Updated news from the home front!

Hey boogie peeps,

Some news from the Elixir home front…. SO! You may or may not have seen the big A0 document taking submissions for our Material Change of Uses {MCU}. This is the lil to and fro battle we’ve been in with council since Sept 2022! Jeeez that was so long ago, lil stink, my sis, has had 2 kids since!! {was a surrogate for one (phewww haha), what a weapon of a woman!}

It is a formality so we can continue to do and operate the way we do and be ‘lawful’ under council land uses. Since good ol’ Volde ‘dobbed’ us in {as he was in breech of using his property incorrectly: Caretaker Use rather than Short Term Accommodation or Residential} for us running yoga, dance classes, workshops, youth programs, community programs, aaaaaaaaand yep even us hosting live music!!

For those who don’t want the deets, skip to the last couple paragraphs to the summary and some effing EXCITING AF news!!  The best we’ve had in the last 2 mofo years…. Aaaahhhhh

So, the background to why we have to go through the Material Change of Use.

We are in a Tourist Accommodation Zone and Elixir, Unit 1 and 2, as venues are council approved as Food and Beverage. When we took over upstairs, Unit 3, we planned to have this as the Mexican Restaurant and an extra event space. Upon going to extend our Liquor Licence to upstairs, we found that Unit 3 was approved for Office space only. We went through an MCU for this which the back neighbours held up at every opportunity, dragging this process out for us from June to Nov 2021 and costing us over $7,000.

During this time, basically upstairs was pretty much dead rent until I found a lil loop hole…. shhhhh... This was through mandate times which made things even more intense and just to add to it all….. the guy we were working with in the restaurant decided to leave by Sept!

As most of you then know, we did everything we could just to try and pay the rent, which lead us to the beautiful, organic meander into what we now do and want to continue to do! Not even thinking we were in breach of anything thinking that if like an ABN you can do other things as long as it's subsidiary.

Enter Volde, Dec 2021, making our life hell since April 2022  I can’t even continue to waste my breath on this assface, so all I’ll say is that he made an official complaint, included Facebook pages, etc to prove all the terrible, ‘unlawful’, naughty activities we were partaking in!! Aug 2022.

Council emailed us and said that we were in breach of our land use, even our live music aspect! We argued back and forth about how the venue has been a live music venue for nearly 12 years!! But they saw the previous operators as running it as a café and restaurant, with music as a subsidiary to the food …… something we could have argued til blue in the face, it having no effect on the current situation.

We pleaded with them with how much would we need to advertise our food and drinks for council not to perceive us just being a music venue…. They basically said, we’ve done too good a job at establishing this now for us to turn back…. So….. we had to move forward….

We had many conversations with council and even a few tears , yep, you guys know how much this place means to me, and to have it potentially be destroyed all by an EXPLETIVE person who doesn’t even live here…. not just for me and dad, how much we’ve put in but what I know it means to others too…. So many incredible memories, firsts, lovers meeting- now married! Kids performing, adults being brave, safe space for everyone, regular NDIS visitors, start up help, community….

The fear of deadlines always looming and the final straw was us needing Lot 0 - Body Corporate CONSENT!! which means.... the backyard bullies needed to sign or at least vote. This happened at the very hairy timing of cyclone Jasper and everything closing for Xmas and NY break, the pressure of not knowing if we would have to close been given notice from council to cease all unlawful activities without any more extensions after January 8! The weight nearly broke me, my anxiety through the roof, my stomach in knots and not sleeping..... Dont know how, but it was like the clouds parted and a ray of light hit me right in the forehead and knocked me to my knees!! The vote came through {even though they are contesting it, my poor, poor landlords...} and the consent got lodged with half an hour to spare from the deadline.... faaaaaaaarrr out!

Aaaaaaaaanyway….. We got there!! 160 pages later + another 20….. and now the Public Notice as a couple of the Uses are Impact Assessable rather than Code Assessable {which turns out good for us for the community to have their say and council to actually give it weight!}….. means anyone can place a yay or nay submission for us to continue to ‘lawfully’ do what we do in our lil community space of magic!

So: Community Use for workshops and youth work, Hotel so we have options with licencing and accommodation, Indoor Sport and Recreation for yoga, dance and… LIVE MUSIC!! Market for our vinyl, clothes and bespoke items, Shop if we potentially want to change something upstairs etc…

The petition you all signed has a part of it which includes support for this MCU so we’ll be submitting everyone’s signatures as support!! For those who still haven't.... Link here... https://chng.it/j6fXcQHTzs

We currently have 6,961 signature online plus the ones we got inhouse!!!! Yewwwwwwwww hoooooo!!! So I’d say that’s a pretty substantial support the council can’t over look. We submit everything c.o.b this Wednesday 10th.

So that’s a MASSIVE THANK YOU BEAUTIFUL PEOPLES!!! We have all fingers and toes crossed council will approve our submission as is so we can just continue to operate and now try to actually focus on promo and getting more people IN, rather than being caught up in red tape…

Massive thank you to Tam for helping me collate, proof read everything and being the right hand woman, Faaaaasher for always running round printing shiz all the time and waiting on hold, Rochy for being the lil bomb weapon you are, Ash for the love and always hard work you bring everytime, Popsui for your fun, smiles and always good times baby!! And all the other cas crew!!

It's time…. 1st round of CELEBRATIONS are comin…… Next Monday 15th…. Volde’s apartment SOLD and apparently goes unconditional!!!!!!!!!!!! {thanks for the intel you know who!!}

Honestly as I type this I have lil wells in my eyes for the release of stress this has had over me for the last 2 years. Finally...…. F^*k right off Volde!!!! WOO HOO!!!

Cheers to that gorgeous peeps!!

Next chapter opening {very} soon!! been in the works for a while....

Cause.... You can't stop the music....