Visit the Wonderland Hill Development Company Web site to find out about the developer of the Hearthstone Cohousing Community.

Our vision is to live creatively in supportive and sustainable relationships with each other, the neighborhood and the environment.

Hearthstone is an urban cohousing community in North Denver. The neighborhood is one of Denver's oldest and most diverse. Located near the southwest corner of the old Elitch Gardens amusement park site (near 37th and Wolff), Hearthstone has 33 townhome units as well as a Common House, garages, and carports. The rest of the site is being developed to include a mix of housing, retail, and live/work office space. The historic Elitch's theater is to be renovated and will become a community multi-use facility. The carousel house has been preserved and is used for concerts, farmer's market, and private parties.

Like many cohousing communities, Hearthstone's homes and Common House are connected by internal walkways around and through common green areas, a configuration that lends itself to children's play and casual interactions between adult residents. Hearthstone's dwellings face inward toward the green, clearly defining it as a community discrete from the larger development. Garages and other parking spaces are on the outer perimeter of the site.

Hearthstone offers:

	A nurturing environment in which to raise children
	The opportunity for older people to grow young in an intergenerational community
	A sense of belonging for all
	Neighbors who value fun, creativity, environmental concern, and community involvement
	The opportunity to share resources such as tools, machinery, books, and ideas
	A healthy balance between privacy and the opportunity to interact with others

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The North Denver neighborhood is just minutes from I-70, I-25, and the downtown area. In the near vicinity are

	Berkeley Park and Recreation Center
	Sloan's Lake Park
	Locally owned businesses: coffee houses restaurants bakeries bookstores community theaters hardware stores organic grocery and deli
	Branch libraries
	Regis College

Easily accessible by bike, bus, or car are lower downtown Denver (LoDo) and the Platte Valley, including

	Coors Field
	Invesco Field at Mile High
	Pepsi Center
	Six Flags/Elitch's
	Ocean Journey
	Children's Museum
	Denver Center for the Performing Arts
	Auraria higher education campus
	Bike paths
	Confluence Park (for wading and kayaking)

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Hearthstone, with Wonderland Hill Development Company as our developer, began to come together in the fall of 1998. In late January 1999, members met with architect Kathryn McCamant for a weekend workshop to design our site plan. We decided to place the common house at the northeast corner of the site, adjacent to a neighborhood park and visible from most of the homes in the community.

The heart of the community, the Common House includes a large dining area and meeting facility, high-capacity kitchen, children's romp room, laundry room, and much more. The large south-facing patio provides an appealing area in which to linger after dinner or gather for an impromptu party.

Charles Durrett, Katie's husband and partner in The Cohousing Company, designed the individual units. All incorporate porches, passive solar design, and open floor plans. (For details, go to Site/Building Plans.) During the design process, community members agreed on radiant heat, quiet plumbing, and solid wood doors for bathrooms and bedrooms as the three most desirable amenities.

Construction began in the fall of 2000, and was completed in early 2002.

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Hearthstone's members range in age from infants to 86 and in profession from massage therapist to librarian to computer network engineer. Several are fluent in Spanish. Some have already live in the North Denver neighborhood; others were suburbanites, one moved from Seattle and two more came from California. For more about us, see the Members section.

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