Week of Great News for Boomers Collaborative!

Hello, everyone!

So great to hear from Jennifer Hicks of True Casa Consulting this past week agreeing to work with us as our Affordable Housing Expert! And, we received the much-anticipated Resolution from the City on their request of staff for an RFP for our preferred site on Ryan Drive. We’re thrilled to see our leaders prioritize a housing cooperative and creative spaces for the 5.5-acre site, as well as innovation in energy efficiencies and water strategies.

Notable Events

We attended pitch practice with mentors last Friday (Nov 30) for some great tips and thoroughly enjoyed our Improv Session after with Joey Neugart. Tonight, Karen Meschke and I attend Terry Mitchell’s Sneak Peek for our cohort at his new venture, the Tyndall. We can’t wait to see it and have an opportunity to share our one-pager and mingle with others in Austin’s affordability network.

Progress Highlights

Based on Friday’s feedback, we’re refining our pitch. I’m busy eliminating words and boosting the number of graphic representations in our slide deck.

We talked to Scott Wilson and members of his team at BEC Austin Tuesday (Dec 4) afternoon to go over the first draft of our pro forma. And we plan to catch up with Eric Donnelly of Capital Plus Finance Institution while he’s in town this week.

With True Casa and BEC Austin on board and good news on the nature of the City’s pending RFP for our preferred site, as well as tentative progress with Capital Plus Finance on providing share loans, it’s now time to go back to the National Co-op Bank to firm up a commitment for the permanent financing.

Lowlights

Disappointingly, we only had five responses to our survey. As we understand, most likely ended up in spam folders. Plus, we think distributing it during Thanksgiving week hurt us, as well. disappointing. However, we have significant results from our 2015 Survey and have decided to use those results for now and work with AustinUp for an updated survey of their membership in January.

Thank you!

Grateful thanks to Teresa Ferguson at Austin Up. We appreciate her support and help with our survey.

Thanks, again, to BEC Austin for helping us complete our pro forma.

Many thanks to Joey Neugart for his tips and pointers.

Many thanks to Terry Mitchell for hosting our Sneak Peek.

Thanks, Julie Maslowsky, for Whole Communities | Whole Health support.

How You Can Help

· We need operations funding for three years at $50,000 per year.

· We need the expertise of a restaurateur and high-quality artisanal product retailer,

· We seek a commitment from a fitness enterprise to locate in our commercial space to partner with us in providing facilities and services to our membership.

· Our preferred site will take a while to develop. Perhaps we can begin in another location. Consider a ground-lease to us in an urban village setting.

· Consider serving on our board of directors.

Until next week!

Carol Lilly