We continue to thrive despite You-Know-What. Thanks to Zoom, we're holding our regular chat sessions and Guess Who's Coming to Dinner parties, and we're getting lots done at our business and committee meetings. We're even managing suitably social-distanced in-person get-togethers.

If you've been keeping in touch, you'll know that we're looking closely at a site near downtown Peterborough. We're raring to go, and to that end we recently met online with officials from Peterborough's development industry about how to make that happen. What we're hearing is definitely encouraging.

Tom, one of our members, recently passed along this article from The Globe and Mail about co-op housing. It's a different flavour than cohousing, but the article demonstrates the renewed interest in alternatives to traditional housing, and some of the benefits that they bring.

And if you want to try your hand at building your own community, then this is a good place to start.

We always like to tell everybody about ourselves, but these days it's not so simple. As we've already told you, we've suspended our orientation sessions, but we look forward to finding a way to resume them before too long. We'll definitely let you know.

Nevertheless, we still want to hear from you. Drop us a line anytime at info@kawarthacommons.ca.

Stay safe and have fun!

Building a new home

As you can see from the diagram above, shepherding a project from pie-in-the-sky to shovels-in-the-ground takes a lot of hard work - and more than a little faith and goodwill too.

Scott sits on our Site Committee, and recently he and Andrea co-hosted an online info session about the municipal planning and development process here in Peterborough. Thirty-four KCC members sat in, which says something about the degree of interest in this subject.

We heard from four panelists: Aaron Hill, Civil Engineer and Partner at Engage Engineering; Michael Gallant, Architect and Partner at Lett Architects; Paul Bennett, Developer and President of Ashburnham Realty; and Brian Buchardt, Planner-Urban Design, City of Peterborough.

Each of our panelists gave us their perspective on planning and development, and we had the chance to ask them questions. There were plenty.

The questions addressed everything from storm-water management and dealing with contaminated soil, to the length of time for the rezoning process and when the lobbying process starts; and just how negotiable all of this is.

Not many of our members have had dealings with developers and planners, but they're all engaged and well-informed. They certainly kept the panelists on their toes.

We eagerly await our next session, when we take a look at working with an architect to design our new homes, which in turn will take us down the road to tenders and selecting a builder to actually build them.

It's a long road, but we've definitely stepped out on it.

Lots more to come. Watch this space!