Overhead aerial photo of rural land, fields and trees with a few dirt roads and a labeled creek.

For the 3rd time in 30 years, a residential developer aims to turn the Laurelwood school's farmland into a subdivision. We're assisting the locals and their attorney with research and insight in opposition. We share the vision of that land's use remaining primarily agricultural.

More interesting properties not quite right for us:
www.zillow.com/homedetails/... RV park and marina in OR with horse facilities for $900k.
theoldhouselife.com/2025/01/17/3... 32 bedroom "cottage" for $3.1M in the MA.
www.crexi.com/properties/1... tiny college in RI going to auction next month.

Hey @cooperatives.bsky.social, do you know of any efforts to build residential+worker coops? Either half alone seems not uncommon, but finding examples of both purposes together has proven difficult.

Interesting properties that didn't make our top 10 candidates list:
www.loopnet.com/Listing/500-... Office zoned for residential conversion, 178k sqft on 73 acres. $2.1M in central PA.
www.loopnet.com/Listing/133-... Military base of 89 homes and many amenities. $5M in rural WV.

We intend for the residents to own the property.
This could happen early, if we form a co-op with smaller buy-in, then secure a loan. It could happen later if early investors/co-owners are bought out by residents over time after the initial debt is repaid.
What else might work?

Based on past and current interest, we will likely launch with at least these 3 pods:
Maker / Builder
Garden / Permaculture
Homeschool / Family

What other pod would you want to live with, a group of 10-20 people who share some specific goals and passion and lifestyle?

The Laurelwood property includes a small vineyard. It was productive a decade ago but has been left to grow wild since. We expect to restore and expand it.

Located in the Chehalem Mountains Laurelwood District AVA, we could join some existing winery tours open to the public.

The Laurelwood property includes an orchard with about 300 productive fruit trees. Most are apples, with fewer pears and plums as well. The region should also be good for figs, and we'll try some other less common fruit trees.

What orchard fruit would you help us cultivate?

We have a long list of priorities to balance when choosing a property, including...
Price
Financing options
Existing improvements
Zoning
Natural features
City/Airport distance
Transit options
Natural disaster risk
Local politics

What else should we be considering?

A successful intentional community aligns on various norms and policies. @sparr.bsky.social wants to allow legal drugs like alcohol and tobacco in at least some private spaces, and not allow heroin or meth at all. Founding members will decide where to draw the lines between those extremes.

Mia, one of our founding members, plans to join the Garden / Permaculture pod and also contribute to the Homeschooling pod. Mia joins us from New England with a background in early childhood education as well as experience with cannabis cultivation and businesses.

The Science / Home Ec building has sadly not been maintained as well as the others. We're hopeful it can be restored. Labs for science projects and startups, auditorium as a backup theater, home ec micro kitchens for food projects and education... So many possibilities!

The first property we pursued for the CoDwell intentional community project was Southern Vermont College. The dorms, classrooms, manor, fields, forest, and other amenities were a great fit. We continue to search for other properties to consider if Laurelwood doesn't work out.

We also haven't found an explicit list, but there are some good leads if you follow the web presence and social media accounts of organizations like Lost Valley Education Center.

Regular and effective physical and mental practices are definitely something we want to encourage. This could be a pod, and/or a series of activities for many of our community members.
The music practice rooms elsewhere in this building offer surprisingly quiet indoor spaces for this sort of thing.

Potential intentional community membership levels.
Full time: Live on site and fully participate in a pod.
Off-site: Access to non-residential amenities, partial pod participation.
Comets: Occasional visits where they participate like a full time member.
Which would you choose?

What sort of events and activities would you do in our gym? Two basketball courts, 100x100ft with 30ft ceilings, 30x100 shuffleboard, 30x60 stage, locker rooms.
Sports, aerial arts, climbing, roller skating, drone racing, ... what else?
#intentionalcommunity

The Admin building was used and maintained by the previous owners. It contains six large classrooms, a dozen small to medium offices, and a 300 seat theater. We would use these spaces for events, education, coworking, performance, startup incubation, and private member offices.

The easiest way you can help us succeed is to follow/subscribe on other platforms and occasionally share/boost/comment/etc. Help us reach members, residents, owners, investors, etc!

twitter.com/co_dwell
www.facebook.com/CoDwellCommu...
www.instagram.com/co_dwell
mastodon.social/@codwell

LOST VALLEY EDUCATIONAL CENTER & Intentional Community Permaculture Design Courses in an Intentional Community, natural building, ecological restoration, and rewilding. ecovillage, organic regenerative farming, Eugene, Oregon, Pacific Northwest

Another inspiration for our project is lostvalley.org. They have combined land stewardship and coliving intentional community with a wide variety of permaculture educational opportunities. Located a few hours south of our target property in Oregon, they are well worth a visit!

YouTube video by Kirsten Dirksen Rundown apartments reborn as food-forest coliving Agritopia

Kailash Ecovillage is a local inspiration. They took a typical apartment building, yard, and parking lot in Portland and built an intentional community; reclaiming pavement, growing food, hosting events, and fostering community.
www.kailashecovillage.org
www.youtube.com/watch?v=iCGX...

4. Enable other groups to replicate our success.
5. Expand the community and organization of this project to include additional properties.

Our non-hierarchic values statements will follow in a future post of the day.

2. Protect the time, money, and effort contributions to the project from being wasted or lost.
3. Give control over the future of the project to the people who have contributed to the success of the project.

1. Enable many people to make use of the amenities of this property, in some proportion to their contributions of time, money, effort, and undertaken risk for the project, and in ways that would not be possible or feasible individually or elsewhere.

1. Enable many people to make use of the amenities of this property, in some proportion to their contributions of time, money, effort, and undertaken risk for the project, and in ways that would not be possible or feasible individually or elsewhere. 2. Protect the time, money, and effort contributions to the project from being wasted or lost. 3. Give control over the future of the project to the people who have contributed to the success of the project. 4. Enable other groups to replicate our success. 5. Expand the community and organization of this project to include additional properties.

High level decision making in our community will be driven by explicit priorities that will be written into our founding documents.
This draft isn't set in stone and might change as more varied viewpoints become part of the project.
Text of priorities in thread to follow.

Our target property includes this Industrial Arts building with a wood shop, auto shop with lifts and five bays, welding shop, car paint room, and multiple classrooms we intend to use for new shops such as for 3d printing and electronics fabrication.
What would you build here?

CoDwell Community Governance CoDwell Community Governance Work in Progress as of December 2024 (some things likely to change as we find sources of funding) More info about the project at http://CoDwell.org

More details in the slide deck from our recent meeting on the topic of community governance.

docs.google.com/presentation...

Diagram showing decisions held by the owners, pod reps, and community reps.

CoDwell's governance structure may see some tweaks depending on eventual sources of funding/financing, and will definitely change over time as the community grows and equity moves into the hands of the residents. That said, here's the plan for launch in the most likely case.

The "Girls Dorm" (minus the historic religious gender segregation) will be the center of our intentional community coliving residential spaces from day one. 60 dorm rooms, 2 apartments, 1 house, 1 commercial and 3 residential kitchens. Most recently used as a retreat center.

We hope to put 30-40 acres of the 50 on our target property to use growing food in a sustainable way for 100+ people. Economy of scale hits hard for growing food, livestock, etc.