Efforts to bring a new type of neighborhood-style housing to South Florida have failed yet again.
For 10 years, South Florida Cohousing has been trying to join a national movement by establishing a cohousing community. Cohousing combines single-family units and common areas for eating, socializing and gardening with neighbors. Cars are parked in a lot so residents have to walk through the neighborhood.
About 75 cohousing communities have been built nationwide in the past 15 years, according to the Colorado-based Cohousing Association of the United States.
The group’s latest effort was to build a 32-unit development called Emerald Place on 3.6 acres on Sims Road west of Delray Beach. It ended this summer when developer Symphony Builders and the group disagreed over the contracts.
“I feel really sad that we got so close to building a dream place and now it’s not there,” said Lian Bloom, who planned to live at Emerald Place.
Group members said they were not given enough time — a little more than a week — to review contracts, but Symphony president Lewis Moscovitch said they were given as much time as other clients.
Members also had reservation agreements with an agreed-upon price but were told prices were going up. Moscovitch said he had to raise prices because of increased construction costs. Unit prices were between $164,990 and $259,990 and were raised to $189,990 to $289,990.
Bloom and her husband sold their condo west of Delray Beach last year in anticipation of moving into Emerald Place this summer. Bloom liked the idea of never being alone and having neighbors who cared for one another. She had become close with the other families involved through a series of meetings and potluck dinners.
“We uprooted ourselves from where we were for 20 years with the idea of being in this community. I felt frustrated and upset and really sad about the whole thing, and angry,” she said.
Moscovitch said he knew the group was unhappy with him.
“The group of cohousing has a lot of time and effort and dreams [invested]. But Symphony … we have a lot of money invested in it, so we have to make it successful,” he said.
Symphony Builders is putting Emerald Place on hold and redesigning it as non-cohousing, Moscovitch said. He said it will probably be delayed a year.
Kate deLaGrange , a cohousing consultant in Colorado, said many factors can get in the way of a successful project, such as land prices, county codes, agreement on community rules and styles and getting mortgages. But that’s starting to change, she said.
“A lot of it is, it’s just new. Of the 75 cohousing communities already completed, almost all of them were completed in the last 10 years, and most in the last five,” she said.
Cohousing originated in Denmark in the late 1960s and came to North America in the late 1980s. Most of the American communities are in California, Colorado, Massachusetts, Oregon and Washington.
Florida has a cohousing community in Tallahassee and projects forming near Tampa, Orlando and Miami.
South Florida Cohousing attempted to build the cohousing project on its own in 1997. The Palm Beach County Commission approved the community, then known as Synergy Cohousing Community, over the objections of neighbors unhappy with the project’s density. The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development honored the group for its innovative design for affordable housing (four of the Emerald Place units were designated as affordable housing).
The group found, however, that it had added too many expensive, environmentally friendly features and could not find affordable contractors.
They turned to Symphony.
Mike Winston, 67, sold the Sims Road property to Moscovitch for Emerald Place with hopes that several of his six children would move in. He’s been involved all 10 years.
“I probably am no longer a candidate to be in the front line for cohousing,” Winston said. “If someone else was involved, and it was well along on its way, I would be interested in learning about it. At the moment, I’m not expecting that to happen.”
Ushma Patel can be reached at 561-243-6621 or .
