Maybe it’s a symptom in our growingly impatient world but I, for one, much prefer e-mail to the phone, so I am certainly not apt to walk over to a neighbour­ing townhome to knock on the president of the board’s door if I have a concern to voice. I would also prefer to know what’s going on with my corporation—and my $270 a month in condo fees—more often than once a year at the Annual General Meeting. And good luck ever getting a straight answer from the manage-ment company—whose answer every time I have called about something has been that a new manager is now handling our property.

Wouldn’t a message board for owners to post concerns, and for members of the board and possibly the management company to respond to and key in updates to maintenance, house rules and visitor parking policies and availability, and a copy of the bylaws, board meeting minutes and budgets be a cheaper, cleaner and easier way to go? Especially with so many people buying and selling, being able to access the bylaws online would be a huge help to new residents and would-be purchasers. When we moved in our bylaws were being revised, so we actually have still not received a copy more than 18 months later.

I was surprised when I began surfing the ’Net in search of Calgary condominiums with websites for residents, only to find there weren’t too many. So I called and browsed around for the scoop on creating a website, if only to arm myself for my AGM in a few weeks.

Kelly Sigethy, owner of Frynge Web Design (http://www.frynge.com) is currently launching a website for Eversyde on the Park, to be used as a communication venue between owners and their board. While it’s the company’s first condo website per se, he has created similar tools for customers like the Fraud Examiner Board and Sigethy is surprised more condo­miniums have not tapped into the possi-bilities of the Internet.

“As soon as we started working on the Eversyde site it seemed like there was a lot of interest; people keep asking when it will be up and running. I think it is the wave of the future, really,” he notes.

Those interested in creating a simple website of three to four static pages can expect to pay in the $300 range to start, while adding a page could bring the initial price up near the $600 to $700 mark. Another cost is registering the domain name, which runs about $20 a month, plus the fee for hosting the website, which Sigethy says will add another $60 to $80 annually. Frynge also offers maintenance packages, which cover updates and changes to the site to be done on a monthly basis for a flat rate for a year, or clients can opt to net user-friendly software for around $300, so the site can be maintained by a resident administrator after it’s created.

I also came across a couple of web developers with specialties in condo websites and similar pricing, starting around $400 for creation, then anywhere from $200 to $400 a year to maintain and host. Well worth the cost when you look at the benefits and saved printing costs, especially when that’s divvied up over 140 owners.

And if that seems high, I discovered there are also ways to cut down how much a corporation will have to shell out to keep a website running smoothly. In our computer-savvy professional city, I would say the odds in most condo complexes having a resident IT whiz are pretty good.

Such is the case, I discovered, in Pearce Gardens in Inglewood, where Shannon Hoover created, hosts and maintains a bare-bones Intranet site for those who live in the Streetside Development Corp.-created complex. While three years later, he now admits he might do it differently if starting from scratch again, the inexpensive site has its obvious merits. Parking is at a premium in the trendy area, and visitor parking is often abused in the condo community, so Hoover says next time he would incorporate some way to reserve and monitor spots online, as well as book the condo’s popular amenity room.

While Hoover, who sat on Pearce Gardens’ board for two years, says it had been the initial goal to get not only the board, but also the management company aligned with the concept, they didn’t bite. And while many residents seemed to be keen on the idea of a place to relay information, participation was not to the level he had hoped. He also offered pearcegardens.com e-mail addresses for residents for lifetime use with 2GB of storage space, but saw a far lower buy-in than his expected 60 per cent.

Hoover does note that, aside from his time, the cost was a drop in the bucket for creating the tool for his condo and fellow owners—at $20 a month which he pays in hosting charges, which he piggybacks with more than a dozen other sites he hosts, and $15 every two years for the domain—the venture was worth the gamble.

Now I just have to find someone who lives in my complex who knows his or her way around the Internet, and sell my board and 139 other owners on the prospect.  CL