Hundreds of locals from Victoria town buy property as a co-op

ABC NEWS (Australia)

Hundreds of residents from a small Victorian town have successfully bought a coveted local property as a co-op. When Castlemaine’s 'the hub' building which houses a number of local businesses was put on the market over two years ago, locals put their heads together to see how they could deter possible private buyers. Now locals say they have been able to stave off privatisation and ensure the hub will remain community-run.

Transcript

00:00Well, I think a lot of local residents have got some sort of past or current connection

00:06with this building.

00:07And, you know, as you said, it houses quite a lot of our local small businesses, including

00:11some of our key not-for-profit environment organisations, and it has a community garden

00:15out the back, which, you know, a lot of people use during the day for gatherings and events.

00:21So yeah, it's a pretty important building.

00:23And so why was it important to get this into co-op ownership rather than private ownership?

00:29Yeah, you know, it was motivated by, I guess, a combination of both fear and opportunity.

00:36So sort of fear, I guess, that this building, which has been run by a sort of local philanthropist

00:41couple for 15 years and set up as a community building, a bit of fear that if a standard

00:48private investor bought it and wanted to wring as much money out of it as they could, then

00:52it puts at risk the sort of community vibe that it has.

00:55The garden is on a separate title.

00:57So there's always a possibility, too, that that would get built on.

01:00So that was part of the motivation.

01:02And the other side of the motivation was just this opportunity for, you know, the community

01:06to genuinely own this asset and use it as a rallying point to build other sort of community

01:12wealth building and own other assets so that we can create some sort of economic democracy,

01:18I suppose, for our town.

01:19So there's a bit of more community control over the future economy of this place.

01:22And how does it feel now that it's done?

01:26Yeah, amazing.

01:27Amazing.

01:28You know, we took more than two years to sort of get the model right and get set up.

01:33And then we had a month on capital raising campaign.

01:35So we borrowed the money from the community, two million dollars, nearly two million dollars

01:39borrowed from community members.

01:40Wow.

01:41You raised two million dollars.

01:44Two million dollars from 330 community members, mostly kind of smallish amounts.

01:48So, you know, this wasn't a sort of gathering of a handful of rich community members, mostly

01:55sort of two, three, five, $10,000 amounts put in by a lot of different people.

02:00Is it likely to turn a profit?

02:04Yeah.

02:05So it's a going concern.

02:07And that was one of the big motivations for buying it, as well as the fact that it's, you

02:11know, it's an iconic building in our place, is that it's an established business.

02:15It's got a long track record.

02:17And so we, you know, we need to repay that two million dollars to the community members

02:20over the next 20 years.

02:21We think we can own the building outright in about 20 years.

02:25And so, yeah, the current rent from the tenants will do that.

02:29And are there other co-op owned businesses in town?

02:34There's a co-op childcare and there's a sort of co-op agricultural group.

02:40Um, yeah, there's a few co-ops around, but not quite like this, not a co-op that aims

02:46to sort of, uh, you know, it's not for profit.

02:50Non-distributing is about just owning property for, to be managed by the community for the

02:54community.

02:55This is quite a unique thing.

02:56Uh, and naturally with a collection of so many people, there'll be many different personalities

03:02and styles of doing things.

03:04What's it like making a decision in a co-op?

03:07Yeah, look, so far, so far, it's been, um, not too difficult.

03:12I think there's a really shared, and a really important part of that is a shared vision,

03:15you know, shared values, shared vision for what the co-op is trying to do.

03:19But, you know, the, the idea is that this is our first purchase and, um, we will be making

03:25other purchases.

03:26The dream is that the co-op becomes one of the big sort of real estate, uh, owners in

03:31this town and the community have control over that.

03:33So, you know, there are already lots of ideas about what the next purchase should be and,

03:37and quite a bit of disagreement about that, but that's all right.

03:39That's the challenge.

03:40That's the joy of it.

03:41And I think, uh, I read the online article about this and it had someone saying they went

03:46to a, uh, a, a media co-op meeting or decision meeting, which was nothing like that ever been

03:52to before with some interpretive dance.

03:55Uh, can you describe the spirit of Castlemaine for us?

04:01Well, you know, I think this is, it's been a very artistic sort of a place since the gold

04:06rush days, you know, the, the gold money that used to be here, um, was supported the arts.

04:12There were patrons of the arts and when the gold left and the money left, the artists stayed

04:16and it's been like that ever since really.

04:17So, so this is a very artistic place and, and, you know, we, we like to keep our, uh,

04:22AGMs that we had our annual general meeting not long ago and there was the interpretive

04:26dance and, and we kept, we kept strictly to an hour for the entire thing.

04:30We make it quick.

04:31We make it fun.

04:32Uh, there's always art involved.

04:34So that's just the nature of this place and also what we want to be, you know, we want

04:37this to be a fun community thing, not a sort of dry meeting based decision making thing.

04:42And do you think this might set a bit of an example for other small communities to follow?

04:49We've got lots of communities getting in touch with us about this model, you know, and at

04:53the moment we've only just settled the building a month ago, about a month ago.

04:56We're still kind of learning how to be community, um, based, uh, you know, landlords.

05:02And, and so we've got a long list of people who want to talk to us.

05:04Uh, at the moment, we're just sort of keeping that list.

05:06We might have to do a webinar or something.

05:08We haven't got time to talk to them all.

05:09So yeah, definitely.

05:10This is definitely, and, and we're totally happy.

05:12To share all of our legal advice and our foundational documents and everything with anyone who wants

05:17to do this, you know, as part of the cooperative spirit, we really want to, um, have paved the

05:21way for others because it took us a long time to work this out.

05:24Hopefully it'll be quicker for others.

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