Stuart: Building Research has stalled for now, since this doesn't seem to be very urgent anymore...

Jessica here: I would like to contribute to the discussion of whether Free Ride should buy a building by putting forth a number of questions for the consideration of the collective. I don't mean to discourage us from considering something that could be great if we have the courage to do it. But, as a person who often allows myself to get stuck cleaning up neglected or unallocated work in the interest of not seeing something I care about fail in some way, I have a selfish reason for wanting some serious thought to go into this. I will put these questions on the wiki too, so others can easily add to the discussion.

• How much work will it be? I feel we need to very thoroughly assess this before going down this road.
  • If we get a fixer-upper, it seems it will inevitably be an immense amount of work or money. If we do it ourselves as we have in the past I cannot see it taking less than years and years, given the amount of time most of us actually have to contribute (and referencing the rate at which projects on our own homes get completed). How will we marshal the necessary labor force, or how will we finance improvements?
  • If we get less of a fixer-upper, building management still has to happen. What is involved and how much work is this?
  • If we get a shared space, how much work is required to coordinate with shared users?
• Who will do said work? There are multiple strategies for dealing with all the potential work items listed above.
• How much will it cost? Obviously related to which strategies we decide upon above. Do we have that money? How will we get it if not? How much work will that be and who will do it?
• What kind of time commitment is required to see this process through from beginning to some stable situation in the future? Do we have people in the group willing to make that committment? (as in, "I will be in Pittsburgh for the next two years and commit to working on this during that time") Or if not individuals, do we believe that our volunteer pool as a whole is capable of seeing the project through to a stable point?
• Can we as a group handle the planning and coordination necessary to do this? Last time we moved, it ended up being very destructive and demoralizing to the collective, because it took up all our time, and because in my assessment we did not manage to come up with good ways to work together on an unprecedently complex task. Complexity and differences in working styles were not dealt with productively, causing frustration and hurt. It's way different to collectively make small decisions within the relatively fixed framework of open shop than it is to collectively embark on a huge, long, complicated process that will affect everything about what we do, and which we're not very familiar with. Buying a building would be the most complicated thing we have ever done together. Are we prepared? Have we learned from the past, do we have confidence we'd do better this time?
• Does Free Ride itself have sufficient long-term sustainability to justify a building purchase? Such a thing only makes sense if we're going to be around for, like, the next 10 years. Is that going to happen? Honestly, at least half the collective are at somewhat flexible points in their lives, and in the next year or two could find themselves making life decisions that remove them from Free Ride. Or simply getting bored with it, if our programs don't become more satisfying and dynamic than they are right now. What happens if we lose half the collective, does Free Ride continue? I know we are all trying really hard with this new governance structure to end up with a positive answer to that question. But we have barely started to address the question of how to improve open shop so that it doesn't burn people out. So, given these serious questions, do we have confidence right now in our sustainability to buy a building?
• What are the individuals who make up this collective excited about spending their time and energy on? What kind of day-to-day work do we like - building things, doing administrative and financial stuff, working with people, working on bikes? Are some people interested in Free Ride because they want to make particular projects happen - youth programs, pedal-powered technology, autonomous building space, etc? Do we have a match between what people want to do and what would be required to make this building project happen?
• What are our other goals for Free Ride (as in, advancing what we actually do - improving open shop, outreach, developing mini-free rides or a mobile program, expanding programs or collaboration with other sustainability work)?
• How much would a building-buying project interfere with pursuit of above personal and collective goals?
• To what extent does the current situation at CJ interfere with pursuit of those goals? Are there reasonable prospects for improving CJ problems, or not? Which choice comes out ahead in terms of letting us actually do what we exist to do?
• What do we want out of buying a building - storefront location, green building (or potential for conversion to such), shared space with bike pittsburgh, community space for other projects, etc?
• Specifically regarding the New York Opportunity that would require us to buy something within 90 days -
  • Will this actually be as good or better deal than getting a mortgage from a bank? Andalusia has a list of questions to ask this dude along those lines.
  • Can we meet our goals for buying a building within the short timeframe available here?
  • How does working with this guy compare to going it alone - what will we lose if we pass this opportunity up?

Okay, that's my list. What do folks think?

(Will says:)

On the subject of CJ & relocating:

• Generally speaking, I find myself substantially agreeing with Jessica fairly often, and her comments above are no exception. I wasn't around for the last move, so I don't have that experience as a point of reference. However, I agree that there are some major things we would need to work out before going out on our own.
• My big concern (and the reason I kicked the bee hive on this latest round of discussion) is what happens if stuff with CJ forces us to go out on our own? That seems likely enough to me that we ought to have a plan for dealing with it. I see our current situation as unstable and unsustainable; either it has to get better, or it's going to get worse. I would count maintaining our status quo as getting worse, because we seem to be accumulating problems faster than we're clearing them up.
• I am seriously concerned about CJ's stability and profitabilty. Supposedly they don't have the money to fix the lights in the parking lot. What's up with that?!? They were supposed to have their lease squared away in August, but the end is still not in sight. It seems to me that they are trying to do some really complicated stuff, and they might not be able to pull it off. What happens for CJ then? What happens for us then? Will we have any advance warning if stuff goes seriously wrong (CJ closing down or losing space for example)?
• On the other hand, CJ's mission and FR's mission are very compatible and naturally go together. Perhaps certain personnel changes at CJ could really turn things around.
• I think trying to get a new building in 90 days is probably more than the collective can handle now in its current condition. However, I could see things rapidly deteriorating with CJ, and I would be really really disappointed to see FR fizzle out or go away if that happens. I think we should try to get the collective healthy enough to move relatively soon if we had to.
• Another big thing to consider is, what would it mean for us to go in together on a building (or buildings) and related projects with Bike PGH, perhaps with Bike PGH as our landlord. As I see it, such an arrangement could potentially pull things in the direction of assimilating FR into Bike PGH. How would that affect FR's decision making process and its identity as a collective?

On the subject of Free Ride's future and why I care about it:

• I think Free Ride provides a really valuable service to Pittsburgh and, by way of example, to many other places and groups.
• I came to Pittsburgh to get involved in sustainabilty related stuff; my decision was not a casual one, and I intend to stick around for a while. Of the things I want to put my time into, bikes and local farming are at the top of the list.
• As I see it, we are rapidly transitioning out of the period when cars are the dominant means of transportation. There are going to be a lot of people who can't afford to drive any more, and the demand for cheap wheels will be huge. In that context, it would be really good for Free Ride to be healthy and prepared to scale up its operations or perhaps to help other shops get started.
• From the waiting lists during open shops, it's clear that we already have more demand than we can handle. It would be really cool to have a shop that was open a lot more often.

On the subject of how do we move forward:

• We need to really sit down and find some solutions to the organizational problems that are currently giving us trouble.
• I wonder if we should find a way for collective members to get paid for some of the time they put into FR. I can say that my commitment to FR is significantly influenced by the money vs. time trade-off. This summer I've had the luxury of plentiful free time subsidised by savings from my old job. However, as I get no money from FR, and I will soon need more cash, I expect to scale back my involvement in FR to free up time for stuff that pays. If we want to have a collective that people will potentially be making a long term commitment to, it seems unreasonable to expect all that time for free. It's not like we're broke.
• Personally, I intend to be involved with Free Ride for a long time. However, making rent and putting food on the table have priority. I already put a lot of time into FR, and to the extent it is economically feasible for me to do so, I am interested in sustaining or perhaps increasing that comitment.
• Regardless of any organizational changes to the collective, we need to either make some progress on improving things with CJ (lease!), or come up with a contingency plan for moving.
• Somebody mentioned the idea of closing down the shop some over the winter in order to free up time for planning (and to avoid freezing). I think that sounds like a good idea.
• There is also the possibility of doing something, perhaps temporarily, in Morgan's neighbor's garage. As I understand, it's available now and it has heat.

11/8/07 will says after some additional reflection:

In the past few weeks, I've had a ton of free time, and I've dumped a good portion of it into Free Ride. In particular, I've been hanging out and talking more with people in the collective for committee meetings, volunteer nights, and other stuff. Those interactions have clued me in to a whole new level of how Free Ride works and how it affects people.

Some observations:

- The current state of things is even more stressful than I realized for many volunteers in the collective.

- If people are getting burned out (and it seems like that is the case), I think we need to work pretty hard on fixing the underlying problems.

- I'm pretty sure that moving soon would be a really bad idea, unless we first manage to establish a new structure that is more rewarding and less stressful for volunteers.

- I'm still excited about Free Ride. I would like to see us start by becoming healthier as a collective. After that, it would be cool to either get our own space or significantly improve our working relationship with CJ.

- I am still concerned about CJ's unresponsiveness and potential instability.