By Renee Wood
Warburton’s Yarra Ranges Enterprise Centre will finally become the official owners of the Woods Point Road property, five years after the State Government first announced it was off loading the asset.
YREC will be making the final payment on November 8 and Executive Officer Alison Fitzgerald said it will be a significant milestone.
“This is just a celebration really to say thank you to our community for being there for us and we’re there for you,” Alison Fitzgerald said.
The centre started leasing the property from the government in 2000 and sixteen years later it was announced it would be going up for sale.
Unsettling times for the organisation and tenants, who began to fight to hold on to the property, vying for local and state government support to take ownership against prospective developers.
“It was a really tough time. The tenants that were down there running small businesses were really worried about the future and the organisation was worried about our future, it was a really unsettling sort of insecure time. So when we got the news that we could buy it at the end of December 2017 – we were just absolutely delighted.”
“So from November we’re even more excited because it will be our asset and anything we do to the property will be at our benefit not the State Governments.”
The not-for-profit is home to many small businesses, established in 1998 to support the growth and development of small businesses in the Yarra Ranges.
Now with full ownership, a strategic plan will come into affect that will see investment put towards improvements to the valuable community asset.
“Everything we did was really short term and reactive as far as maintenance. You know, it was band aid fixes all about safety, but we never had the opportunity to do things properly or proactively.
“We’ve just developed a strategic plan about capital improvements and that’s about making it a more attractive place and being able to welcome people and just becoming a better link with the community because we will own it.”
The centre is currently over 80 per cent capacity, with the space supporting grass roots businesses to grow.
“We had three tenants actually graduate last year, they moved on after being with us for about three years and they are going to bigger premises, moving for different reasons. But that’s ultimately what we want – people to come in stay for a while, grow the business and graduate and move on.”
The pandemic has also had an impact on a change of offerings seeing some space now dedicated to part-time combined work areas.
YREC will be holding a celebration at the end of November to commemorate the ownership achievement and discuss its future with the community.
“We’re not sure what you need coming out of lockdown but we want to listen and we want to hear what the needs are – it might be more networking opportunities where we can offer our space or just bringing people together.”
