MERRI COHOUSING NEWS

Article in The Age, Thursday 3rd July 2003

Merri Cohousing and Moora Moora were featured in a good feature article on local intentional communities in The Age on 3 July, in the A3 section. The title of the article was "Utopia Rising". The front cover of that issue of A3 had the slightly amusing tag line "White collar hippies".

For the time being you can read the article by following this link to The Age.

Other Media

Merri Cohousing has received other media attention recently, particularly in the local newspapers, but also on ABC Radio National when Sharryn Muir spoke to Geraldine Doogue on 'Life Matters' on Wednesday 11 June.

Preferred location is the site beside CERES

The preferred site for Merri Cohousing is still on part of the vacant land beside CERES in East Brunswick, and if we can't get this site then we will buy other land in the coming weeks or months.

'Eco-village' masterplan

A Merri Cohousing development on the site beside CERES would be on less than half of that land, located within an 'eco-village' masterplan that was highly sympathetic to CERES. The rest of the 'eco-village' would be quality best-practice environmental housing, with some outstanding innovations in housing-types and some mixed-use units, home offices, etc. These will be for sale, by word-of-mouth initially, so if you are interested, be sure to put in an informal expression of interest to be kept up to date.

Owners of site have 'gone broke'

Just as VCAT was finally approving its plans for 30 townhouses and a 42 unit apartment block on the site beside CERES (the order was dated 16 May 2003), the property development company which owns the site became insolvent and went into 'voluntary administration'. The creditors of the company have negotiated to try to take over the development project, but it will be a number of weeks before it is clear whether they can raise sufficent finance. Until then, there is a possibility that the site would be for sale again.

Other suitable sites

We need about 4600 square metres for 24 dwellings, but it could be more or less than this. The preferred location of Merri Cohousing is in the inner Northern area of Melbourne (up to Coburg or Preston). Sites such as this are sold regularly, so if you know of such a site then please let us know.

Please request to be emailed a further update of where Merri Cohousing is up to.