Talk:Madison Community Cooperative

message: Benjamin wrote:
[My comments are in brackets]
I seriously question the inclusion of some of these houses in a generic list, which has current houses that were always MCC or were in MCC from early on, with houses that were never in MCC and in a few cases were in the co-op arm of the now-defunct Madison Mutual Housing and Co-operative Association (which kept its mutual housing arm as Madison Development Corporation)
*Anon, 170 Jackson Street was never an MCC house [I have no information.]
*Badger Photo [Co-op House was owned by Larry Kneeland, who asked MCC for help finding other photography students to live there. MCC held one meeting there, and all the members took photos.  Badger Photo joined MCC and paid associate member dues for one or two years.]
*Kibbutz Langdon, 142 Langdon, [was the site of a terrible mistake by MCC (the name "MASC" was changed a few years earlier.)  The leader of Kibbutz Langdon somehow convinced MCC's board to lease the building to the house corporation which an option to buy, and then when the house corporation failed to exercise its option, MCC's board extended the lease and the option for another year.  Then the house corporation did exercise its option, stayed in place for one more year, and then sold the house (flipped it) to Theta Delta Chi, who were not its original residents.  It was an owned house and dues-paying member of MCC during its entire three-year existence as a co-op.]
*Melting Snow Co-op -- never in MCC. Went defunct c. 1990-91 because the inhabitants decided not to pursue successors upon moving out.  [I have no information.]
*Rivendell, 622 N Henry St. was in MCC for at least one year as an associate member.  The official corporate name behind Rivendell is CMHC -- Central Madison Housing Corporation.  
[You have to understand something about the era.  University of Wisconsin had bought vast tracts of low-priced housing and bulldozed whole blocks downtown to make space for university buildings that never came during my entire seven years in Madison.  The absence of all those houses put enormous pressure on the university to provide housing, so they built high-rises like Ogg, Sellery, and Witte.  Some would call those properties vertical slums.]
[MCC had three MCC advisors -- real estate professor Dr. James Graaskamp, MASC founder Max Kummerow, and our attorney Mark Musolf.  In the fall of 1970, when I was selected as MCC's executive director, I spent many hours talking with them to understand what we could do and should do.  MASC (later to be called MCC) rented Summit Avenue and Nottingham for a year each, before the house corporations bought the houses.  Along the way, 222 Langdon was a one-year co-op leased by a house corporation, and then sold by its fraternity trustee owners to James Korb.  MCC could have bought it, if the members of 222 Langdon Street had asked us.  260 Langdon was a big house but totally trashed by its last generation of fraternity members.  MCC could have bought it, gutted it, and rebuilt it as a co-op, but we didn't think of that idea at the time, and James Korb bought it.  Resistance House, 211 Langdon Street, was for sale for a few months, and MCC could have / should have bought it.  Many other houses were for sale, and MCC could have bought them for $100,000 to $150,000 each -- and pass the benefits of those house purchases to generations of students to come.  We were held down, however, by a few anti-expansion members, and we preferred to operate by consensus.]
[Then even as MCC had opportunities to expand, to our surprise, Graaskamp, Kummerow, and Musolf -- who helped us conceive and dedicate Stone Manor, Marvin Gardens, Nottingham, and Summit Avenue-- had the bright idea to go into business in opposition to MCC.  They had no faith whatsoever in the co-ops they themselves had promoted.]
[I think the problem was me.  I think they didn't think that I could manage the co-op system -- I don't know -- I always thought they were friends until a year later, when I realized that Rivendell could have been an MCC house, and the beauty of a co-op house is, once it's paid for, you don't have to keep paying for it over and over, like normal real estate that's bought and sold.  Instead, you can use the proceeds from members' monthly house payments to buy more co-op houses.  I had a vision 50 years ago that looked forward 10, 20, 30, 40, 50 years into the future.  My beloved real estate professor, my attorney, and my partner in co-op organizing lacked a fundamental understanding of how the future should be.  Was my vision correct?  Looking back after 50 years, I can say with 100% certainty that my vision of correct.  All the co-ops I worked to start (except Tralfamadore, which MCC sold for a big profit) are continuing and thriving to this day.  In the words of "Hamilton,"  "I prob'ly shouldn't brag, but dag, I amaze and astonish / The problem is I got a lot of brains but no polish."]
*Rochdale [International Co-op is still functioning, being the second longest-running co-op in Madison after Babcock House Co-op, which opened in the 1940's and thrived ever since, never touched by the rest of the co-op movement. Benjamin wrote about "Rochdale Confederation" but no such thing exists.  Rochdale International Co-op House was a dues-paying member of MCC for at least one year, but it is an independent house.  Babcock was never an associate member of MCC, but MCC should approach them about membership.]
*Solveig House [was an enthusiast participant in MCC for its year of existence, and in fact at the time, MCC president Robert Bohrer was a resident of Solveig.  The problem was that the house corporation held a one-year lease, and a year later, another group, not a co-op, outbid them for a lease.  MCC could have AND SHOULD HAVE attempted to negotiate a second year's lease and maybe a purchase.]
*Summit Avenue at 1820 Summit Avenue [was just like Nottingham.  Max Kummerow and James Reaven negotiated the lease for the first year under MASC's name, then the house corporation bought the house.  They paid MCC dues for a few years early in their life cycle.]
*Tralfamadore Co-op at 240 Langdon [was an MCC house from day one.  I negotiated the purchase for $120,000 after driving up to Minneapolis in a snowstorm to meet with executives of the owner, Mutual Services Insurance Company, which acquired the property after a mortgage default by its previous residents.  Mutual Services is a consumer's co-op, and I reprented MCC as a fellow co-op.  The price tag was just $120,000 for a big property, always owned by MCC until they sold it about 8 years later.]
*Yahara [Land Trust on Linden Street was founded by Janet Hilliker, an alumna of Stone Manor.  She had the same idea as me -- take a house off the market and let subsequent generations of members enjoy the fruits of the labors of the earlier members, except she called it a "Land Trust."  Janet did a good job, but I wish the house had joined MCC, at least as an associate.  They may have done so after I moved to East Lansing.]
[I suggest even today that MCC should rent vacant houses for a year with an option to buy.  MCC's treasury has grown through the years, and now is always a good time to buy real estate.]
[Will Rogers said, "Buy land. They ain’t making any more of the stuff."
Mark Twain said, "Buy land, they’re not making it anymore."]
Jay.wind (talk) 03:09, 22 March 2021 (UTC)
thread_title: CMHC vs. MCC  vs. MASC

message: [Jay Jacob Wind wrote:  I don't have great Wikipedia editing skills, but I have wanted to set the record straight for many years.  I can only cite my own recollections, but fortunately, I have a (Badger) photographic memory.]
I prodded this article, as the only citations are primary, and even those are few. Please remove the prod tag if you feel you can wikify the article and cite factual assertions to non-primary sources. Failing that, though, I'll either nominate for AfD or stubify if the prod tag comes down. LOLthulu 19:14, 14 January 2009 (UTC)
replies: text: I removed the prod tag, added more content, and multiple references. I'm now creating a to do list and will work on cleaning up the rest of the article and adding more references. Poseurtech (talk) 15:30, 17 January 2009 (UTC)
replies: text:  I removed all of the primary sources, including references to MCC's own web page, minutes from meetings of Dane County boards, the Loth wiki, and I think that's it. Please review WP:PRIMARY and WP:OR before replacing them. LOLthulu 16:07, 17 January 2009 (UTC)
thread_title:  prod! 

message: MCC is a 200 person co-op organization with a unique organizational structure with deep ties to NASCO and radical/progressive movements in Madison. Poseurtech (talk) 15:38, 17 January 2009 (UTC)
thread_title:  WikiProject Cooperatives Mid-importance Reasoning