Living large in tight quarters

Threshold Housing took three small house lots and transformed them into a complex, populated by four single women, two single men, and three couples. This was more diversity than expected, given market analysis identifying single professionals - primarily women, ages 30 to 55 - as the most likely buyers.

The complex is U-shaped, with three inward-facing cottages flanking either side of a gated courtyard. Anchoring the back edge of the property is a triplex of three adjoining carriage houses. The layout was designed to encourage interaction among residents.

The carriage units, which help to create a buffer to the highway sounds a block away, sit atop a row of nine garages, reserved for the cottage owners' parking.

So that the homeowners don't resort to using these garages for storage space, individual 7-by-10-foot storage rooms are provided in two walk-in basements.

This indirectly benefits the neighbors, as does the overall look of the project.

Variations in the color of the cottages and the roofs are designed to give them their own character, while visually integrating them into the surrounding single-family neighborhood.

Ravenna Cottages enjoys an inviting public face, partly because of a decision not to make it a walled compound. The garden at the center of the property is clearly visible from the sidewalk through an attractive, but sturdy metal fence.

"We said, 'Let's give this [view] to the neighbors,' " Kucher explains.

Unlike the Pine Street cottages, which created loft sleeping decks to maximize living space, Ravenna Cottages are 850 square feet spread over a full two stories. This includes a great room (living/dining/kitchen space) and a half bath on the first floor, and a full-size bath and two bedrooms on the upper floor.

Among the standard features are a gas fireplace, high-speed Internet access, a laundry closet with stacked washer and dryer, deep kitchen drawers, hardwood floors downstairs, and wall-to-wall carpeting upstairs.

Every inch is used and nicely finished, which helps explain the price: $255,000 to $310,000 per condo.

Retiree Joan Davis, a Ravenna resident, says she finds her cottage well designed, comfortable, and the storage space more than adequate. She also likes the size of the complex and congeniality of the neighbors.

James Fearn, a lawyer, is equally pleased with his home in the even cozier Pine Street Cottages. He enjoys the discipline that living in a cottage encourages and finds it involves only minor inconveniences, such as rearranging the furniture to accommodate small dinner parties.

Kucher said he caught some flak from city-council members, who said, "Well, John, your cottages look great," they said, "but they're not affordable. You made them too expensive."

Kucher's reply was that they didn't have an affordability problem, the city had a supply problem.

"Our sense was it was a demonstration project," he says, "and we wanted to create the most livable project we could because we know a lot of neighborhood planning groups would be coming over and looking at it, considering whether they wanted to allow these in their neighborhood. It's really a touchy political situation."

This means more inspections, approvals, and public meetings than is normal for a project of this size. It can test and frustrate a developer.

Kucher says it would be easy to produce a more affordable product, but to do so would run the risk of alienating the very neighbors whose support is critical.

From his perspective as a cottage resident, Mr. Fearn says that the success of any cottage project depends on quality workmanship.

"If you are going to have increased [housing] density," he says, "you must devote real attention to detail in the design and the landscaping. Because if you build cracker boxes that people don't enjoy living in, the houses could become a blight on the neighborhood."

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