Our primary vision includes conscious relationships, awareness practice, compassionate communication and sociocratic decision making. We place a strong emphasis on sustainability and encourage urban ecovillage practices.
Our Story
In 2010, Ron & Laurie relocated to Asheville, NC with the intention of building a community after decades of living in different types of communities on their own. At the time, Ron had a lifetime of experience in building that he wished to combine with his 30 yrs of community living experience to create something new.
They shared a lifetime interesting in sustainability and intended for this project to incorporate all aspects of sustainability: social, economic, and environmental. The vision for the project was to create a strong, sustainable community that would provide the context for personal and interpersonal growth that could bridge our society’s gap from the lonely and separate individuals toward connection and comunication.
In 2013, they purchased the land that would become our neighborhood, which included a brick ranch home that would later become the community house. It took about two and a half years of planning, engineering, and zoning before building commenced by 2016. By mid-2018, the five initial green-built homes had been completed, making a total of 6 residences for the neighborhood.
Moving forward, we are in the planning stage for our next two to three houses and plan on moving ahead with the first of those homes within the next month. We hope to continue building slowly and intentionally as we focus on building relationships during process of getting to know potential buyers. We’re going along slowly on purpose to ensure that we do things right the first time and continue to build healthy, nourishing homes for us all.
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Developers – Ron and Laurie Czecholinski
With a lifetime of home building and over 25 years of community building experience, Ron and Laurie love to help people create healthy homes, as well as community-oriented living environments. Their experience is hands-on and goes beyond the nuts and bolts of construction to focus on the relationships with those we live and work with. They understand the dream and challenge of construction and collaboration – the pitfalls and frustrations along the way, as well as the excitement and satisfaction.
Residents
Within the design parameters of Echo Hills Cottages, residents are invited into full participation. From designing your home to creating the neighborhood, all residents are crucial to the co-creative process and are invited to participate in all the varying levels of decision making.
A healthy mix of personalities have converged so far here at Echo Hills. Activists, humanitarians, scientists, engineers, social workers, developers, entrepreneurs, lifelong communitarians, gardeners, beekeepers, wanderers, homebodies, and more. Some of us work full time at our trades. Some of us are happily retired. Some of us can’t wrap our minds around that concept.
All told, there are about a dozen of us at the moment. Though we lead lives of our own and maintain healthy boundaries, we’ve landed here from different backgrounds, paths of life, and ages to share and hold space with one another for a while.