A Brief Update on Polestar Village, Fort Collins, Colorado
Dear Friends,
Our brief moment of celebration for this recent and essential milestone in the creation of Polestar Village – final approval from the city and the recording of our plat map in Larimer County – has been well-earned and much needed. Many hundreds of souls have made significant contributions to this effort and we are so grateful! The next steps are much more obvious though not necessarily less challenging. Here’s an outline of where we go from here:
We have negotiated permission from the city to build Polestar Village in not more than 5 phases. This is helpful since doing all the horizontal construction (infrastructure) at one time, though more efficient, is difficult to capitalize. As it stands, we can bite off smaller chunks of the horizontal costs and sell lots and units before moving on to the next phase.
Phase one, the 18 single family homes at the north end of the property, is our biggest financial asset and will provide the means to fund infrastructure for future phases. We currently have commitments of roughly half the amount we need to break ground. Since we have taken three new reservations in just the past few weeks and will hit the MLS (multiple listing service for real estate) in the next few days, we are hopeful that we will have all the needed funding soon. With just 8 presales on the single family lots, we can self-fund our own infrastructure for Phase I.
With final approvals in place, Polestar now has many individual assets that can be used as collateral to protect loans. Though we have standing offers from ‘hard money’ lenders (traditional banks are more difficult for non-profits), we hope to find a more economical way forward by presales, reservations, and continuing our peer to peer lending program. If you are interested in lending, investing, reserving or purchasing at Polestar, contact us soon!
Phase 2 gets to the heart of the community and begins construction in the Village Center. The garden; our first common spaces for gathering, meals and meditation; housing, the barn and more will bring our vision of community to life.
Especially since Covid, more and more people understand why a community like this would be a wonderful place to live. Many also respond with immediate enthusiasm and gratitude, saying, “Of course—this is exactly what’s needed right now!” Our biggest need then, is simply to get the word out. If you can share our website or newsletter with others or would like to get involved in any way, we’d love to hear from you!
There are many more aspects of the project to update and we will share more in-depth at our Sunday meeting and in newsletters to come.
Mahalo (thank you!) for your interest and support!
michael
