What does community mean to you?
My dad was a high school football coach and teacher. One thing he always said when coaching was “start with the end in mind”. What he meant was, you always start with the end result you are looking for, and then you plan for and teach the best path to make that end result a reality.
When we started the Montava development, we began with the desires of this great community and the decades of work that had gone into its planning and development.
The Fort Collins community is known for many things including:
- being very conservation minded on things like energy and water
- being passionate about the outdoors and nature
- being incredibly innovative
- being committed to local “everything” and in our specific case organic farming
- caring deeply about health and wellness
- caring about each other, and the idea of overall “community”
These are incredibly wonderful ideas to build a community development around, and they became the foundation for the vision that is Montava. I asked a long time Fort Collins resident what “community” means to her and gave her only 4 sentences to describe it. I thought her answers captured the essence of what we intend to develop in Montava much better than I could.
Here’s what she said.
1. Basic, sensible shared services like garbage, possibly yard services, composting, recycling, etc…(A different garbage company races through my neighborhood everyday…not good for safety, noise pollution or the environment!)
2. An ALL generational community with old folks, kids and everything in-between.
3. An intentional, but extremely diverse residential population who share a commitment to healthy food and supporting the folks who grow it….not just financially, but holistically.
4. A neighborhood where people are outside of their homes moving, walking, riding bikes who know each others names.
So what does community mean to you? It’s an open question, and I look forward to you sharing your thoughts with us.
PS. If you haven’t ever compared the incredible food grown by Native Hill Farms to what you can buy in your local grocery store, you should. This is a picture of some collard greens I picked up from the Native Hill stand this past Saturday at the court house compared to the same produce I then bought at Whole Foods. Besides the fact that its amazing these folks grow this right here, right now, and you can know them, which one would you rather eat?
