Condo Life
About 20 of the owners of the 227 units at the Barclay Towers attended this evening's Meeting with the Manager, an informal session with our building manager, Kathy Dingman, and long-time board member Bill Cox. I sat in as a rookie board member and audio tech. My idea was to record the entire meeting and put it up on The Barclay Show, as an experiment in using the internet to build community in this vertical village in downtown Denver. The audio turned out fairly well, so I will make another recording of the official Board meeting tomorrow.
Perhaps because of the presence of my recording device, this Meeting with the Manager was relatively free of fireworks. But we have some big projects looming, so homeowners have understandably strong feelings about potential costs and benefits of a renovated lobby, improvements to the top floor's exercise room and hot tub, as well as an ambitious proposal to build out the third floor with a variety of new amenities.
Unless you live at the Barclay, the following hour-long podcast is not likely to hold your attention for more than a few minutes. By now, I can almost recite parts of the meeting, having sat through the original and then listened to the entire thing again in order to create the podcast. A homeowners association like ours represents a very basic form of democracy. I find it fascinating when it's not driving me crazy.
Perhaps because of the presence of my recording device, this Meeting with the Manager was relatively free of fireworks. But we have some big projects looming, so homeowners have understandably strong feelings about potential costs and benefits of a renovated lobby, improvements to the top floor's exercise room and hot tub, as well as an ambitious proposal to build out the third floor with a variety of new amenities.
Unless you live at the Barclay, the following hour-long podcast is not likely to hold your attention for more than a few minutes. By now, I can almost recite parts of the meeting, having sat through the original and then listened to the entire thing again in order to create the podcast. A homeowners association like ours represents a very basic form of democracy. I find it fascinating when it's not driving me crazy.
Monday, March 13, 2006
