A Marriage Made in Eco-Heaven

by Tom Braford

A few days after we posted in the Business Connections section of the SustainableBusiness.com website, Irresistible Community Builders, LLC was contacted by Tucson Transatlantic Trade, Inc. Holding Group (USA).

At the time of our posting, we were poised to launch one of the most ambitious urban cohousing/ecovillage projects to be undertaken thus far in this country, but we were struggling to get out of the gate.

We had managed to assemble a contiguous site in the heart of one of the hottest redevelopment areas in the City of St. Louis, Missouri, which is in the midst of a full fledged urban renaissance.

We had developed plans with the assistance of the Metro Cohousing buyers group, the CoHousing Company of Berkeley, California, and Village Homes in Atlanta, that include: the renovation of a complex of grand, old commercial buildings into a European village-style, multi-generational cohousing community, complete with live/work space in restored 19th century storefronts on an active street, a community building with two-story attached food and heat producing solar greenhouse and many more green features.

There is also a senior cohousing community that consists of attached eco-homes surrounding a fully restored 123-year-old, 4-square-style, brick home as the common house on a quiet, tree-lined cul-de-sac, as well as an intimate eco-condo community surrounding a wooded area on an adjacent lot. These three distinct but integrated neighborhoods make up the Culver Way Ecovillage.

The project had received enthusiastic endorsement from both local and national community organizations, including a Green Communities designation from Enterprise Community Partners, support from the Washington University and Saint Louis University Urban Issues Symposium, the City of St. Louis Affordable Housing Trust Fund and a host of others. The project had also received generous support from many levels of government, including a 25-year tax abatement from the City and millions of dollars in state tax credits. A core group of committed buyers had already reserved units.

But since this was Irresistible Community Builder’s first major project and we weren’t sitting on a pile of cash, the banking community was not beating down our door. To make matters worse from the bankers’ perspective, we were also proposing to use the proven, yet relatively new, Green Sandwich panel system, which we are licensed to manufacture and build with in the Midwest, as well as other proven, but not yet wildly used, green technologies.

This fact, however, just made us that much more attractive to TTT, because they have specialized in technology transfer for a long time and in recent years have gotten very involved in the areas of sustainable, industrial and logistics parks, green business incubators and sustainable residential communities.

Irresistible Community Builders, on the other hand, in addition to the Culver Way project which will be profitable in the first year, has received a bevy of serious requests from property and building owners around the region, to build similar projects on their sites. So, for us, the opportunity to partner with a company with a well established track record complementary to our mission of causing a sustainable world, with significant resources and a national and international reach was like a dream come true.

Both companies agree that it’s a marriage made in eco-heaven, so we have formed a new 50/50 partnership called TTT Ecovillage Development Company, which is already planning other projects in the Midwest in addition to the Culver Way Ecovillage prototype project, and others in Arizona and California. A $50 million syndication is being formed to fund these and other initial projects.

If you would like to get in on this or future TTT syndications, or if you have a site that you think might be a natural for a cohousing community or an ecovillage, please contact us. TTT is also interested in partnering with other green product manufacturers and green service providers.

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www.CulverWayCohousing.com

www.ttthg.com

Contact Tom Braford
Irresistible Community Builders, LLC
St. Louis, MO
314-479-6750