The processing centre has industrial-sized benches and a coolroom, while a second building on the site has office spaces, large activity rooms, a kitchen and an indoor swimming pool.
Uniting Wimmera chief executive Josh Koenig said although the site was deemed unsuitable to provide the organisation’s disability support programs, it had potential to serve some other service need.
Mr Koenig said the service provider was open to working with the community to identify how the site could support the region.
“This would be around consultation with the community – most of that land was donated to Wimmera Uniting Care, which is now Uniting,” he said.
“It would be remiss of us to not think of the community in any decision making.” He said Uniting Wimmera planned to retain the land and would look to work with various stakeholders to identify a need.
“We wouldn’t look to offload it because it’s an important parcel of land to us. It has meaning and history. That’s why we haven’t moved in the sale direction,” he said.
“But if someone had a great program or idea that met a community need, ideally, we’d like to work collaboratively with them and support some sort of development.
“At the moment we don’t have a clear plan, we’re just maintaining the property and all of our focus has shifted to relief recovery and responding to the coronavirus pandemic.”
The buildings at Grahams Bridge Road were first established in 1979 as Karkana Support Services – a supported employment program that processed large quantities of produce weekly.
After Karkana went into administration in 2009, Uniting took over the site and continued to build on the service.
Following the roll-out of the National Disability Insurance Scheme, NDIS, the agency started reviewing its support for people living with a disability.
The review concluded the site had failed to ‘take the next step’ in a progressing era of disability care.
Mr Koenig said it would take a great deal of work to bring the buildings up to the modern standards required for a service provider.
“It’s a real old-styled building – it’s received a couple coats of paint, but that’s about all it’s received over the years,” he said. “If it was a cleared block that was shovel-ready for development and someone came to Uniting with a really great idea and had the money to build it, we would have those discussions.
“But those buildings are not habitable at the moment – we’ve got a fair bit of work before we turn it into anything.”
Mr Koenig said the site had potential to relieve a service shortage such as the Wimmera’s ongoing affordable housing crisis.
But he said public transport availability at Haven would be a major hurdle to make that a viable option.
“At the moment there’s a lot of talk around affordable housing availability, but large investments are required to turn any big block like that into housing,” he said.
“Because it’s on the edge of town, it’s away from essential services, so affordable housing might not be the best option.
“Our people who rely on housing support also rely on public transport.”
Mr Koenig said it was unlikely the site would be used for disability support services again.
“Disability and NDIS services are now focused within the city centre,” he said.
“Graham Bridge Road, while it served a very important purpose for many years, the NDIS is telling us it’s about connecting people living with a disability to community and others,” he said. “Some of the supported employees have transitioned to our other programs, while others transitioned to other services such as Woodbine and into community-access work.”
Uniting Wimmera is open to hearing from the public how the building can be used to meet community needs.
“Anyone who would like to work collaboratively on any of our programs, not just at the Graham Bridge Road site, and has ideas about things we should be doing and areas of need that we should be addressing, we’d be open to those conversations,” Mr Koenig said.
– Dylan De Jong
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