Community Building - Fixtures and Fittings

Aim

To raise £15,000 to finish the Community Building and get it open - we are so close!

Having to build throughout the Covid-19 Pandemic has added extra challenges to this project - increasing our costs due to product scarcity and increased timescales and has meant that we have spent all our contingency budget and we are short approx £20k to finish the building (including fixtures and fittings) to enable us to open our doors and welcome you all in. This may sound like a lot of money but when it is compared to the actual build cost of approx. £390,000.00 we have not done too badly at budgeting! This crowdfunder money will help us reach that gap.

We were due to be up and running in July 2020 opening with our Picnic In The Park event - this of course didn't happen due to Coronavirus. We will however be opening from the hatch on or around the 30th January 2021 with a limited offering until we can open our doors completely [when we return to Tier 2]. WE CANNOT WAIT!

This new community building will become the hub of Victoria Park in Stretford. The building is a means to an end, as it allows our community to access the park more and stay longer.  The building allows the Friends of Victoria Park a space to plan the activities and events in the park and a community room to hold them in. 

We are working on bringing you a packed programme of activities to improve our health and wellbeing - Stretford Stress Busting is the name that FOVPS have given it. This programme of activities has been designed to reduce stress, anxiety and depression for the people of Stretford and the surrounding areas by tying in with the NHS 10 Stress Busters as outlined on their website. [https://www.nhs.uk/conditions/stress-anxiety-depression/reduce-stress/]

Within the programme our 5 key priorities/themes were used to give our project theme and names:

Our priority to create a safe, healthy outdoor space runs throughout our whole programme and is tackled by working to ‘crowd out crime’. This means making the park a busy and vibrant place to be and not somewhere that you can hide and carry out illicit behaviour without being seen. Our projects and volunteers will also carry out improvement works to the park making it an even more fun and healthy space to be. We will engage with specialist support groups to ensure that wrap-around care is available within the park or in our surrounding community and we will signpost accordingly.

 This building has also excellent green credentials – it has solar panels, an air source heat pump, underfloor heating and rainwater collection for powering the toilets.

The Tea Room is the name for our café and food related social enterprise within the community building. The Tea Room will operate on a commercial basis with a menu developed for our community that is both seasonal and responsive to customer requirements. The Tea Room will be open from 0800-2200 each day serving a breakfast, lunch and tea menu and snacks and drinks. We will be able to operate a take-away & delivery service utilising Shocal a local delivery service app. We will have a menu suitable for those hiring the community room to choose for a buffet or snack or a party menu which we will extend to local businesses, schools and Stretford Public Hall. We will be able to utilise the cafe and staff for events. The Tea Room will be able to give opportunities for training and upskilling, volunteer opportunities and also paid employment for local people, including weekend roles for young people. As we are running the tearoom ourselves all money spent in the Tearoom stays in the park to allow us to run more events, activities and make improvements to the park.

It's all very exciting but we really need this last bit of funding to make the business plan work and get the building finished and open.

THANK YOU!

This project successfully funded on 6th February 2021