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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