Behind The Scenes

Waiting for the Curtain to Rise

It’s been over 6 weeks since our Grand Launch weekend to celebrate completing the purchase of the Edward Hain building. So some of you may be wondering: What’s been happening? Where’s the action? Answer: Behind the scenes!

‘That’s all very well,’ you might say, ‘but that’s the way it was was for months! Not knowing what was going on. . . the waiting. . .’ Ah, the waiting. We know about that. The seemingly endless stages of negotiation. Getting necessary surveys done. Finding a mortgage. The legalities of converting a building from one use to another. All this, and more . . . . There was so much that we wanted to share on our Facebook pages – but everything was confidential until the purchase contract was signed, so had to be kept under wraps.

Making the most of delays

Still, we made the most of the extra time in order to get things set up: our board of trustees. . . finding a Centre manager . . . And then, ta-da! — Oh, sorry. More waiting. Things were in fact happening – albeit slowly – but it’s true that ‘behind the scenes’ often felt like a stuck place for us, too.

At last the purchase was complete, and on the second weekend of September we held our amazing launch at the Edward Hain. Our manager, Sharron, started work the following day. Since then, she’s been going nonstop, setting the stage for us to open our doors to our first Health and Wellbeing providers.

The List of Tasks….

• Phone and IT. This came first, as nothing can be done without communication – both for us, and for our tenants, who will need internet access to run their businesses. Status: Now in place. Phone to follow soon.
• Other utilities. Who would be the best utility providers for us, moving forward? Gas, water, electrics: sorted.
• Sifting through the applications we’ve received. There’s no shortage of would-be tenants! But their details needed collating into an Excel doc so that Sharron could easily see who was who, what they offer, their space needs, scheduling, etc. A work in progress. . .
• Setting up interviews with the above. Writing contracts for them.
• Scouting for volunteers that we’ll need at the Centre, a few of whom are beginning to come on board. (See info** at the bottom of this post if you’re interested...)
• And let’s not forget minor repairs, decoration, refurbishment The list goes on, with a lot more admin besides, whilst all of the above is ongoing.

In short: what’s been going on behind the scenes is a lot of ball-juggling – and things are moving fast! Again, we can’t share the specifics of WHO, WHAT and WHEN until contracts are signed. But we all know the WHY – which is to keep moving towards providing a wide range of health and wellbeing services to our community. That, after all, is the entire reason we’re here. So now, it’s the Edward Hain Centre that’s waiting—for its first tenants. All we can say is now that there won’t be much longer to wait before that curtain rises!