Message from the Action Committee

Hi All,

The Aspiring Community Action Committee has met twice since our last Aspiring Community gathering. Will and Lynette Raap joined committee members, Alan Plumb, Nell Coogan, Ted Panicucci and Laurie Smith.

Our discussions centered on the next steps to be taken by the Community. Our goal is to provide the Community with a conceptual framework that both adheres to our Guiding Principles and advances the Community toward concrete action. To this end we defined three general areas where we will focus our attention: physical, financial, and governance.

Physical
The Core Group defined and the community ratified Guiding Principles including environmental commitments. Designing a neighborhood that adheres to and fosters these will require input from many sources. Depending on the level of detail we will require less or more assistance from professional services. As a first step in this direction, we are focused on attaining a "general visualization" of possible layouts within an area of land at South Village. Size, design and the specific location will depend on the ultimate number of units and their type (single family, duplex, multi-unit). We have termed these first visualizations as "design doodles". We welcome everyone to think about the overall layout of the neighborhood and feel free to doodle your ideas or describe them to us.

A philosophical note regarding the physical aspect of South Village - our vision for the entire property is to build upon it in a way that preserves land, creates a community, and restores and nurtures the land so that it regains its full vitality. The organic farm is but one component of this process. How we build and live upon the land is a significant part of fulfilling this vision.

The Action Committee and the Core Group agreed to invite Ben Falk to visit the South Village site and address the Community at a gathering on August 30. Ben is a leading voice in sustainability. His business, Whole Systems Design, is a "land-based response to biological and cultural extinction and the increasing separation between people and elemental things. Ben has studied architecture and landscape architecture at the graduate level and holds a master's degree in land-use planning and design. He has taught design courses at the University of Vermont and Harvard's Arnold Arboretum as well as on permaculture design, microclimate design, and design for climate change." (Whole Systems Design web site) We are excited he will be helping us in our first steps in envisioning South Village as a possible site for our community.

Financial Framework
The Guiding Principles contain a brief statement regarding economics. Simplicity and sustainability through shared resources and the creation of economic efficiencies to benefit community members are broad and attainable goals. Moving forward will require financial resources and commitment. The Action Committee will develop a broad financial framework that will accomplish the following:

1. Adherence to the Guiding Principles.
2. Creating incentives for early financial involvement in the project; recognizing risk.
3. Outline broad enough principles to minimize or avoid legal fees at the outset.
4. Flexibility, allowing a fully defined financial structure to be defined in the future that will enhance and complete these items.
   

Governance
A defined governance structure will become more important as the Community takes further and more concrete actions, and as members commit their financial resources. How we make decisions and by what authority will be defined early in the process. The Action Committee plans to create an initial framework for the Community governance structure. The governance structure will accomplish the following:

1. Adherence to the Guiding Principles.
2. Foster transparency.
3. Define the best balance between individual and Community needs.
4. Provide the best mechanism for progressing towards Community goals.
   

Addendum to Guiding Principles
The Action Committee plans to meet again on August 24th when we will define the Financial and Governance frameworks. We plan to post these on this blog as a proposed addendum to the Guiding Principles. We very much encourage everyone's input now and until we meet, and feedback on our proposed principles once posted. We plan to have a Community vote on the addendum when we all meet again at the end of August.


Input
In defining both the financial and the governance frameworks, members of the Action Committee seek input from everyone. We will research and speak with others outside the community who have experience in these matters. Our intention is to provide broad, conceptual frames of reference that will both nurture the Guiding Principles and actively move the Aspiring Community vision forward.

Dwelling by William Riley

Each of us

is responsible

to those who dwelled here before us

and those who will inherit our decisions.

What we do now

will be recorded

not only in the mind of god

but in the bowels of the Earth

where trees invent their roots.

The Earth is alive

with the ecstasy of those

who dwell forever in a place our spirit knows as home.

Home is the membrane

that envelopes spirit in the face of character

for only within limits is the infinite real

and only within boundaries is the Earth whole.

Boundary marks the gateway between here and there

without which place is only space ungrounded

and one space the same as any other.

In a world without places

there is no responsibility for yesterday and tomorrow.

(Read at the opening of the July 9 meeting)

Short summary of our meeting July 9, 2009

About 20 of us met in the Raaps' enchanting gazebo. JoAnne Dennee shared the research she and Larry have done on the South Burlington water system. The bad news is that houses at South Village have no choice but to connect to the public water system which uses chloramine as one of the disinfectants. The happily unexpected news is that there are ways to filter the chloramine out! JoAnne shared several different options for filtering. The bottom line is that the water won't be the deal breaker some of us anticipated it could be: the way is made clear-er for building at SV. (JoAnne may be adding specifics to this blog....)

David Miskell wowed us with a description of the three acre farm and the work that has been done to transform hard clay with bad drainage. He and the members of the SV CSA have been pleased with the results. He shared peaches with us that he's grown in his greenhouse for the CSA--fabulously juicy and sweet.

SV has a vision for 13 acres of farm plus orchards and greenhouses, a farm store with produce from nearby farms and greenhouses as well its own farm. The farm has been working with schools as part of the farm to garden program. And, Sugar Snap catering deli is considering opening up a satellite deli at the SV farm. There will be plenty of room for community gardens. David shared his vision of many of us having our own chicken tractors in the orchard. When will the whole farm be up and running? It depends on houses being bought. The original plan was for 5 years.

Will Raap reminded us that there may be an opening now (while the housing market is in 'paralysis') for us to present a proposal. We created an Action Planning group that will come up with a draft proposal of a general layout and site design as well as financial options. That group consists of: Alan Plumb, Laurie Smith, Ted P, and Nell Coogan (liason with Core Group). As I write this, that group has already had one meeting with another very soon....

Stay tuned for next meeting plans...they're exciting!

Love, Jill for Core Group

Our Next Meeting...coming up!

Aspiring Community Agenda       Thursday, July 9^th 7:00-8:30 PM    Raap’s House

 

7:00-7:15    Gather and get desserts and drinks

7:15-7:25    Rousing, Unifying round of  Jubilate Deo (or a new one depending on group druthers)

 

7:25-7:35    Ratification of Aspiring Community Guiding Principles

 

7:35-7:55    Report from JoAnne and Larry  ( research and propose next steps)

 

7:55-8:05    David Miskell:  “What’s new at the SV Farm”

 

8:05-8:10   Will Raap:  Update regarding South Village   

 

8:10-8:20   Call for 2-3 volunteers for an “Action Group” subcommittee

8:20 - 8:30    Determine next meeting date and focus.

Please RSVP and indicate if you are willing to bring a dessert.

 

South Village in the New York Times july 1 2009

Organic Farms as Subdivision Amenities

Paul O. Boisvert for The New York Times

For South Village, a 22-acre development project in South Burlington, Vt., David Miskell, right, converted a segment of the property into an organic farm. Bobby Young, left, is a hired farmer.

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By ALEC APPELBAUM

Published: June 30, 2009

SOUTH BURLINGTON, Vt. — The bewildered Iowan who converted his farm into a ballpark in “Field of Dreams” in 1989 might reverse the move today. From Vermont to central California, developers are creating subdivisions around organic farms to attract buyers. If you plant it, these developers believe, they will buy.

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Increasingly, subdivisions, usually master-planned developments at which buyers buy home sites or raw land, have been treating farms as an amenity. “There are currently at least 200 projects that include agriculture as a key community component,” saidEd McMahon, a senior fellow with the Urban Land Institute.

In 2001, investors in a stalled project with an agriculture component outside Boise, Idaho, recruited Frank Martin to take over their development. Mr. Martin had been a manager at Prairie Crossing, a subdivision built around a working farm in the Chicago suburb of Gray’s Lake.

By 2008, the 1,756-acre Idaho development had repaid a $12 million loan from the financing arm of General Motors; realized a 61 percent premium on the sale of its sites, compared with similar parcels with no farm nearby; and claimed a $2.8 million pretax profit by selling 785 of 800 lots, while keeping 1,000 acres open.

The success of the two developments proved the concept, and like-minded developers around the country are trying it on inactive farmland and even on formerly industrial land.

“Open space improves the return for a developer,” Mr. McMahon said. “We have 16,000 subdivisions around golf courses, where developers found they could charge a lot premium of 25 to 50 percent over comparable tract subdivision. But most people who live on golf courses do not play golf.”

The latest variation on this is blending in working agriculture, Mr. McMahon said. Living with a farm, he noted, can bring a buyer permanent views, wholesome activities for children, access to walking and riding trails and inclusion in an epicurean club.

Here in South Burlington, David Scheuer, a developer, runs a firm called Retrovest that specializes in pedestrian-friendly subdivisions. He is adapting the Prairie Crossing model with a 220-acre project called South Village, where he eventually hopes to sell 334 homes at prices of $200,000 to nearly $700,000.

A 16-acre segment of the property, which was not previously used for farming, is now producing lettuce, garlic and other crops, which are harvested for sale to homeowners and others from the area who have joined a local community-supported agriculture group. “Agriculture can be the caboose on the train,” Mr. Scheuer said, “and housing can be the engine.” Once he is selling 20 homes a year, he said, he hopes to pay the salary of a full-time farmer.

At the 220-home Serenbe project near Atlanta’s airport, the cachet of local produce has been added to retiree-friendly businesses, including galleries, a bed-and-breakfast and three restaurants. Steve Nygren, an Atlanta restaurant impresario, started the project on his 900-acre farm.

“We preserved forest and pasture, and there were 20 acres left for an organic farm, and we also have a large wildflower meadow,” Mr. Nygren said. “We’ve set up the design so 90 percent of the houses back up to one of those natural amenities. We are selling our lots at a premium that’s probably three times what the raw lot is.”

Mr. Nygren has focused Serenbe’s second phase on “edible landscaping,” he said. “At street corners there are blueberry bushes, fig bushes, peach trees and spotted apple trees.”

And in more rural areas, developers are buying big tracts of ranchland and selling small lots to buyers. David Hamilton, a principal in Qroe Farm Preservation Development, is pursuing this approach at the sprawling Bundoran Farm subdivision outside Charlottesville, Va. “We go through a mapping process to see functional agricultural units, if they are good for apples or cattle or whatever, then see where they go together.

Qroe (pronounced “crow”) leases some of the land to cattle ranchers and orchard managers. A buyer of a home site hires a builder from a developer-approved list. Qroe is marketing lots of under four acres for less than $400,000, Mr. Hamilton said. “You’re buying two acres but access to 2,000 acres,” he said.

Grady Lewis, a Virginia native who closed on his 2.67-acre lot in 2007 and moved into his 1,800-square-foot house at Bundoran with his wife, Diane, this spring, responded to Qroe’s idea of preserving “rural quality.”

When all the house lots have been sold, the rental income from the farmers, which currently goes to the developer, will go to the homeowners’ association. “Beyond it being great to see 300 head of Angus scattered across the acres,” Mr. Lewis said, “it’s a cash-flow issue.”

Farm-focused developers must juggle financing a few houses at a time with cultivating crops on a yearly cycle, so many rent farmland to professionals.

Mr. Scheuer hired David Miskell, a veteran Vermont organic farmer with a white beard, to help convert the property’s damaged soil. Working organically, which Mr. Miskell translates to “a lot of manure,” he and two hired farmers replenished the soil with enough nitrogen to grow greens, root crops and sunflowers this year. “Upfront costs are high to build fertility, but I doubt they are any higher than any golf course,” Mr. Miskell said. “Mainly, we are growing healthy organic food for healthy homeowners.”

Gus Burti, who lives with his wife, Maggie, at South Village, says the farm helped clinch their purchase after a two-year search of the area. “We used to live on a golf course in North Carolina and wanted to come back to Vermont,” he said. “My wife loves to cook, and we like that it’s organic.”

Because a farm’s open space takes land from the tax rolls, a developer often donates some land for public use. Hidden Springs sold a parcel to the local school district for $10,000, and Retrovest deeded South Burlington some land with road frontage for a soccer field and playground.

But developers stress that their housing units should stand on their own for the idea of the farm-as-amenity to click.

Mr. Scheuer, driving around a competing subdivision with nondescript open space, is convinced that despite the work that goes into a farm, it adds real value to a development. Scoffing at the look of the traditional development, he said, “If I have to do this to make money, I’ll find some other way to spend my time.”