News About Kawartha Commons

Peterborough Currents: Peterborough cohousing community moves closer to construction, by Brett Throop, published on June 27th, 2024

When Aukje Byker imagines her dream home, she focuses less on how it will look and more on who she will share it with. “What I’m looking forward to most is really living in community,” said Byker, standing on the site of her future home in Peterborough’s west end. That home will be a condo unit in what’s being billed as the city’s first cohousing community, called Kawartha Commons Cohousing. In a cohousing community, residents live in private, fully-equipped suites and share extensive common spaces, such as recreation areas, kitchens, gardens and guest rooms.

Toronto Star: “These once-strangers want to live alone, together — and are designing and financing their own community to do it” by Diana Zlomislic, published January 27, 2024

The group is embarking on a co-housing project, a living and real estate arrangement that allows residents to have their own home while being surrounded by neighbours who know their names and are willing to share a glass of wine or a story in the garden after dinner. Like in a condo complex, co-housing residents would own their own suites but there is an expectation that residents pitch in to manage the property. “We’re trying to recreate the concept of a village,” explains Aukje Byker, a former college professor who was among the first in Peterborough to join the Kawartha Commons Cohousing group."

Kawartha Now: “Ground-breaking for Peterborough’s first cohousing development eyed for 2025: With the purchase of a Maryland Avenue property, Kawartha Commons Cohousing is slowly but surely moving ahead on its long-held vision” by Paul Rellinger, published January 9, 2024

KCC is singing the praises of its acquisition of a 1.4-acre site at 736 Maryland Avenue in Peterborough that, in due time, will be home to a wholly sustainable community for some 40 families. The site is within walking distance to downtown and close to grocery stores, the hospital, and public schools. Maximizing the preservation and use of existing green space, the development will also house 4,000 square feet of common space to facilitate community gatherings that speak to the very heart of the cohousing concept. Says KCC president Kris Staveley: “One of the things that is important about cohousing is that it’s very much run by the people who live there. The model we’re going with is we’re the people who find the land. We buy it. We make the decisions about what the design looks like. We design our units. We decide how much common space there is.”