The Long Middle: What it Really Take to Build a Neighborhood

From finding our land to designing our first homes, we're discovering that some of the most important work happens between the milestones.

In August, after approximately 18 months of searching, Gratitude Village finally purchased our first property: 7.81 acres in Brighton, Colorado. It was an enormous milestone for our young organization and one we'd worked incredibly hard to reach. After exploring countless properties, studying zoning regulations, meeting with city officials, running financial scenarios, and negotiating with landowners, we finally had a place where our first neighborhood could become a reality.

I expected to feel an enormous sense of relief and accomplishment, and I did. What I hadn't anticipated was how quickly we'd find ourselves immersed in an entirely new set of challenges. We'd spent so much time focused on finding the right land that I hadn't fully appreciated just how much work would follow once we owned it.

We're now in what I've come to think of as the long middle of developing Gratitude Village Brighton. It's the stretch between acquiring the land and seeing homes begin to rise from the ground, when progress is happening but isn't always easy to see. And while it may not be the most exciting part of the journey, I'm learning that some of our most important decisions will be made during this phase.

From a Vision to a Real Neighborhood

When I first began exploring cohousing, I wasn't planning to become a housing developer. I was looking for a place where my daughter and I could live in a connected, supportive community. As I visited existing communities, I realized that many of the homes were financially out of reach, both for me as I approached retirement and for my daughter as a prospective first-time homebuyer.

That realization led me to start asking questions. Could we create a neighborhood that offered the benefits of cohousing while making homes more affordable? Could we build homes that were sustainable, energy-efficient, and accessible from the beginning? And could we create a community that welcomed people of different ages, abilities, backgrounds, and incomes?

Those questions eventually became the foundation of Gratitude Village. They're also the questions we continue returning to as we make decisions about our first development.

One of the exciting developments in recent weeks is that we've received a preliminary land plan from our architects. For the first time, we're beginning to see how the homes, Common House, shared outdoor spaces, and other elements of the neighborhood might fit together on our Brighton property.

It's one thing to talk about creating a neighborhood where people know their neighbors and share resources. It's another to begin looking at an actual site plan and imagine where people might gather for a meal, where children could play, or how someone using a wheelchair might move comfortably from their home to the Common House. Every design decision has the potential to make everyday life easier, more welcoming, and more connected.

Of course, this is still a preliminary plan. There are many details to work through, and some things will undoubtedly change as we move further into design, engineering, and the city's approval process. But seeing the neighborhood begin to take shape on paper is an encouraging step forward.

Keeping Affordability at the Center

One of the biggest challenges we're working through right now is how to translate our affordability goals into homes we can actually build.

From the beginning, we've been committed to creating a mixed-income neighborhood, with homes affordable to households earning approximately 70–80% of area median income, along with attainable and market-rate options. We want a community where people with different financial circumstances can live alongside one another, rather than another development where the cost of entry limits who can participate.

Making that happen requires more than good intentions.

We've spent considerable time studying comparable home prices in Brighton, evaluating what prospective buyers can reasonably afford, and looking at the relationship between construction costs and eventual sales prices. We also have to consider accessibility, energy efficiency, long-term operating costs, and the shared amenities that make Gratitude Village different from a conventional subdivision.

There are tradeoffs, and sometimes difficult conversations, involved in balancing all those priorities. We've had differences of opinion with our design team about appropriate home costs and have needed additional time to work through those questions. As a result, we've postponed our private home design workshop until after the holidays.

I know that delay may be disappointing to some of our Founders, particularly those who are eager to see floorplans and begin imagining their future homes. I'm eager for that too! But I also believe it's important to get the financial assumptions right before we move too far into detailed design.

If we design beautiful homes that the people we're hoping to serve can't afford, we haven't accomplished what we set out to do.

Building Community Before We Build Homes

While the development work continues, something else has been happening that I find equally important. We're already beginning to build relationships among the people who may eventually call Gratitude Village home.

Over the past couple of years, I've had the opportunity to meet people with a remarkable variety of backgrounds, experiences, and reasons for wanting to live in a more connected community. Some are thinking about retirement and aging in place. Others are younger adults hoping to purchase their first home. Some are looking for a neighborhood where accessibility is part of the design from the beginning, while others are drawn to the opportunities for friendship, shared activities, and mutual support.

These conversations have helped shape our vision in ways I couldn't have anticipated when I first started exploring the idea.

We've also experienced some departures as Founders have reconsidered their plans or found that their circumstances have changed. I understand those decisions, although I won't pretend they aren't disappointing. By the time someone becomes a Founder, we've often spent considerable time getting to know one another, and I've already begun imagining them as part of our future neighborhood.

It's a reminder that building a community is different from simply selling homes. People are making decisions about where and how they want to live, sometimes years before those homes will be ready. That's a significant commitment, and one we don't take lightly.

Expanding the Conversation About Housing Choice

Last week, I had the opportunity to bring together people from across the housing ecosystem for Building Possibilities, an event I organized through my BMO Fellowship with the Watson Institute.

We spent the day exploring why meaningful housing choice remains so limited and what might become possible when people from different sectors begin working together. Participants included housing developers, government representatives, nonprofit leaders, funders, and people with firsthand experience of the challenges we're trying to address.

The conversations were thoughtful, sometimes challenging, and often encouraging. We talked about regulations, construction costs, affordability, accessibility, and the barriers that arise when organizations and systems operate independently of one another.

One theme kept coming up: community.

People spoke about the importance of relationships, collaboration, and finding ways to connect resources and expertise that already exist. It reinforced something I've believed since the earliest days of Gratitude Village. We have an enormous amount of knowledge and experience in our communities, but we don't always do a very good job of bringing it together.

I'll share more about Building Possibilities in a future article because there were some wonderful insights worth exploring. For now, I'll simply say that the experience reminded me how many people are interested in finding better ways to address our housing challenges.

Learning to Appreciate the Middle

I'll admit that this stage of development has tested my patience. I'm someone who loves starting new projects, figuring out how to make things happen, and eventually seeing the results. The long stretch in between, when progress depends on technical details, professional coordination, financial modeling, and decisions that sometimes take longer than expected, isn't necessarily where I find my greatest enjoyment.

I've also been reminded that even work we're passionate about can be exhausting. Between Gratitude Village and my fellowship, the past several months have been particularly demanding. I recently wrote a more personal reflection on this experience in my Substack article, When the Dream Is Still There, but the Energy Isn't, including what I've learned about myself and the challenges of staying motivated through the long middle of a project. As we approach the holidays, I'm looking forward to slowing down a little and giving myself time to recharge.

That doesn't mean the work stops. We still have important design decisions to make, development plans to refine, and a great deal of preparation ahead of us. But I'm trying to give myself a little more room to appreciate what we've accomplished rather than immediately moving on to the next challenge.

We own the land. We have a preliminary neighborhood plan. We're continuing to work through the financial and design questions that will determine what we can build, and we're developing relationships with people and organizations who share our interest in expanding housing choice. A year ago, much of this was still uncertain. Today, we have a real place to build, and the beginnings of a plan for what that place could become.

I still look forward to the day when we can walk through Gratitude Village Brighton, visit neighbors on their front porches, share meals in the Common House, and enjoy the community we've spent so much time imagining. We're not there yet, and there is plenty of work between here and that day. But we're making progress, even when it doesn't always feel as exciting as I'd like. And that's something worth remembering as we work our way through the long middle.

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