Woman Builds 30-HOME POCKET NEIGHBORHOOD with COMMUNITY at CENTER — Ep. 133

on this channel we show different ways that folks are living or working within a more communal setting from our own decisions to co-house together at flock to 230 families living within a Cooperative at the Eco Village at Ithaca another approach is through the development of something called pocket neighborhoods which is a type of planned community that has smaller residences around a courtyard or some type of shared space one of the pioneers of pocket neighborhoods in the area is Sue cosentini who developed the Aurora pocket neighborhood and is now in the process of developing the much larger amabel pocket neighborhood about a mile from downtown Ithaca thank you I wish we didn't have the heavy equipment in our way but well you know what it just shows that it's a work in progress honestly so sue tell me a bit more of your background because you didn't start in carpentry did you no I um I went to Cornell yeah I was an animal science major but mostly I played Sports yeah mostly I uh competed on uh I mean actually up there at uh you're lettered you're let right yeah like a nice little whack for yourself that's right how'd you know that's right so I competed in two sports in the same season yeah ice hockey and swimming which is very unusual so I had two practices a day so I just was training all the time and super physical and my boyfriend that I met playing rugby suggested that I work for him yeah and as soon as I found out it was very physical and outside I was like sign me up and then I became addicted yeah now back when I started it wasn't like it is now you actually used a hammer yeah now you don't use pneumatic gun which is way more fun a hammer you know everything was just hand drives and that's more it's more seductive than it is now you were like if you were working when you were training that's like another training yeah yeah it's a great way to stay in shape to some degree yeah but then I got addicted to it and and so he was doing construction yeah he was doing construction so he invited me I really shocked in the beginning except for love the physical stuff but I didn't know yeah and then I just stuck it out that's amazing and I you know stuck it out and got and then once I had two kids you know when you're on your own business it allows for a certain level of flexibility so I persevered despite um it's pretty difficult this business you know it's not the margins are really tiny but it's but it's really fun how did you come up with the ethos and tell me what your ethos is just to give people a sense of like uh you know you're building ethos and then Place us where we are here yeah people get context well for me I grew up being a remodeler after getting out of Cornell I was a remodeler and we built new construction too and that was just standard stick Framing and back then it was just fiberglass it wasn't High performing homes like we do now and now and then I graduated I built the Aurora pocket neighborhood and that those are high performing then uh found this piece of property and both of them are arranged around a common Courtyard that one much more diminutive because in a city environment out here I'm in the town of Ithaca just outside the city line and it's it's like X Urban you know so it's I could aggregate the houses around a bigger common Courtyard and that's what we've done here the houses kind of circle around this big Courtyard in the center which right now has construction roads in it obviously but that'll be a big community garden right off of the barn and uh and the and we'll have these lovely Groves and it'll just be this community space all the houses face out onto it we're walking through three houses right now and they will also look out onto it with their porches meaning that there will be more houses here right here yeah so how many houses are going to be here totally 30 total houses okay and then does this then comprise like a neighborhood or do you refer to it as a neighborhood yeah we refer to it as a pocket neighborhood actually okay and that's a model that was brought to sort of salience through Ross Chapin with his lovely sort of coffee table book called pocket neighborhoods pocket neighborhoods have sort of emerged from various configurations over um the centuries in some regards that then be called got called that even though they were sort of social housing at first and then then they got gentrified and now they are around a common area and that's all that really designates a pocket neighborhood is that you it's configured arranged around a common space which doesn't have vehicles in it which is really really lovely right these people and kids and everybody can enjoy this space without vehicles you know your classic Suburban right has the road in front of you right this has been a difficulty here for semantics people like that's the front of the house I'm like no the front of the house is towards all the site where contract they keep calling the back of the house the front of the house because it's on the roadside it's a really interesting I go no no why would you call that the fourth house this is the front of the house you know looking out on this beautiful space yeah that's the that's like the the mechanical end of the house nobody cares about that side and so that's been kind of interesting to watch the inculcation in people and how it's been kind of difficult to get them to wrap their heads around this organization and to me it's just so much more lovely yeah than the standard model so so that's the idea and um we're gonna put a big Garden in obviously it'll be organic by default you know we'll bring in a bunch of soil for it and I'll put a big deer fence around it like you have to do like you guys are probably finding out and uh absolutely and it's I want to build it so it's pretty so I have some research to do on how to keep them away without having to be have like big old flags hanging off of it that's really lovely that you're going to basically this area is going to inhabit like a garden that then people could contribute to that are here yeah the garden will be designed around everybody's interest I mean I'll make I'll make it so it's suitable for 30 plots and everybody will have their own plot you know for the most part we're not going to try to have conversations rather arguments about who did what weeding yeah not going there you can have your own plaid or not and take care of it and if and if somebody lets theirs you know go to weeds and it starts to infest other ones we'll have to have a conversation about that yeah as it is yeah but it's not exactly communal living but there's Community to it that's right right so entirely intentional to not have some of the encumbrances associated with co-housing that can be rather expensive first of all the common house and also just some of the the social structures that are in place that results in kind of a sort of overwhelming kind of chronic sense of obligation I did not want any of that right right and no like you oftentimes will then get more bureaucracy that comes with it as well and plus you're dealing with the fact that most of the people probably buying the homes here right are are not related or don't know one another right then they'll come and go well they are all going to stay they're all a lot of people are retired so they're going to stay for kind of the duration know each other they don't however they're coming in as a bunch of friends we have two houses that are really close friends oh that's cool they actually vacation together but um I have set up Social Network social network systems where people are meeting each other nice and we've had a couple potlucks and you know they're all on Zulu we're all on zulup together yeah um and I introduce everybody in my slack workspace at first and so people are having dialogue right now like we've all decided to have no pesticides already um and things like that so people are dialoguing with each other so I'm trying to get them into found that out the hard way on my first neighborhood yeah that I really want people to get to know each other a bit better before they move in got it so we are doing some of that and we're going to do more um you know as people get on site we are doing things like we go down to the brewery and and have you know have a little dinner together and that's really nice at the brewery because it's so close and so when folks are here and they're they're considering a space like this what do you say to that what do you do do you preempt them in any kind of way like yes I do you mean when people are are coming when I'm talking taking them on tours yeah yeah um I I take I tell them that the houses are nested okay so our houses are nested and they're nested in order that they have a shared pathway and that's intended to create some level of sociality not at the level of co-housing where it's like a lot more common Pathways and a lot more they have perimeter parking and co-housing so you're forced to walk to your unit and then the process of walking to your house you run into a fellow resident you have a dialogue so these have do have a common walkway in order to encourage that I introduce them to that and then I tell them the basic demographics everybody here so they can kind of know how comfortable they are with you know the people here and but most people a lot of people from out of state came here because they know Ithaca they researched Ithaca and they're like I'm going there yeah and so and then the idea idea too like in some in some ways like the houses are like you said nested together they're kind of close I think some people when they move to you know like you said this is more like kind of suburban previously Urban but when they're moving more towards the countryside there's Countryside around people are like oh that's almost too close do you get folks like that as well yeah particularly in your male type of the species um uh yeah but at the same time they have this huge area in front of them but a lot of people are interested in that relationship basis for navigating life like let's say you want to go away oh watch your cat you know really easy just I'm right there so you can come you know the cat can come right to my house or I can go over there easily so there's a lot of that and just taking each other's back like somebody falls down somebody's right there to help them take somebody to the hospital take him to the airport that kind of thing so people are interested in that so I really tried to orchestrate it and design it in a way where it you had both that and privacy yeah you know to the and that's a that's a bit of a something to navigate you know to make a fine line to walk around because different people have different ideas of privacy and I think some of us tend to glom onto the things that may be on the negative side of being a little bit too close you know to another person whereas there's a lot of positive benefits as well yeah yeah don't forget that we this this is a very unique site because we're on the Black Diamond Trail so you can walk to town from here and you can just go down here and you don't even have to go on the road and you can all also get to the Waterfront Trail really easily so your capacity to get to what's called a third place is is really enhanced here as opposed to really being rural because we're really not rural it just looks rural it looks real because we're we're really we're one mile from downtown right you know really close to the West End so it's not it's easy to get places I feel like you can feel really isolated in a rural environment so here let's say you're annoyed at something there's always somewhere to go plus we have that huge Woods over there and yeah and then what's this building like right here this is something that was originally yeah it is in the original Barn I did have to move it there oh you actually lifted yeah yeah we skidded over here on i-beams it was quite something wow um this is this little Barn is just about the cutest thing it's so adorable yeah so I could not let it go it even has some hand hewed beams in it and it's really well constructed is it something that we could look into it's got a huge amount of construction crap in it but yeah it's really adorable too well that's the quintessential Barn yeah you know that's the gambrel roof that you are expecting on a barn yeah and um yeah I was here and I just felt it was in love and it's so it's going to be our Garden Barn I'll bring water and electricity a little gingerbread like barn house I know it's so cute it's crazy I still got some repairs to do to it it's great though to have a barn unit just to store your stuff if you're because you're constantly working here and once once all my stuff all our construction stuff is out we'll store all the garden stuff in here yeah um I'll probably bring water I'll put water outside electricity into it and um and we'll bring the kayaks in here if we want to I'm upstairs or you can put like uh winter tires and that kind of thing because we have a whole second floor that's really nice yeah that looks like the birds already oh that's old I don't think they're coming in anymore but they were it was it was for horses this was a horse pasture so wait did you yeah I poured that you poured the cement okay because I was like you moved it but then there's oh no we poured that first that's a giant thick slab um yeah we poured this and then we skid it over here and we dropped it onto the big beams that we put in here and now you obviously were you know connecting this this neighborhood in midst of the pandemic when supply chain was just going all over the place and mostly up uh what are some of the struggles and the challenges that you had to deal with with price considerations and everything for supplies here well during that time we you know we had to now we had to uh manage the price Lumber particularly increase and just uh people had to incur that um wherever we could we ordered things really far in advance because as soon as you uh we sign your contract it takes 10 months to get your house not because it takes that long to build a house it's because the queue is so long so we have a lot of time to get materials in advance and really kind of get them in bulk so my my Builder did a lot of that so that that helped mitigate that for a while but the lumber prices we just had to right people had to bite the bullet but most of the people that got in early got such a great reduction just by being early adopters that I don't think it resulted in that much do you think it was easier for you to sell the concept of this after doing the Aurora pocket news oh yeah okay the pro the the the proof of that was like the proof of concept in some respects and I think that that made at least the first six or seven people a lot more comfortable because they were buying in before there was anything there wasn't even infrastructure structure you know there's nothing here so they knowing that I had built that oh I'm sure that made a huge difference and I mean knowing that I've been doing this for 30 years probably contributed to it but the fact that you could look at progeny on the ground over there I'm sure that was helpful yeah right and then what tell me a bit about the the design of this because it's really nice you have this kind of porch out front so people could be facing the communal space the common area and then it has this uh I don't even know what you'd call that structure the it's really it's a it's a Gable end detail but it actually is structurally it's not like faux yeah it's necessary to help hold up that roof extension I just looked at some plans and and and played around with some designs I knew knew I wanted this um porch you know obviously facing this space in order that you can really enjoy it and um you know you're constantly working to get marketability and cost Effectiveness right so you're constantly working with those and I also knew I didn't want drywall uh so we have this nickel Gap finish in these places interesting um which is a bit which is a different we'll take you into diet we'll take you into couple houses um and is this kind of like a board and Baton style or is it Ford and trueborn Ben that actually that's an LP product yes I've seen this yeah so it's it's those are 16 inch boards yeah so it really is Warden baton it's just not Hemlock yeah you know three quarters of an inch that is something that you actually looked into the lp product for for potentially for one of the ones that we were looking at much cleaner you know yeah you mean than using real wood yes you know it also doesn't rot yes which is a little bit better and you can get a finish on it um pre-finished although that's a little bit better on the collaborg because this finish isn't applied as a baked on but yeah it's a great it's a great product yeah I kind of hate that it's Louisiana Pacific that's the Koch brothers but you have to make these decisions right when you're building these homes oh yeah yeah they're tough making all these decisions because whereas you wanna you know engage in some level of environmental and social justice then you know the cost Effectiveness gets that's insane and that means marketability goes down yeah and then you know obviously if you wanted to make this like super airtight and you know the best of the best on the sustainability standpoint you could price yourself out of the market oh yeah those are only Custom Homes nowadays yeah you're not doing a development like that I don't think so these houses are really tight they have a flash and bat system in them so that means there's two inches of two pound spray foam on the outside and then fiberglass or roxle on the rest of the two by six and then some of the houses are are opting for the two pound in the Attic so they're they're pretty high performing they're one lady said that she's ran her air conditioner all last summer with her doors open to our screened in porch and she was only 50 bucks a month wow so that's one of the smaller single stories that had that so they're really performing quite well um we have an ICF Foundation block that's all insulated down there you know so I'm I'm making them as tight as possible I actually had to invent uh intake air system for fresh air because they're so tight that we were getting carbon dioxide buildup as well as condensation so we mitigated that in sort of a creative system using the Panasonic whisper green fan so you guys will want to learn about that I can tell you about that I'll send you my white paper you got it you got to bring in fresh air yeah and you've got to have the fresh air you either do it with an Erv really focused on that yeah we've been trying uh well we'll talk about it later yeah yeah I'll show it to you um I'll show you the little snoogle my phone that I put on the I don't even know what that is that's my own name it's a Dr Seuss name snoo snoo it's kind of like an earth tube you guys should be like yeah I totally know what she's talking about no no no no there's no way you should know it so this is our air intake oh so this brings air directly to the air handler yeah and then what we've done is orchestrated this little this it helps filter so if you have dust on the road that gets filtered because what I'm trying to do here is it is make it so people don't have to go into their crawl spaces in order to change their air their air source their air handler um filter yeah so they can just do it here so this is bringing intake air in to the air handler and that circulates it through the house now when the air Handler's not running the Panasonic fan is always running at 50 cfms it's got a motion sensor on there so so when a person goes in there to use the shower liver it amps up to 80 cfms until one hour passed it doesn't see motion they're brilliant Panasonic fan yeah very grateful to them it makes it all so what what the expression for this system is a poor man's HRV and and Studies have shown and we did a study wait someone did the math and the cost for the the what what's called exhaust only ventilation system relative to an HRV is only about 300 a year more in the space he added space heating load that's necessary because you're bringing cold air in so that's not much yeah and so most people have opted for that rather than spring for the three thousand to four thousand for an Erv got it I shouldn't say HRV because they're not hardly used in our climate anymore it's ervs now it's nice to be able to actually touch this stuff and feel it you know yeah it's a really it's a good product yeah pretty amazing and you can see how crisp it looks the deer just bounding them there they are they're like when are you putting a garden in get going on that when can I move in uh so you know the thing about planting apple trees out there it's like decoy yeah that would be I don't know I'm in that's a good point I know it'll be like lots of food here yeah uh I'll defeat my whole purpose exactly so what are some of the the things that you know you're you're building a development You're Building multiple homes you could probably buy things more in bulk uh yeah early on but what are the some of the considerations that you would have liked to do if Like Money Was No Object like what would have been the next thing that you would have liked to put in here in a communal pocket Village oh well I would have wanted to amp up the performance of the homes okay make them you know Net Zero yeah Net Zero without having a huge amount of arrays to to get it to hit that that would be really cool yeah but that's a that's a double stud wall you know it's a whole different that's a bigger house and so many you know you got to do the double stud for that pretty much you got to get a thermal break on your roof and your walls in the whole nine yards oh when you say a bigger house does that mean because of the double wall yeah yeah you gotta I mean because of a bigger wall and then you've got to put an exterior thermal brake on and a roof uh thermal brake the whole the whole deal you know the whole passive house thing uh higher performing Windows would have been cool just bigger houses it would be you know I wanted I really I my biggest desire would have been to produce a house that could allowed for more families right so then this is are these more like uh one to two beds they're too darn they're they're you know they're all that you can get a big one it's just it gets up in the level that where so many people that are young yeah with kids yeah can't afford yeah so that that's a that's a fantasy yeah you just asked me about a fantasy yeah that fantasy yeah that's what I I wanted that's a fantasy because I I do think that like a lot of folks especially folks who are not renovating or are not building don't realize or understand or comprehend the costs that are associated with it and you know we get a lot of folks especially when somebody's designing a village or a pocket neighborhood or whatever it might be you know that you have to make some of those hard decisions and it's like well is there opportunities for uh low or even middle income people for those types of things it's like well how do you have to build in order to do that and do you have to get something subsidized from the government whether it's a local or state or national government in order to be able to make that work and I think those are some of the those are some of the challenges that I'm not even aware of but I think that those are some real challenges that oh yeah that's um in yeah developers and Builders are up against that exact brick wall that you just you know rocking a hard place that you just kind of articulated with respect to producing What's called the missing middle as well as anything that's median income you know and and that's why those are subsidized yeah there is either subsidized by the government or Mom and dad you know into homes like this yeah um and part of the reason I went to modular and set a stick was partially because of the labor shortage that is you know ubiquitous especially here in upstate but the country in general but I also did it to help Drive the cost down because I visited the plant and was just like oh my God there's no scraping of ruse in wintertime when they were putting the shingles on the roof is flat because these roofs are hinged up and they just put you know and I just watch them their bathroom was warm and toasty yeah their little lunch break room wasn't in the woods and I was like oh we got to do that because that definitely saves on not having stick framing going on here it also reduces the time frame but that I was hoping was help with the cost factor and it did it's just not enough yeah now how does this differ from like uh Eco Village in the sense that like Eagle Village they have to deal with their own like uh they have somebody to deal with their own snow removal and everything and they pay into that how does it work here does everybody just manage their lot or are they even getting a lot do they buy a lot or do they buy the house and like the rest is communal like how does it yeah yeah it's it's pretty simple the co-housing is a Cooperative Land Use model so they're I think that they're only responsible to the outside of their wall and the top of their roof right it might be the condo is inside I think with the cooperatives outside and then the Cooperative takes care of the rest of the landscaping and that kind of thing this is called fee simple and that means your Sovereign land is your parcel so you're responsible for that the co-op are the homeowners association we got to flip names there right is responsible for everything else managing the road um managing the the common spaces the barn um the the the waste water collection system that kind of thing that's all done by the HOA and it's just a simple collection of fees okay so so once you get you like The Cooperative once you get the lot you own the lot and you can buy and sell that lot you can buy and sell that one and you don't need to talk to anybody you don't need to speak to the HOA it could be anybody that can move in yeah and then that person or people then have to be a part of the HOA yeah automatically automatically homeowner associations are not uncommon as you probably know yeah so yeah once you buy in your party in New York City and condos too yeah yeah um and cooperatives yes I mean that's where they came from that's why we were able to do them up here is New York City made it happen for some reason yeah you don't find them hardly anywhere else yeah Community Land Trust as well you could find that in like in the cities as well which I thought was really interesting there's lots of different models for living in the city and then you could just like extract them to a less urban area yeah the lawyers have tried to extract sometimes they run into difficulty but yeah that's and that's what Eco Village is the cooperative and not so then they have their common house and that's the biggest distinction between this and a co-housing communities we don't have that common house our common house is the brewery [Laughter] yeah and I do hope to build a pavilion yeah that you know we'll set up a bunch of tables in and we'll put some lights in it and we can have nice potlucks there yeah and that kind of thing just a simple Pavilion you know no heat or anything just wide open like a giant gazebo yeah yeah and that that'll be shared um and you know we can your Wi-Fi will reach you out there and you can work out there you know and play checkers and eat food and all that good stuff and and be covered and uh yeah but we don't have an actual building and that is a that makes us not co-housing yeah interesting but we do we are you know we definitely have um I teach this communication workshop and there's that modality that we're I'm attempting to employ here in order to create a level of relationship where people can not take things personally like human beings are inclined to do with you know regularity um and and that it means that there's sort of this um tolerance and flexibility and and uh fluidity through the relationships where you know you you say Hey you want more for dinner tonight and I just had a shitty day and I'm like ah no I'm not I can't no I'm and you don't feel rejected yeah because we've had enough of a relationship where you're like oh okay all right I'll ask you next Friday yeah you know and you're right you're not feeling so rejected you're like I'm never gonna ask her for dinner again you you get they're like it's not about you yeah when I say what I say it's not about you right and so that's part of the equation that I consider more of a in accelerant to sociality than objects like the Dynamics between humans between us I think Fosters a closer relationship than a place we eat dinner at that we can't hear each other talk by the way I just think this is this conversation is so wonderful because if if people are kind of already picking this up if you haven't already I mean you are here like we even met you you were there like knock off the metal like you you're building this you're helping design and build this you're overseeing it you're project managing it these are not things that typical like contractors will talk about no you know what I mean like you're really thinking through how we interact how we live you know our relationship with our own environment the vision of what's to come you know right now there's big machines here and there's sounds and things moving around and everything and and people were buying into the vision even before they actually saw all this come together so it's such a wonderful I think sustainability has more to do with the the Dynamics between the people then it not more to do but just as much to do with the Dynamics between people as it does the the technology and the environment just your relationship with the environment around you like you said that we're kind of in an urban area but it feels rural because of the way that it's like closed hey there the way that is closed like in with the forest and the fact that you can get to town through the Black Diamond Trail and take a walk you know take a nice leisurely stroll like through the trail so the other the other cool thing I should point out to you guys that we did here and I kind of did it as part of aging and place considerations but it resulted in this really wonderful experience inside the homes which is because we've I've sunk them into the Earth so much there's this wonderful and you'll feel it hopefully you'll feel it when you go in here there's you know how in the urban environment you've got to be elevated because if I'm sitting in my kitchen table and you walk by and you're like look at me in the eyes it's like shitty you know but here we don't have to be elevated at all yeah and and I can feel it in my house here I'm we're in the Earth right so it doesn't feel like you're dominating the environment it's kind of dominating you which is how it should be yeah or it could feel like that's just giving you a hug it is you know I mean there's and so when you so the because you're sitting there right in the earth instead of three steps to even two steps has you feel that distance from the earth it is a different um experience altogether and one of the residents paid it the best compliment and she's actually in Scotland right now so she won't be able to talk to her but she paid it the best compliment he said this is the first house I've lived in where I don't constantly have a hankering to go outside relentlessly like she's every other house I've ever been in I mean she's always wanting to get outside and this house I'm I feel really comfortable inside and hopefully this is how it's under construction um obviously we're going to visit some that aren't but yeah nice to see it come together look at the wide the wide boards on the floorboards yeah and this is the the rigid core Sono Eclipse product are you are you in the dishwasher now what's up oh yeah you know because you're right I love the wide overhang it just makes you feel a little bit more uh you know kind of protected but like still out there you know yeah because and part of that is because like I said we're not elevated and I had like multiple arborists come in and assess these hack berries to make sure that they're structurally capable of taking the excavation that had to occur near them and so that's able to stay there whereas most developers just tear that thing down just take it right out yeah and I just love this little Grove I love it and it's also Hackberry is an incredible plant for Native Wildlife as well so I you know it's yeah that you're able to keep them yeah they're really an unusual tree I guess around here yeah and cool bark yeah they're they're really good in highly draining soils which we have here that's interesting that you have highly draining soils it's very strange yeah this is called a hanging Delta one of the people that lives here or is about to live here explained to me he's a geologist and when the glaciers were going in and out you know and they dumped a whole bunch of gravel and it's called a hanging Delta um interesting and and we it's all gravel which is extremely unusual I was very grateful to find that because it's very structurally sound well and I also see that somebody already started planting their garden over there she she just that just went in uh plantsman uh the plantsman put that in nursery and I think those are mostly pollinators probably a lot of native plants yeah they're all Native everybody's doing native yeah and she didn't want any grass she's from Manhattan and she's a lot about birds and insects yeah very much about birds and insects so that's what that's about yeah me too I'm just like I'm like I'm building this Garden only for specialist pollinators yeah what okay like that a pollinator Garden can be a source of entertainment I was just at the um uh Bari the Insight Meditation they have a beautiful pollinator garden and I just sat there and like massive hummingbirds I know and just all the different things like large insects it's really fun there's so much activity yeah like most of the time and this is this is a challenge because and I I understand why we've moved this way through guard to gardening but especially here with all the deer brows deer-like native plants oh so that's why when somebody says oh I'm gonna plant a deer resistant garden a lot of those plants are not native and then so it doesn't attract as many of our Specialists pollinators because they or are not host plants for our insects here and therefore you don't get a lot of birds because 96 of our Birds rely on caterpillars which need native plants and but the native plants are also deer food so wow that's what people when they say I'm going to plant a deer resistant garden oftentimes they bring in plants that are not native to the area because the deer don't know it and they don't eat it but neither do the caterpillars which then feed the food for the birds so that's kind of the push and pull and that's a lot of the the decisions that people make in their own gardening and I understand why because they still want Greenery and they don't want their like plants all nibbled on like we went out this morning and I planted a bunch of our native hydrangeas and plethora which is summer sweet and all the tips were nibbled off because we have one deer that was able to get into the the fence area and she fond and we know that that's the deer and they'll eat off the tops because their brows they'll just browse and they'll eat the tops off the tasty Parts the tasty Parts the things that you would forage in the spring you know I mean the the little growing tips so but the non-native varieties they didn't even touch so no kidding you have a perfect little laboratory there yeah and so I think that's like some of our gardening choices but when I started to plant more native plants the amount of pollinators and specials it's just so much more extraordinary but then you have to contend with the deer now have you tried the Irish Spring method yet no I have never even heard of that you have it no what is it we'll have to take you down here the Irish Spring soap oh I I thought you people in Plants I knew all-new this I didn't know it spring method I'll show it to you uh right down the road here one of our residents Ruth has a lovely little um installation that she did and she's got little things hanging off of the plants I was like what's that you know in like stockings and it's Irish Spring all right little apparently when you buy I want to get some because I found a mouse in my house and apparently works for them too they sell it in like big cases Irish Spring I feel like they've figured out what people are doing with it yeah Irish Spring soap you just take the soap you stick it in this like whatever nylon or something I'll show you now and you hang it really like a pantyhose and it just hangs off your fancy house and I I guess they hate the smell oh my God but that's going to show you don't use Irish Spring on yourself no I think you can attract humans maybe but deer will run away and so will mice maybe it smells like a like a a hunter the hunters all use Irish Spring not after they've been out and all morning yeah that's true but uh yeah I don't know you'll have to try it you can do you have a laboratory there yeah interesting um I heard it from her and somebody else about the Irish Spring idea and I was like oh that'd be great if it worked this is how word gets around one person use Irish Spring here and then the whole town starts using Irish Spring yeah they're gonna do well so how many houses actually are here that are going to be here finally like we have a pen on site okay right now and then what's going to be the final 30 30. yeah wow so that's huge what was Aurora pocket Village well that was even closer right because that's an infill there were just four houses in there okay so four and this is 30. so that's a real ramp up for you yeah but not but not I mean yeah you know not I mean really the infrastructure is the hardest part of any development the buildings are I mean after this many years of building yeah buildings weren't hard yeah working with the clients and figuring out everything about various options that they wanted but the building's not hard but the infrastructure the water the sewer the road the electric all that good stuff and you really had to put that in here because that was non-existent oh no no there's nothing here okay yeah so this was an empty Place infrastructure is what really elevates housing costs right okay so this was an empty house with the with the barn that house okay in that house and this Barn was way up by it that's right and then it was the rest that was seven acres and then the city had a little three acre parcel at the bottom here that I had to buy okay and can join and then now what is that house going to be that's my house that's your house it is I'm working on that house but yeah that's that's going to be my house wow that's cool I was gonna build one but then I discovered how nice the southern light is up there yeah but then I discovered how much I like these houses set in the earth so I'm going to put an addition that's sunken ah the 70s conversation pit room is that is there like a basement there yeah there is a basement that house that I hope to turn into a root cellar oh that's cool and then how old is that that's like the 50s okay cool it needs everything yeah it needs everything but it'll be fun that's wonderful I mean so you're actually going to be living yeah yeah I'm going to live here yep I might if I do another development from living here I change the entire layout because I saw how the light hits the land and so I'm like if I do another development I'm have to get like a little Airstream and drive it to the site and live there for a year that's interesting yeah I mean even when we it makes a huge difference and we were feeling where the light was and you know seeing where the the homes are already placed in the landscape is getting at the southern light that so that's interesting that you said oh you know that's how yeah I would place these houses a slightly differently yeah I had them aggregated in small pods like PODS of five and some of them some of them had their backs to the sun in in some respects like the front the porches weren't getting the light flooding in at the great optimal level that I could get by reorganizing them and then I redid the whole layout you know everything in concept is good but you got to be in context yeah context is makes a huge difference and so once I hung out here I thought when I moved from Fall Creek I wasn't going to like it I thought I was going to miss downtown miss getting on my bike miss you know just the ease of living in Fall Creek which is super nice right but but I but the quality of the light here you know and sitting out in the morning having my coffee was like wow no I'm good it was just it was just so lovely and it takes two seconds to jump on my bike and get downtown right that's true and it's uh probably healthier for you you know but then there's that yeah I might have gone to the gym more whenever but then I discovered because we have these windrows that go east west yeah that the light coming across was like really flooding the whole um parcel so nicely and then I re so I changed the layout so everybody's porch would get light flooded all the time or as much as possible yeah well that's just really lovely yeah it's really now that I know that you're actually going to be living here I mean the other thing too is that as you assess the interactivity of folks and you know how people get along or don't get along or you know the things that you would you may change because there may be things oh I know yeah uh you get to experience that and then if you ever do another one do you think you have another one of these in you I don't know I'm still debating that it I've really enjoyed working with the builder I'm working with our relationship is just the most crystalline communication which is so rare and it's just really Pleasant yeah it's so it's so bizarre how rare that is yeah but they're Craftsmen and I'm an old-time class craftsperson Carpenter you know and they're a car and we just can have this like dialogue that's just really open and free and that makes me feel like I should do another one even though the hardest part isn't the building it's the pre-development it's working with the entitlements that's the hardest part getting it draw you know all that stuff with the town that you're working in um but the town of Ithaca is by far the hardest to do that with yeah you might want to go a little yeah outskirts even another municipality probably in New York state yeah and then is this land also uh part of the community or is this on the other side no that's Cemetery Land so we're walking on house 23 right now I should take you down and show you two nested houses sure sure so and also so you can see the Irish Spring I would love to see the Irish love to see and smell the Irish Spring so the this is another housing plot so this is basically this is one house and house right there's really these houses are nested so that and the houses are designed with the mud rooms on the side right so the on um permeable or trans you know open side of the house is not on this side so your yard side has your great room and um you know the master suite right so that's the master in this house okay right and that's all on her yard side right this shows how the houses look when they're nested these two houses are obviously the only two we have on site that currently has their mate yeah and so that's the common walkway and so that's interesting so the people who came in us that are friends who vacation together did they get kind of a house similar to that well they have two houses over there their houses are totally different model yeah this is the Tarn and that's the Bourne oh back sorry this is the biggest one over here on the left right this is the smallest one and that just worked out that way but that just shows you what happens on the nested side and then the other side is their open Sound this one has a garage but this one doesn't right that's right yeah they have two kids they they put a big garage in that's the house that we can go into around one hopefully that doesn't be too late yeah and see that that shows you the Irish Spring oh yeah look at all them now let's see if you'll be able to tell if it's been chewed on it looks like they've been chewed on they've been chewed on for sure but this one see this is chewed on all right so it's ineffective so it's ineffective you see this it's almost like a fairly clean cut see so they don't bite they might not eat the whole thing oh because of the Irish Spring so we so if I put a steak like this and put the Irish Spring on top I don't I don't know I think it might be she tried that right here yeah actually I could also see the deer go like this will hold my breath exactly no this is definitely deer browsed right here all right well I'll have to let her know and this is sad uh physocarpus I don't know nine bark Maybe yeah I'm I'm completely plant ignorant and then this is I think these are dogwoods see dear love dogwoods see these are all eaten they are okay I have to let her know she's uh the country right now these are fine though because um they you actually want to cut your dogwoods back to get these red stems but they will during the winter they will probably mow them all the way down um and again this is the challenge that you have with native plants it's it's uh hers is all Native too she went crazy she's researched it I think I think the HOA is going to say we want to fence around the whole thing oh God wow yeah oh God that's crazy amount of money drilling all those holes yeah yeah I we were we had a little shell shock when we found out like defense prices or like oh see if this one's eaten just for shits and giggles so this one's enclosed clothes this one here yeah that's cool because it's really great you can do that with this design yeah yeah it actually looks good you know what I mean like yeah dude it's indistinguishable to some degree uh it doesn't look like it but I don't know what kind of plant this is yeah so they're not as motivated for this one yeah I mean if there's something better then they'll eat the better thing and they love like this you could tell is really browsed you see this they ate all the leaves they ate everything because why is it down here not up yeah right right you know so they they ate all of us they get all the good tips do it at night don't they they do night night is that an inculcation they figured out that we yeah you go to bed firstly they don't smell any humans humans are out during the morning you know they've also figured out red buttons they don't they're these are native but they don't like them but they don't eat the Red Buds as evidenced by the robust nature of that plant so it's it's funny because she had an oak out here I thought Oaks are like deer food very hard to keep this keep an oak I don't know what this is it's very hard to keep it open because they really like them yeah this one's definitely been eaten yeah I can see that yeah it's decimated after the tour outlining the vision and the construction of amabelle with Sue we paid a visit to some of the residents and toured their homes first up was Diana a retired restaurateur who moved to the Annabelle neighborhood from New York City you were just mentioning to me like during the pandemic you were feeling isolated in New York can you tell me a little bit more about that wow that was it was I mean I like everybody else had to stay in my apartment I went out to shop early and I bought enough food for two weeks at a time um and I didn't see any of my neighbors not that I knew that many of my neighbors that was that's part of the problem yeah in New York you don't necessarily know everybody who lives in your apartment building I I say that all the time I said isn't it so funny that we have neighbors who live miles down the road who come and see us yeah and I sometimes you don't even know the person who lives down the down down the hall down the hall yeah that was I knew the people on my floor but not well enough to hang out with them so I felt quite isolated during covid um and I was looking out over the George Washington Bridge and at my computer one night and I saw this ad on Zillow which I would normally ignore from Ithaca and it showed what Annabelle was going to be like and I said I think that's where I'm supposed to move that's amazing so it was a little bit of a sign either that or the advertising was very good at targeting you yeah it was a sign I had explored intentional communities in the area and in Vermont I had been looking at them so it was in my mind but I call this more like a semi-intentional community yeah get the best of both worlds yes exactly yeah yeah so tell me a little bit more about the the house like so when you got here was there even a house here or well no I there was no house here okay when I decided to do it um I I think it was that night when I saw the ad I sent an email to Sue told her I wanted to come up to take a look at it and at the property and there was nothing here there was this Barn in her house that was it and was the barn moved here or was it was it no it came was it was it was here okay and um because she said she actually physically moved the barn which I thought was really interesting wow I didn't know that that's interesting it was up towards like that house and she had moved it there wow I didn't know she was full of surprises yeah um she met with me in the little design Cottage and by the end of that visit I said I'm in wow and and nothing had been built yet well you were very decisive good for you well I can be yeah yes and so then I waited a year it was about a year at Chuck I moved in a year and um two months after I signed the contract well that's amazing I mean that's a pretty fast you know it felt yeah it was perfect it really was how I mean how do you feel about this space how do you how do you I love it here yeah I feel very connected because the windows are so big and I love that the porch is so low that's one of my favorite things about the house it has this rustic modern feel to it um somebody said to me oh I'm your New York City Furniture you know fits so well in here yeah because it still has some Modern aspects to it yeah yeah so yeah I feel very I just I you know my challenge has been getting to know people in Ithaca yeah but I think is a very welcoming friendly place I've found and also the commons like when you walk into the commons area it's also has a little bit of a communal feel to it there's like little Community Vibes and the so the the pocket even though this is considered a pocket Village I feel like there's like pocket Villages within pocket Villages yes you know yeah that's a good point so someday I'll be looking at a community garden out here yeah and that was also what got me because I was a big gardener um and the other thing I liked is that I could have a pollinator Garden that's what she was mentioning because she's like that this woman is really into bees and birds and I was like oh my God that's so me yeah um the Dan seagull from the plantsman put this on yeah I'm looking forward to it all filling in once the deer stop exploring it they've been the deer they came they explored they left yeah well then tell me a little bit more about the like amenities of the house like how it's designed we'd love to kind of see well uh you know I love that I have an induction range it's taken a little while to get used to it I mean you're a restaurateur you're probably so used to cooking on gas gas yeah it's not that big a difference I mean it's a big enough difference that I've had to adjust to it but it Heats things up beautifully it Sears things beautifully in a way that gas doesn't really do yeah um so yeah I and to live with space it's a big kitchen actually you know especially from New York you're probably like oh my gosh yes Mansion feelings yeah I'm cooking dinner for friends for Wednesday night I have friends coming amazing so I'm going to be and I'm making so friends from New York are friends from the local friends from Wyoming actually oh wow okay cool so you could host some folks here but I've hosted quite a few um little Annabelle dinners here with some of the people who live here and I've gotten to know them and it's that's what's the amazing thing that I I have friends here already that after how six years in an apartment in Washington Heights I had like a friend yeah everybody's invested in getting to know each other like that's part of the goal well even just talk I was just her you contractor you know she's really thinking about interactivity and communication and you know giving people enough privacy but also giving them enough interaction so that people don't feel isolated yeah no she's got a vision and it's she said to me once that the thing that made her feel the best is when she looked out of her windows at night and saw lights on and all the houses that's nice yeah yeah very cool it is yeah and then you also mentioned like it being in a space too it's like very um energy efficient oh very yeah that's all new for me yeah um because you came from a drafty New York apartment yeah or just too hot New York City Apartments the heater yeah heater on windows open you know came October the heat was on you had no thermostat yeah yeah and so this is any temperature I want I can get I've never had central air conditioning which is you know so this it felt nice this summer too yeah when it was really hot to be able to come into a cool space so you've been here for four seasons now four full season um I got here on February 22nd okay so almost a full year almost a full year yeah yeah well happy anniversary in in advance thank you yeah the fall I'm looking forward to the fall color which yeah I haven't had that yet it's slowly it's slowly coming in but it's it's nearly here yeah so should we can we take a sure Mosey around and get through this is obviously the living room in the mud room is here oh this is nice yeah the little mud room those are the entrance Door yeah so that's the actual entrance yeah and you could put all your shoes in your washer dryer very clean and yep tidy and practical here's one of the bathrooms this room is a little but I I would need to vacuum but it's a little bright in here right now I I have I got this red rug and I didn't really know so I have you know I'm figuring out what to do with this awesome light actually here even though you have like the garage there it still brings in some really beautiful light and this is my bedroom oh wow look at all the light flooding in here yeah so this is kind of cool because you have like the you have homes that are close to you you're going to have another home right here but just the way that the light comes through you still have it angles in and you have a very very bright space compounded with the fact that the walls are lighter too so it kind of reflects yep and it's very spacious Very Yes I mean this is like more than enough especially coming from New York you're probably like this is more than I ever thought I would need yeah I I thought my bedroom was a little too big yeah actually but I've gotten used to it yeah I had I in New York I slept on this this was my bed like a day bed a day bed yeah that's so much space I had I didn't really I didn't really have enough room to have a uh to have a double or a queen size bed yeah and how much square footage is this 1300 1300 square feet which is nice that's very capacious I mean honestly after coming from New York I'm like I don't know if I need anything over a thousand square feet but it's always nice to have a little bit more elbow yeah especially if you're entertaining if you're somebody who cooks yeah you want to have like people within your kitchen space But even the fact that they could spill out on that kind of protected you know porch or patio is very nice I'm very happy I couldn't be happier in fact and I even like all the construction activity yeah it's an interesting thing yeah well you come from New York you're like where's the construction to watch this I mean they're getting ready to put another house in place but the funny thing is is like it's actually very silent even though there's all this construction happening outside that's true which is funny all the banging happens elsewhere yeah in Pennsylvania yeah well honestly thank you so much for sharing your story and sharing your whole like house here with us and just like your transition from moving to New York to to here it's it's something that we I think we understand as well being that we also lived in New York for a little while the second tour we did was with Lisa whose family purchased a larger unit at amabelle she moved back to New York state after having lived in Austin Texas with her husband and two sons yeah so my family moved here from Austin Texas before the pandemic right and I grew up in Jamestown New York um so that's about three hours West of here okay and we were really looking to just move back closer to family Ithaca just seemed like a place that would really fit with our lifestyle and the things that we value so we moved here and we're renting in Lansing uh one of the things that was interest staying like we plan to buy but the pandemic just made everything really complicated yeah Annabelle was sort of on our radar like we knew about it but it seemed like it wasn't at a stage where Sue was really looking to to build it out with our timeline but then you know like we we weren't close to our neighbors we just thought we wanted to be part of a community that felt like a community talked to Sue and that's how we kind of got here right right on and you have two children so two children you ended up going with a little bit more of sizable you know room right right because you you have to cater to that right yeah and so my husband works from home so you'll see he has an office upstairs which we've built out I work from home once in a while so we have space for all that but the kids took over the room behind you which is like also a guest room and then their bedrooms are downstairs nice um yeah but we honestly having been here we wouldn't change a thing we worked with a designer who helped us do the floor plan and it's just tons of space like if you start opening cupboards I have empty cupboards because we just didn't have enough stuff that I I felt like when we first got into our space I was like all these cupboards are what I want to do with it yeah yeah but that's amazing to hear even with like having two children you still have like extra cupboard space and even this is like really sizable this like kind of common kitchen space yeah so is it three floors because you said the kids are downstairs and oh we're downstairs yep so they're back here if you want to like do a quick peek all the rooms are huge this is like their play Space wow and guest room so that's like a pull out sofa yeah um and uh then their bedrooms are somebody's into Legos Saunder yeah oh my gosh big time they don't the closets are just like Lego Legoland cool train yeah loves his Legos yeah um so then and we opted for only two bedrooms because I like personally don't believe any house needs three toilets to clean so right um so that's the the bedroom down here this is my younger son's bedroom oh yeah Legos tons of space yeah have you seen these ones sonder no they're amazing Legos wow no but they like they're um oh yeah they flapped their wings and then my older son is in this room he's also a Lego guy yeah very cool I mean so and how do they respond to like being a little bit more in a community even though like the community's not all here yet like it's gonna be 30 homes yeah no they absolutely love it so they love getting to know the neighbors and you know sometimes I have to be like okay like let me text that person first don't just like show up and and knock you know but they really like being part of the community yeah yeah that's cool that's very good I mean and you're from this area but they had to get basically I mean uprooted right from Austin where their friends were yeah yeah and we actually changed school districts again so we went from Lansing last year this year is their first year in oh I'm sorry um yeah uh Cayuga Heights and Boynton okay so how was that transition for them do they seem to just weather the storm pretty good yeah and so like they both are in sports and that always helps like make connections and make friends yeah so absolutely yeah and what do you what do you like about the space you know considering you were mentioning like when they're the houses were coming in you didn't expect it it was going to look like this and then all of a sudden it's together and you're like yeah so I think the light is incredible here the light is really nice uh and then we're just looking forward to being outside a lot you know right now uh the grounds aren't the way that they'll eventually end up but one thing that's really nice and this was intentional when we were looking at the places that like we didn't want to spend our weekends fixing old houses or doing a ton of yard work like we wanted to be able to do the things we enjoy as a family so it's been really nice to just feel like our weekends are our weekends and just like all the details you know they picked like really nice wood for the stairs and everything else but this was I uh the custom oh yeah that's nice with the bookshelf yeah so this is like our reading space my husband works up here this is very nice and then is this kind of like yeah this is our our Master Suite oh wow yeah that's pretty nice yeah so it's big and we just did a bathroom over here so the layout wasn't really set up here is what you're saying no and so we opted for the Dormer where you all are standing right now so that added a little more square feet so that I could have an office in studio space right so amazing also it feels like you're more of a minimalist you have a more minimalist approach to your like decor and everything keep it simple yeah even with your children's room it's like very simple simple and simplified amazing the Annabelle pocket neighborhood as you could see is still underway at the time of filming this video with Sue eight more units within the neighborhood are still available so we'll be following along on the progress and look forward to seeing how the community garden area comes together if you're enjoying these videos we'd love for you to give them a thumbs up and join us by hitting that subscribe and notifications Bell and tipping the channel is most appreciated your views and support really make a difference as 10 of our Google AdSense proceeds get reinvested back into the community here and that's actually matched by our partners over at espoma organic thanks again and we'll see you in the next video [Music]

Channel: Flock Finger Lakes

Views: 92,065

Keywords: Flock, Flock Finger Lakes, Finger Lakes New York, homestead, homesteading, how to homestead, find your homestead, permaculture farm, coliving, communal living, ecovillage, intentional community, upstate New York, summer rayne oakes, how to start a farm, farm life, pocket village, pocket neighborhood, community, building an intentional community, Amabel Community, Amabel Pocket Neighborhood, Ithaca Pocket Neighborhood, coliving community, cohousing community, alternative living

Id: R0Zc8FNeQ4A

Length: 62min 17sec (3737 seconds)

Published: Tue Nov 15 2022