Housing partners will happily take a village

Members of five families who will be founders of Odonata. (Lisa poole for the boston globe)

NEWBURYPORT - They want to live lightly on the earth.

The residents of the yet-to-be-built Odonata Ecovillage will cluster their homes to save open space. They'll use cutting-edge building techniques and green technology to vastly reduce their energy consumption. They'll foster a togetherness often missing in our overscheduled, Internet-ready, 21st-century lives. And they want their "intentional community" to create a positive example.

"Everyone that has been part of this group has a love of the natural world," said Mark Schultz. "There has always been a great concern for how the use of oil . . . is clearly affecting our future. What do you do? You come together as a group and do something."

Like most groups that operate by consensus, Odonata people want to talk over everything, and they're careful about definitions and inclusiveness. But the core group now consists of five families who got together after a presentation on European co-housing held at the Yoga Center of Newburyport on Maple Street.

Peter and Lyra Engel live in West Newbury, Schultz in Byfield, Tom and Debbie Szabo in Newburyport, Bob Spaller and Megan Welsh in Amesbury. Kimberly Graham currently spends most of her time in Iowa.

Their professions include recycling consultant, high-tech device designer, lawyer, and Newburyport High School teacher. Most of them have children.

On Sept. 21, the Odonata founders hosted the first of a series of events that they hope will boost the membership toward the 30 or so families who will live in the village.

After two years of planning, they have formed a limited liability corporation and are in negotiations for a large land purchase "in the greater Newburyport area" that would not be dependent on the financial participation of new members.

Their advisers include green-technology leaders, veterans of co-housing groups such as Sirius Community in Shutesbury, and supporters such as Jacalyn Bennett of Newburyport's Bennett and Co.

They've chosen green builder R. Carter Scott of Townsend as their developer, and hope to break ground next summer.

There's one thing they want to make clear: "We're not a commune," said Peter Engel.

Think of it more like the coolest homeowners association you can imagine. Everybody will own their own house and footprint of land, although the common acreage is held in trust. They'll have cars, TV, Internet, and many residents will commute to jobs elsewhere.

But they'll live close together, surrounded by undisturbed fields and woods, and they'll actually know their neighbors. Oh, and their heating bills will probably be way smaller than yours.

The plans include super-insulated houses up to about 1,700 square feet. The members are especially excited about the possibility of new technology originating in Japan, an air-source heat pump that operates without consuming fossil fuels.

"The difference in temperature between outside and inside is what drives it," Schultz said.

Odonata is the scientific order of the dragonfly. "It was a dragonfly summer; they hovered in the garden, came up in conversation, appeared in newspaper articles," Lyra Engel wrote on the group's blog.

"Then one morning a friend left a newspaper article at our front door. . . . It was filled with interesting facts, dating this winged creature back more than 300 million years - before the time of the dinosaurs - quite a legacy of sustainable living!"

Ask about Odonata's "spiritual" underpinnings, and they are at pains to make clear they're not beholden to any one religion.

A love of the natural world and a desire for more simplicity are key. When they use the word "spiritual," they mostly mean "non-material values."

"There is definitely a core something," said Schultz. "[But] this isn't a Buddhist community, and it's not a Christian community."

"The people that would like to live in this community would feel the purpose is that they would be interconnected and help to, not just save the planet, but show that it is possible to live together in a harmonious way which is low on [consumption of] energy and resources but also fun," said Tom Szabo.

They want older residents and young families involved.

"One of the aspects of the design of the community is we'd like to offer affordable housing, and that also helps us, because under 40B affordable-housing zoning, you can cluster, you get density allowances," said Lyra Engel.

"We want to be a friendly 40B," Schultz said, and members hope that the fact that they live on-site and minimize their consumption of resources will make their plans easy for a host community to accept.

Community is very important to Odonata. A "common house" will provide a venue for potlucks, concerts, lectures, workshops, whatever.

"This is a matter of building a community that in a way is a throwback to villages of old, where everyone knew each other and all the generations interacted, and we're hoping to create that kind of feeling in our community," Peter Engel said.

"We're hoping not just to build on technology, but to build an environment in which people can share things."

The next Odonata Exploring Membership Meeting will take place Oct. 19th from 2 to 5 p.m. Contact voice@odonataVillage.org or visit odonatavillage.org for more information.