ABINGDON -- Dene Peterson and Jean Marie Luce weren't interested in the typical American retirement dream: a trophy house in a gated subdivision along a golf course, a place where most neighbors are strangers.

They wanted neighbors who valued spiritual growth, the Earth, volunteering, simplicity, a healthy lifestyle and mutual support in life and death.

But when they looked around, they found no such place. So they're helping to create it.

ElderSpirit Community, a nonprofit group of 55 people from as far away as California and Canada - are preparing to turn a grassy hillside here into an alternative retirement neighborhood that emphasizes communal living.

They are a diverse bunch - Baptists and Catholics, Southerners and Yankees, artists and social service workers - who are more interested in devoting their golden years to spiritualism, saving the planet and helping the needy than to fishing, sightseeing and managing their portfolios.

"I want to grow spiritually as an older adult," said Luce, the group's spokeswoman and a retired college administrator who moved to Abingdon from Emory. "And I've always liked a strong sense of community."

Peterson, whose mother died recently, wants a neighborhood that helps its inhabitants live a good life and die a good death at home in the arms of loved ones.

"It's a very humane way of living - being useful to others," said Peterson, the group's executive director. Peterson is a youth program administrator from Michigan.

The ElderSpirit group plans to build a co-housing neighborhood on 4 acres along the Virginia Creeper Trail. Details are being ironed out, but the project is expected to cost $2.1 million to $3.1 million and would be financed by both private and public funds. Groundbreaking is tentatively set for next summer.

Because Abingdon is attracting more retirees and there is a shortage of affordable housing here, the ElderSpirit group is being supported by the Abingdon city government, Abingdon Redevelopment and Housing Authority, area churches, nonprofit groups and the residents of a low-income neighborhood next to the ElderSpirit site.

Susheela Shende, an urban planning consultant and former executive director of the Northwest Neighborhood Environmental Organization in Roanoke, has been hired to secure funding and help bring the concept to reality.

"It's very unusual," she said. "This is a group of people who want to live together with similar values. It's an exciting time to be a part of this."

Co-housing was developed in Denmark to build neighborhoods that encourage cooperation and communication among residents. It differs from neighborhoods with features that emphasize privacy instead of communal interdependence.

Co-housing neighborhoods give higher priority to pedestrians than to cars - for example, a walking path and organic gardens connect the homes, not blacktop roads. Parking is limited to the periphery. Carpooling is encouraged.

There are five co-housing neighborhoods being planned in Virginia - in Abingdon, Blacksburg, Loudoun County, Vienna and Charlottesville.

The ElderSpirit neighborhood will have 30 rental or co-op houses designed for couples. Each unit will have less than 1,000 square feet and minimal kitchens and other creature comforts. But there will be a large common house with an expansive kitchen, dining room, laundry, library, exercise room, game room and other amenities to encourage residents to spend time together. The cost to live there has not been set.

There will be a nondenominational chapel and memorial garden for prayer, retreats and meditation. Residents will be 55 or older. Younger members will help care for older ones.

The neighborhood will be run by a residents government association and includes a "sweat equity" rule requiring residents to help build and maintain the neighborhood. Groundskeeping equipment will be shared. The land will have mostly indigenous plants and other ground cover instead of fertilized grass.

The ElderSpirit Community is an outgrowth of the Federation of Communities in Service, a nonprofit group founded in 1967 to help the poor in Appalachia. Co-housing moved from Denmark to the United States about a decade ago.

The ElderSpirit group started looking across the Southeast for a site to build the neighborhood. By 1997, they had chosen Abingdon, a historic town of about 10,000 people in rural Southwest Virginia. Last year, the group started clearing ground for their new home.

"We call ourselves 'older adults,' not elderly," Peterson said, smiling. "We're at a transition age, not old age, and we have a lot of living left to do."

"We're excited to see how all this turns out," Luce said.