It started six years ago with the cheerful excitement of making plans, says Theo Waegemaekers. The retired company doctor (68) walks onto the vacant lot on the main road Nieuwe Plein in Arnhem, around the corner from the city’s central station. He points around. His building collective, the Cohousing Arnhem association, is going to realize his own dream of living at this prime location. At least that is the intention.
The association wants to develop a sustainable residential building with 33 apartments based on the Danish model of cohousing, a concept in which privacy and proximity should go together. Everyone has their own apartment, but there are also many communal facilities, from meeting place to work space.
It will be a monster job, that soon became clear to the association. An architect with experience in sustainable housing projects was contracted. A process director was also appointed, a specialist in complex group projects of this kind. And also a smart calculator for construction costs.
The party was in the summer of 2020. Treasurer Waegemaekers and his colleagues defeated five other building associations in a tender for the right to buy and build on the municipal land. For the fixed price of about 1.5 million euros, the site of more than 850 square meters is theirs.
The construction world was already in full swing at that time. Interest rates were on their way to a record low. Developers had plans over and over and fought over personnel and building materials. Home buyers were willing to pay more and more for the scarce housing.
Cheaper brick
But at the end of last year, interest rates started to rise. Inflation shot up. The Russian invasion of Ukraine also unleashed an unprecedented energy crisis at the end of February. This small construction project in Arnhem was also confronted with the plagues that affect construction throughout the Netherlands.
A few weeks after the Russian invasion, the association submitted its final design to the contractor, plus a cost estimate. The design had already been slightly adjusted, with an extra seventh floor on the building. With the proceeds of six apartments, the whole thing became slightly cheaper.
The contractor soon came back with his verdict. The prices of bricks, glass, wood and other building materials had risen even further: ‘It won’t work that way.’
The association wondered how to cut back further. Yes, there may still be an extra subsidy, for example in the area of building for seniors. But no, the association wants to build for all age groups, not just for wealthy elderly people. Starters with a first mortgage should still be able to get a place.
It may be possible to cut back on material, such as expensive brick, but the options are limited. ‘We are, of course, bound by the conditions of the award,’ says architect Peter Groot of H2A Architecten, who has joined Waegemaekers on the construction site. ‘The council’s welfare committee is also watching. That’s good too, because nobody wants to go back to the sparse architecture of the seventies.’
The provisional answer is to scrap the underground parking, which was previously mandated by the municipality. The new city council wants to reduce the parking standard for new buildings from one parking space per household to ‘zero’. So Cohousing Arnhem can probably suffice with a much smaller, semi-sunken parking garage with 0.3 parking space per household.
The new design is now with the contractor, Hendriks Bouw from Oss. He is still busy calculating, but is also looking at developments in the housing market. After all, the company has declared itself willing to assume the risk of a limited number of unsold apartments. There are currently thirteen for sale.
Waegemaekers takes another look around the building site covered with wood chips. ‘It’s going to be very exciting now. But we still assume that we can set up something very special here.’