that they’re ‘right sized’ for the people living there,” Spaulding said. “Most people who are interested in cohousing are looking to pare down. They don’t want a lot of extra ‘stuff’ in their lives.”

Part of that goal means looking for ways to share resources — for instance, having one communal laundry facility instead of individual laundry rooms in each home.

“Let’s say a laundry room in a typical home costs $10,000. If you remove that cost for 30 units, that’s $300,000,” Spaulding said. “Now you can take that money and build a very efficient community laundry room, plus have money left over for the construction of something else, like a common gathering space.”

Energy is another important sustainability factor.

“Our goal at Wonderland Hill is to develop net-zero cohousing projects with very small carbon footprints,” Spaulding said. The company’s current development, Washington Hill, is to be a carbon-neutral community that utilizes solar and geothermal energy and passive-thermal heating, features that Bohn Farm will likely include as well.

Agriculture also will be a key focus at the Bohn Farm Cohousing Community.

Another major difference between cohousing and other types of housing (apartments, townhomes, condos) is the fact that in a cohousing development, power rests with the community rather than the developer, with community members calling the shots from the beginning.

“When you are launching a cohousing development, the community members are the ones voting and making decisions throughout the entire process,” Spaulding said. “It’s a much more democratic model than when you have a builder who comes in and builds and then just says, ‘Here it is and here are the rules.’ ”

To that end, as one of the first steps in the cohousing process, Wonderland Hill involves potential community members in what it calls its “Getting It Built” workshops. These workshops not only serve as a forum to discuss and vote on project design, but as training sessions to learn how to make democratic decisions as a community.

“It’s a new style of living, with a lot more interaction,” Spaulding said.

For more information about Bohn Farm Cohousing Community, email Spaulding at peter@whdc.com.