There's been a lot of talk lately about building communities. One way of
doing this is to protect the places that are important to them the places
where people meet, where communities grow. Communities build around shared
experiences and interests, and most involve a place: the local school,
strip shopping centre, pub, footy ground, camping ground, theatre, park,
music venue. Many of these are under threat. All places not put to 'highest
and best' use are vulnerable.
In this age of footloose capital and hunger for new investment
opportunities, and every place and experience, even unlikely targets such
as trams, national parks and alternative subcultures, are potential
products. Pressures on real estate and changing business practices are
transforming the way we use and think about places.
The problem is that the commercial market is not adept at handling the
uncommon. To ensure economic viability, an experience must be made
mainstream: customers must be increased, the product standardised, the
prices raised. In maximising profit the commercial operator often destroys
the very thing, the special quality, that made people care in the first place.
Strategies to protect places are limited. Heritage protection only protects
the fabric of a place. There is growing recognition in the heritage
profession of 'cultural significance', where use and meanings and
associations are as important as architectural and/or natural significance,
but protection of use is complex. There are no precedents in Australia for
protection of a use of urban cultural significance.
Australian State planning systems do not deal well with cultural
subtleties. State and local governments can control the size of a tourist
development, for example, but not the tone or cost of accommodation. They
have planning powers over broad changes of use say from hotel to
residential - but not over particular style of use. They are powerless,
therefore, against a change of use from independent music venue to
up-market resort hotel and restaurant, or a thumping disco meat-market.
Should it be otherwise? Would this not be a case of government intervention
gone mad? Who's to say what style to preserve, and whose culture matters
most? In the absence of a clear answer to these questions, it seems that
protection of important places is left to the communities that love and use
them. And in Australia at least, the only way to protect something is to
own it.
In a quintessential expression of Peter Costello's volunteerism, this is
indeed what is happening. Faced with the sale of its beloved hotel, the St
Kilda-based Esplanade Alliance established a not-for-profit cultural
organisation, the Esplanade Hotel Foundation - to try to buy the Espy. Its
purpose was to maintain the venue for original live music and refurbish the
derelict upper floors for non-profit alternative cultural uses such as
community radio, comedy stages and fringe arts studios.
To protect the beauty and tranquillity of St Helier's convent and surrounds
in Abbotsford, the Abbotsford Convent Coalition is raising public and
philanthropic funds to purchase the site. In Clifton Hill a community group
is organising to buy the House of the Gentle Bunyip with funds raised from
residents and church-based groups to preserve the use as housing for young
people on low-incomes or with psychiatric disabilities.
All three campaigns involve maintaining and expanding non-commercial
activities, and devoting as much space as possible to non-profit, public
uses. Even so, each has been required to pay market price for the property.
In the case of the Esplanade, this meant competing for the hotel on the
open market.
The Foundation bid involved well-established hoteliers in the running of
the bars and kitchen. Tax-deductible public donations and philanthropic and
government grants would finance the upstairs works and subsidise the
non-profit tenancies. The timeframe and uncertainty of the tender process,
however, gave the Alliance little choice but to delay the full-scale public
fundraising effort until it won the tender. Careful calculations on
borrowings allowed a community bid of $3.2 million.
But there was another hitch: the Espy was being sold on a 200-year
leasehold, not freehold, meaning no access to the title. There was a great
deal of support for the Foundation's proposal, but translating this into an
unsecured loan to a community-based organisation with no initial assets was
tricky. Despite owner Becton's pronouncements of support for the Espy's
alternative culture, the Corporation went to no lengths to assist the only
form of ownership that would guarantee that culture's survival.
What are the alternatives? Outright State or Council ownership, given the
current political penchant for offloading assets, is becoming less of an
option. Indeed, State Government and City of Port Phillip bureaucrats made
it abundantly clear to the Esplanade Alliance that no government funds
would contribute to the purchase of the Espy.
Public-private partnerships, a hallmark of the Blair/Bracks approach to
public policy, offer a spectrum of ownership arrangements. The Esplanade
Hotel Foundation could have secured additional financial backing by
allowing a greater proportion of commercial activity in the hotel, but this
approached a point beyond which the exercise became self-defeating.
For partnerships to work in some public interest, there must be recognition
that non-profit uses will not generate the same financial returns as
commercial uses, and that community bids will necessarily be lower. In
order to receive the social returns of diversity, alternative culture,
quiet green space in the middle of the city, humanity, equity and uncommon
pleasures, community purchases must be assisted.
To the credit of the Bracks government, St Helier's convent and the House
of the Gentle Bunyip are likely to receive government funds, contributing
to two interesting and different combinations of
public/philanthropic/government/private partnership. Sadly, this
opportunity has been missed on the Espy.
If this is the way we want to go, we need a shift in culture that
encourages community partnerships. The shift will have to involve more
government support, a more active philanthropic sector, and private
companies engaging in regular acts of corporate citizenship. Otherwise,
communities will continue to be dislocated, and the only safe places will
be those that turn top dollar.
Kate Shaw is writing a PhD on urban cultural heritage at the University of
Melbourne, and is a director of the Esplanade Hotel Foundation.
email [EMAIL PROTECTED]
--
Leftlink - Australia's Broad Left Mailing List
mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]
Archived at http://www.cat.org.au/lists/leftlink/
Sponsored by Melbourne's New International Bookshop
Subscribe: mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]?Body=subscribe%20leftlink
Unsubscribe: mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]?Body=unsubscribe%20leftlink
