We have lift-off!

The contractor's cabins have arrived on site. Quite spectacular seeing the first cabin being craned into place with a lot of yelling - 'left-a-bit' 'down-a-tad'. Once in place it was back down the drive to pick up another one which was placed on top - double-decker cabins! The electrician is busy hooking them up as I write this. Later today a tool-shed will arrive and then stairs and barriers and then it will be ready for occupation.
As usual at Ford Park, everything happens at once - as the first cabin was dangling from the crane, our neighbouring farmer bowled up the path with a shotgun on his shoulder asking about a dog reportedly worrying his sheep. We had volunteers and staff standing guard at all exits to prevent curious Day Service clients from getting in harms way. Other volunteers were down the bottom of the field with the golf-buggy and trailer, collecting clippings (or rather branches) from the laurel hedge on Ford Park Crescent which someone had cheekily donated to our community group. Kim was busy getting ready for a group of school children who were about to turn up to take part in an activity - and all this in a howling gale.
Now we have a lull in proceedings so its time for lunch before our Town Clerk and two army officers arrive to discuss an event taking place here on 7th May.  Ah well - its good to be busy!

Two steps forward

Reassuringly the first drawdown of money is now in the bank! We have finally managed to satisfy all conditions and provide the mountain of documents requested. Even at the last hurdle a phone call came through asking about an unknown covenant from the 1800s - 'has the building changed hands since then?' - well, Yes! Anyway alls well that ends well.  That's the first step forward.
Last Thursday, Landscape Architect, David Redmore met with the planning officer to discuss the natural play scheme. She seemed happy with our somewhat scaled down plans. Friday we met with the Coach House contractors to discuss removing the Wisteria (temporarily) so that they can repoint the building. We also discussed the play scheme and our contractors seemed happy to help. If we can co-ordinate these two projects carefully we will be able to shape the spoil from foundation excavations and the car park into its final position which will form a circular mound for our performance space. Another step forward.

Paperchase through treacle

9th March was the deadline I gave myself for submitting all the necessary documents to drawdown our grant/loan but here we are and I am still waiting for the signed contract, insurance form, VAT election letter and so on......and these are just the final bits of a massive jigsaw. Thank goodness we planted some trees for I am sure we have used up a whole forest on the paperwork produced for this over the past two years.  To be fair to our contractors, we haven't given them much time to respond, a situation forced on us by a mad government deadline. So today is a waiting game and I'll try and clear my desk ready for the next onslaught. Tonight I will be giving a presentation about our development projects to the Neighbourhood Forum meeting - 7pm at Bardsea Malt Kiln.

Ford Park - the start of a new era

Well we are nearly there! After two years of applications, writing copious amounts of guff, pouring over spreadsheets and generally getting stressed out over frantically moving goalposts, we are about to drawdown some major funds to develop the Coach House. There are still one or two things outstanding but we should have them sorted by Wednesday which, until 6pm last Thursday, was the deadline to submit our drawdown request.  Yes, even on the brink of signing a fixed price contract the following morning, we were told that the government deadline to drawdown and have spent/committed the funds by 31st March, 2011 was now relaxed due to some clever negotiations and an endowment account.

Hey, what the heck, as long as we get it - but its been a frustrating and challenging process and I am sure I have many more grey hairs! BUT I shouldn't harp on about the negatives as we are really lucky to be in a position to move our project on.  With so many voluntary groups in big trouble funding-wise, we are about to start a major project to develop the Coach House into a new community building with a Cafe/Pizzeria.  Running parallel to this is another project to create a natural play scheme, thanks to a Playbuilder grant which was cut last year but reinstated.  Of course we are going to make rather a mess on the field but the playscheme will be completed by the end of August so hopefully it will look wonderful by this time next year.  The Coach House project will start on 28th March and be completed in November with the Cafe opening early in 2012.  Keep watching this space for progress reports. Phew!