A developer can check every box for parks and shared spaces and still create a place nobody wants to spend time in. Colby Cox has seen stormwater ponds, tiny playgrounds, and generic amenity packages counted as community space even when they do very little to bring different people together or give them a reason to stay. Norm Van Eeden Petersman talks with the Convergence Communities founder about what changes when those spaces are designed around actual human activity: kids playing, teenagers hanging out, people eating, exercising, gathering, and simply being around one another. A park can occupy the right number of acres, but what makes it feel alive enough that people actually choose to be there?
Hello and welcome to Bottom Up Revolution. I'm Norm. I'm stepping in for Tiffany this week with a great interview with Colby Cox, who is the founder and president of Convergence Communities, a longtime entrepreneur in the craft brewing world, and someone working to build stronger communities using really good placemaking principles.
He's thinking about places for gathering and everyday routines that actually bring people out of their homes, garages, and vehicles and into spaces that are very thoughtfully designed so people can get connected. Welcome to Bottom Up Revolution, Colby.
Thank you. Good to be here. Thanks for having me.
You've been working at this for a long period of time, and one of your first larger development projects was connected or adjacent to Dogfish Head Brewing. I wanted to ask, because I love the beer and have always been a huge fan: Can you share how that experience put on your framework the question of how we build in much the same way that we used to build, and how we do that so we can not only benefit the community but create lasting value?
Sure. Around the time that we developed Cannery Village, which is where Dogfish Head is to this day, there was an interesting backstory because that was a cleanup of an environmentally contaminated site and involved a lot of complexity. It was a combination of finding a new use for the land and making it part of the community, but also cleaning up what had been a 100-year-old factory. Our job wasn't only to try to add to the character of the town and fit into the town. It was also to try to get rid of something that was really negatively impacting it.
I was quite young when I did that project. Actually, I was 23 years old when I took that on. To some extent, that was a good thing because I was really hungry and wanted to soak it up and learn as much as I could. But it was probably one of the most complex things I ever could have gotten involved in, just in terms of environmental regulation and everything else. Ultimately, it ended up being such a win for everyone.
Dogfish Head was really struggling at the time to find a permanent spot. They had moved a couple of times, and they were growing so fast that every time they would move somewhere, within a year or year and a half they couldn't fit anymore and needed to find another place.
It just so happened that, in this particular spot, there was a building that, after tearing down a million tons of concrete and everything else, we could not tear down, and we had to find a use for it. The only viable use in that area that would work synergistically with housing and a neighborhood was something like craft beer that was a clean industrial use, pretty friendly, and had a storefront and hospitality arm. It was a super fun thing to do.
In terms of how that's informed everything I've done since then, going back to your question, traditional neighborhood design was the hot topic back then. There was this idea of going back to the way things were developed in the past, with smaller setbacks, zero lot lines, and more density. It was the idea that if we just design it the right way, we will inherently get community.
Let's put it this way: Bad design can definitely take away from creating community. Great design does not guarantee community, and that's where things like the brewery and some of the other stuff we're doing start to come into play.
One of the things that stood out to me, going back, is that you got a bunch of the council members onto a bus and took them to see an example of what you wanted to see. This is not a rare occurrence. I've heard of lots of different people who, basically, to get it over the line, have to actually experience it in person.
We've seen that down in Sugar Land, Texas, where they took the whole council and brought them to places that are working and functional. Even in my community, there was a rally against housing. In that context, someone said, “Are you going to do a rally for housing?” I said, “No, we're going to do a walking tour of the housing that already exists in our place and show people homes that people can call home, and then ask the question: Are you sure you're against this?”
Can you talk about that mindset of understanding that, if people can't see it or picture it, it's really hard for them to want to approve it or be a participant in moving forward for the community?
I will say that, in general, we tend to be a fear-based society. It's not about living in a world of surplus; it's more about protecting your downside. It tends to be the same way with town councils and planning and zoning, because they never get rewarded for doing great things. They only get told everything they screwed up. I get it. It's unfortunate that it works that way, but that tends to be how it is. A lot of times, it's the fear of the unknown.
It's crazy because you can literally take these people and show them, in their own community, the design that exists and say, “Listen, this is exactly what we're trying to do right here. Do you see the distance between these two homes? It's only 10 feet. This is how it was built 400 years ago. Would you agree that, because you've designated this as a historic district and you want to preserve it, this is good design?” They will agree with you. Then you say, “Okay, well, this is what I want to do.”
Then some engineer shows up and says, “Yeah, but this fire truck needs a 250-foot turning radius, and every 100 years we get this snowstorm, and therefore we need 120-foot rights-of-way down every street to plow.” Nothing against engineers, but there has to be a balance between beauty and function.
We seem to have lost our appreciation for the importance of beauty when it comes to the conversation. We see it as an add-on that would be nice after we solve for function. If there's a little bit of beauty, that's great. It's a shame because beauty used to be such an important part of design. If you go back to some of the greatest time periods in human history of creation, beauty and aesthetics were such a huge part of that. The aqueduct system didn't just have to be functional. It actually had to look aesthetically good. It had to fit into the architecture.
I think we ended up taking council, as you mentioned, to two communities that are adjoined: Lakelands and Kentlands in Northern Virginia, just to show them what alleyways do, rear access, and what setbacks look like. It was really important that it was a similar climate, relatively speaking, so they could understand that somehow these people figure out how to keep the streets plowed, and somehow this works. They loved it. It was a thriving community and looked great.
Now Cannery Village and what's going on there have been referenced for other projects in the town as, “Hey, we want to try to build on this.” I understand why councils and planning and zoning think the way they do, because there's no reward for winning there. However, I do appreciate it when a planning and zoning commission or a council is willing to have some political will and be a little brave in the interest of creating good design.
One of the things that stands out in some of your design work and the projects that you've moved forward with is that some of the homes are lovely. Others are more, not utilitarian, but in one sense background buildings, because much of your focus is also on creating really good public spaces that are available to others.
You've got a couple of great quotes pushing back on the idea of the simple amenity package, which is the soulless gathering room, maybe a gym that looks like a hotel gym that nobody can actually fit in and nobody would ever be caught working out in. Can you share your thinking that you need to create a place that's worth being in and not just escaping from? How is that becoming more part of the foreground and more of that calculation?
How hard is it to get that message through? You're talking about per-square-foot costs and some of the concerns that people have about lingering strata fees or condo fees that, down the road, are going to be a requirement for them. They balk at, “Well, are we sure that we want to have a gathering space or a fountain or something like that that will serve our community well?”
I think that a lot of developers, in my experience, look at the offerings for a community with the viewpoint of checking a list of boxes and putting enough open space or green space on a map in order to show up at a council meeting and get an approval. To be honest with you, the only word I have for it is lazy.
They're meeting some ratio of public space or green space to paved space.
Exactly. What some people will try to use or designate as open space is a stormwater management pond that is really not very functional. Aesthetically, you can make them look pretty good, and it does create view corridors and things like that. But functional open space is a different deal.
By functional, it not only needs to be a place where people can gather physically and that is useful, but also one they want to use because it is easily accessible. It's generally located in a place that feels inviting and is of a scale that allows for a variety of functions.
A tot lot is great, but if you start taking these things and, rather than breaking them up, try to put some of them together, that's how you really start to get energy around something. You get the young families and the playground working with the skate park and some of the teenagers and young adults over there. You put that in the same proximity as the bouldering area, and then you've got recreational fields, so you've got activity going on there with various recreational sports.
Once you start having these things where there's always something being activated throughout the day, it starts to build this energy. When you come into a community, people get a sense of that energy immediately. It's inviting. That's what we want. Every human being has some innate desire to be connected with other human beings. If we create these spaces where it feels inviting and natural to connect with people, whether we consciously understand this or not, it definitely is an attractive feature.
I'm in the hospitality business too. I own breweries and restaurants. There's definitely a secret sauce to creating an environment where people feel that factor of, “I don't know what it is about this place, but I like it. It's warm. It's inviting. I feel comfortable.” You can do that with indoor spaces. You can do that with outdoor spaces, and it's really important.
You're someone in the Strong Towns world. We talk about Nassim Taleb's concept of having skin in the game, and this feels really important to me because I've played SimCity on a computer and I get to be in God mode. As an advocate, I at times am advocating in my city for changes to our zoning standards and some of our building requirements. Yet I do so from the vantage point of a renter with modest means, without an active project on the go.
Your perspective as someone who has skin in the game is really important. I have projects and people that are dependent on us being able to move forward and not getting stalled out or completely sideswiped by new requirements. That feels to me like one of those challenges that we have in our planning profession in particular.
As Chuck would say, the zoners with their highlighters can have way more of an outsized impact than maybe at first glance they intend to. Or, as you mentioned, if the standard requires that the garbage truck have perfect access and tons of extra space in order to get to the garbage facilities on any given development, that can have an outsized influence on chopping a lot of otherwise good things out of the plans because you need to meet some dumb requirement. It's orderly, sure, but it can be chaotic but dumb.
As advocates, especially as our audience members are listening, I think at times we wonder who the brave person is who is actually pushing some of these projects forward. But when you have that skin in the game, it certainly grounds you in a sense of responsibility. I think it also gives you a perspective that says, “Hey, here's where some of these big requirements that get dumped on us late in the process can really harm us.” How can we be good advocates for fine-tuning that sense of obligation and responsibility as project developers are coming through?
I think this is going to get a little deep because it gets to a greater issue, which is that fundamentally there's a quiet majority that doesn't speak up very often. It's really important that that voice gets activated in a bigger way on so many different levels, in terms of where we are going as humanity, whether it's a conversation about AI or a conversation about how the property next to you is developed.
Yes, I have skin in the game, for sure. But the biggest skin in the game that I have is, for lack of a better term, a serious level of caring about what legacy I'm going to leave with my communities. Yes, my projects have to perform financially, or I can't talk to banks and I can't talk to investors. But the most important thing in this office, and to me, is: When somebody drives into one of my communities 50 years from now, when maybe I'm alive, probably I'm not, what does it look like? What does it feel like? Has it stood the test of time? Did I generally do a good job? Is there quality in the work that I did? That's really important to me.
It's really important that the more quiet majority starts to activate as a voice and starts to speak up, because it's really becoming problematic in the broader scheme of issues that we are facing right now. There are a few people telling us right now what our future is going to look like as humans. It's, “This technology is going to change your life, but don't worry, we'll take care of you. Just know that it's going to be great. We can't tell you exactly what it is. You may not have a job.”
So far, I would say, if you really follow the last 25 years, the truth is that we have failed to be delivered the benefits and promises of what technology was going to do for us on a broader scale. Yes, there have been improvements in our lives, but generally, if you just step back and go, “Are we a better society? Are we happier as people now than we were 25 years ago?” I would say that the answer in just about everything says no. That is not the case. People feel more isolated. They feel more alone. They feel detached. There are high rates of depression and anxiety.
Here we are sitting on the precipice of huge advancements in technology. My attitude on it is that it's generally benign. It could be the greatest thing in the world or not. But we as humanity should be the voice in deciding which direction it goes, not three or four tech billionaire dorks dictating exactly what happens.
It's the same thing with developers. I can't stress this enough. Just because some guy shows up at a public hearing and says, “I have millions of dollars on the line,” and has a bunch of big lawyers and engineers standing behind him, does not mean that the person who lives down the street should not be brave enough to stand up, ask legitimate questions, and get reasonable answers to those questions. If a developer is afraid to answer your question, that's a problem.
Beware the unintended consequences. Going back to some of the protections that are put in place, sometimes they cause more harm than good.
Ultimately, I think what this comes down to is that, at some point, those reasonable people out there who care about their communities need to participate in their community. They need to show up at some of these meetings, ask reasonable questions, and give their opinion. Take that from the town level all the way up from there.
You've got dilapidated, rundown sites that are contaminated, and the question is: Are we actually content with just letting rainfall continue to drive more and more of these toxic materials into the ground? That's one approach. Or, actually doing something with those sites can be really important.
Certainly in my community, one of the things that we've tried to do with our Local Conversation group is have a much clearer picture of what we are for than some of the folks who are really frustrated in our community and are just against everything. The result has been that we did a community discussion about a project that a developer in our community had proposed, and they immediately assumed we were shills of the developer, that we were working for them, that we were basically astroturf.
We said, “No. We're here to have an honest conversation about it.” It began to really shift the tenor of the room when, all of a sudden, they realized, “Oh, on the one hand you're not just on the payroll for someone. On the other hand, you're really serious that you're okay with this, or you're actually interested in moving forward.”
I wonder if you could share a story of maybe a project or two, especially around breweries. Who doesn't love a good brewery in a community? Have you seen moments where people have all of a sudden come out of the woodwork, maybe in surprising ways, and actually had a role in tipping the balance, or at minimum rewriting the conversation so that it wasn't purely a negative cast that council was, against their better judgment, voting for, but instead saying, “No, this is a win-win for the community”?
I can't tell you how many experiences I've had in hearings where, let's say, the same person over and over again at every hearing will stand up and say something negative about what it is I'm doing. Usually they don't have their facts in order, and it becomes pretty clear that they just don't want anything. That's fair. I get it.
Then, after the hearing, I'll have two or three people come up to me and say, “Look, I just want you to know that we're so happy about what is going on here, and we really support it. Keep going.” I'm like, “That's great. I really wish you would say something in the hearing itself.” But I get it. Nobody wants to get the buzz saw.
I've had a lot of opportunities over the years where I've had members of the public and mayors, specifically in the town of Milton, where it's been a fabulous relationship over the last 25 years through multiple different administrations of council members that are willing to take some risk because they really care about the town, deeply. They're willing to go out on a limb, try some things, experiment, and trust is built over time.
Those are the best relationships because inevitably there are complications and things that don't go according to plan. We thought it was going to take this long to get all the engineering completed and start construction. It took this long, and now we're in the winter. There are always things that come up.
Having some level of trust is important, but it's my responsibility to build that trust. It's my responsibility first to give people a reason to believe that I am going to do what I say I'm going to do, and that's any developer's responsibility. It is not true that all development is good, and it is not true that all development is bad.
In that 80% section in the middle where we're talking about what is good and what is not good, in the reasonable world of that thinking, there's a lot of room to move. I think it's really important to show up. The worst strategy I've ever seen, and I see it over and over again from developers, is to show up at a hearing and say, “This is what we're allowed to do, and it's terrible. This is what I want to do, and if you don't let me do this, then I'm going to give you this.” I don't think we're starting out in the right place.
Our approach is to show up and say, “Okay, what is it that we could do that would help you with some of the biggest problems that you're facing right now?” There may be some things on that list that would be relatively low-hanging fruit for us to solve. Rather than us just showing up and trying to bulldoze you and tell you what we think is great for you, how about we listen for a second, hear what the needs are, and then maybe we can figure out a way to manipulate our plan before we show up to deliver on some of those.
In my experience, just showing up with that question, “What is it you need?” starts to build trust.
Once projects are approved, part of your business model is master-planned communities, and you've hired much better master planners, I think, than a lot of times where sometimes I've asked, “I want to meet the master,” because they're not very masterful in what they've done with very stock tract developments that just didn't really meet the vision that was ever presented.
Within the context of trying to think through how we think more holistically about building really great neighborhoods, one of the traps from a Strong Towns perspective is that it can create the conditions in which it is now frozen in amber. It is a well-planned community, but the plan itself can take on almost godlike status: “Well, we can't deviate from this by allowing a new brewery to pop up because it wasn't in the original master plan.”
There's a tension there, and we would say at Strong Towns that no neighborhood should be subject to radical change, and no neighborhood, once it's built, should be exempt from change either. I feel like we might be getting to the point where the shackles are coming off to a certain extent, but can you speak to that challenge of path determination? We're on this path. We have the plan. It's filed in the court records or county records. But no plan survives first contact with the enemy, so we need to have that flexibility built in. Are we getting there?
What are some ways that Strong Towns advocates will sometimes be flustered because it's not in the lexicon of our planning and development operations to have this idea of persistent, gradual adaptation and iteration over time? You must grapple with that when you think, “I want places that are going to survive and thrive 50, 70, 80 years after I'm gone,” and we know a core element of that is that the tinkering, iterating, fixing, and tweaking have to be part of that process.
Definitely, especially when you're talking about most of our projects being a minimum of 12 years, typically north of 20-year projects. A lot can change. Hopefully, the goal of any project is to get better over time and to improve on things and learn as you go through a project.
If we had shifted this road a little bit, the view corridor looking over would have been better. Maybe when we get into phase three, let's change this radius a little bit. We're constantly doing stuff like that.
For the most part, there are always extremes in the sense that sometimes political environments change and, for whatever reason, this anti-growth, say-no-to-everything mindset comes in. A no-growth candidate runs, and it's just, “We don't care what it is. We're against it.” But for the most part, reasonable minds can come together.
My experience has been that, if my request is truly in the interest of trying to make something better, usually I can get the ear of planning and zoning, council, and even the public around that. I do agree that some of that is shifting.
I think the biggest problem in preventing that more flexible approach is that there's a lot of terrible development happening. It is the exception that something is done really well, not in any way the rule, which is very unfortunate. In terms of how to solve that, we're back to getting the more quiet majority to speak up and pay attention. Maybe that's a function of raising awareness.
A lot of times, people don't realize how much their voice, one voice, can actually change the direction of something. People generally feel, “I'm just one resident in this town. Nobody cares what I think. Nobody's going to listen to me.” It's just not true. Most people do not speak up, and when somebody does speak up, for the most part the room will listen. They really will. We try to listen to what people are saying as much as we can.
Obviously, everybody's got an opinion, and sometimes we know better what is going to look good than the people we're talking to because we've done this for 25 years. But if there's any message that I could pass to the people listening to this right now, it's to get engaged and get involved. Even if you don't want to show up to the hearing, write a letter. Just have your voice heard. The worst-case scenario is you put it out there and it fell on deaf ears. The best case is that something gets picked up and you actually make an impact. I think you might be surprised.
Writing the letter is old school. Showing up to council is old school. Can you share some of the challenges and maybe opportunities of social media and some of the environment that we've created?
I do liken it to the way that, in the '70s and the '80s, they realized that a lot of smokers had a cough, but it was still not quite identified why there seemed to be a relationship there. I think we have the same thing right now, where a lot of people have a cough, the equivalent of a cough, which is, I would say, a certain form of madness that social media induced.
It's both a blessing and a curse. It connects people, but it offers this facsimile of human connection that's very different from in-person connection, and we want to harness that. We have Strong Towns stuff going out on different podcasts and social media channels, but we're also grappling with this besetting madness.
I would imagine this can be, as you mentioned earlier, some things are repeated about you or projects that you're working with that are simply untrue and completely unmoored from reality. Yet it's this new challenge that we have to grapple with. How do you cope? What do you have for other people in terms of how they can cope, but actually maybe use tools like social media effectively?
The algorithm, whether it's mainstream or social media, is all geared toward fear. I think that's the reason why, for a lot of people, there are two fundamental things. One reason it's not really an effective way of communicating is there's some level of distance created in communication that allows people to start to lose their level of humanity in terms of the person on the other end.
There's some distance created where I no longer feel like I'm communicating with another human being the way that I would if they were standing in front of me. That's problematic because a lot of crazy, vitriolic things are said online that would likely never occur if people were just sitting in the same room together.
My solution to it is to turn down the volume as much as possible. In my own world, I stay out of it generally. I enjoy engaging in the content, but I stay out of the world of reading comments and responding to comments. It's just not a productive place.
For me, I am old school. I go to the public hearings. I stand up there. I have conversations with people. I try to be there in person as much as I can, especially on a new project, and try to connect with people on an in-person, human level.
I think Joe Rogan said, “Post and ghost.” That's his strategy: Don't ever read the comments and just get it out there. But I think this problem, to some extent, is going to solve itself a little bit. I'm generally optimistic about it because we're in this wave of social media novelty that came on over the last 20 years, and we're starting to realize that it's not the most effective communication tool. People are starting to lessen its effectiveness.
So what are they doing? They're turning up the volume on the fear algorithm to try to continue to keep the attention and the eyeballs. I think eventually a lot of people just get sick of it.
Yeah. Like you said, if one of the keys is in-person conversations, then making sure that there are enough public spaces for that, third places that people can come to. I see that woven into the projects that you're working on and taking on.
Maybe as we come to a close here, as you think about people who may want to follow in your footsteps or adapt this for their own efforts, what are some things that you would recommend for people who want to build meaningful places, or really be able to be proud when they answer, “What am I leaving behind?” so that they have a really good answer for that? Do you want to share some thoughts as we close out?
Sure. I think a lot of it has to do with what your fundamental philosophy is on the whole question of why we're here. Honestly, if you believe in the materialist paradigm and this idea that we're all just matter, we were dirt and we're going back to dirt, and there's nothing after that, then I think you're more likely to subscribe to the mindset of, “I could care less about my legacy. I've got to get it while I can. It's a zero-sum game. Winner takes all.” I think that's really unfortunate that that thinking has been pervasive a bit.
But I see that changing. I see that people are starting to realize that there's some level of connection that exists between all of us, and that it's really important that we care about other people. It's really important that the things we do have an impact on others, and we need to be conscious of that, aware of that, and really care about what that impact is.
I think it's really important that people understand that, when you go and admire something and look at its beauty, something that's been around for a long time, think about the level of being fulfilled in knowing that you've done something like that. Just because something is possible doesn't mean it's optimal. Just because you can do a project, make this return on your money, and go on and do it again doesn't mean that's necessarily the best way to do it.
I don't know how to teach this, and that's why I say it comes back to an underlying philosophy. For me, legacy is important because, when I'm long gone, I want people to know that this guy had some sense of aesthetic beauty and community, and clearly he cared about that. It doesn't mean everything I did was spot on or right, but there's a clear demonstration of effort and a clear level of caring.
Honestly, being constantly inundated with fear, fear, fear, which gets us back to that conversation, pushes people into this individualistic, materialist mindset. I think it's terrible. I think it's completely wrong. It's not true.
I love that because, if our goal is to leave the world a better place than we found it, there's truth in that, but it also feels so grand. I think what is so compelling about all of these efforts that we're doing is we're saying, let's bring that in: Leave our places better than we found them.
When we do that, we have myriad ways to be able to do it, and you don't have to tackle the world's biggest problem in order to have found a measure of success and value in doing that. I love this. I feel like we could go on for much longer, but I want to honor your time and really appreciate the opportunity.
I do hope that we will find ourselves soon at a table enjoying a beer together and chatting further because it's been fantastic. Thank you for coming on Bottom Up Revolution.
I really appreciate you having me. Very interesting conversation.
Great to be able to do it. If folks are interested in learning more, definitely check out Convergence Communities or the Grainery Project in Milton. There are a number of other opportunities. We'll share some of those in the show notes afterwards.
Keep doing what you can as you, in your community, are taking note of, “Hey, here are the real opportunities to make a difference.” This is the type of work that Strong Towns is here to support you in, to participate with you in, and to be able to share those stories. Much like Colby is doing, take note of those opportunities.
With that, take care and take care of your places. This episode was produced by Strong Towns, a nonprofit movement for building financially resilient communities. If what you heard today matters to you, deepen your connection by becoming a Strong Towns member at strongtowns.org/membership.