One of the flats the trust is hoping to convert for local workers
St Ives Community Land Trust has made more progress by securing a grant for more than £73,000 from the Architectural Heritage Fund.
The cash will support the CLT’s project to convert the Old Vicarage Flats, in Street-an-Pol, to six affordable apartments for local workers.
The Architectural Heritage Fund is a charity supporting groups who want to give a new lease of life to historic properties. This is part of a wider government-funded initiative, the Future High Streets Fund, which focuses on regenerating high streets and town centres.
Morag Robertson, chair of St Ives CLT, said, in an interview on Radio Cornwall, that the grant had helped to get the Old Vicarage Flats project under way.
She added: “This kind of funding, which is about development funding, and the actual restoration funding is coming in separate streams, but the architectural heritage fund are one of those key funders throughout the country because they recognise new lives for old buildings.”
The trust recently extended the deadline for its share offer in the flats scheme to the end of November. The trust is targeting a 4% return for investors. There is a minimum investment of £350.
The eventual goal is for the CLT to have a number of affordable housing projects on the go around town, but for now it is concentrating on the Old Vicarage Flats scheme.
Anther fundraiser has been an art exhibition run by the Anima Mundi gallery, across the road from the flats. Opening in the run-up to the scheduled Brexit deadline of October 31, Protected by Alarms — a title taken directly from the security poster on the door of the Old Vicarage — alludes to a form of personal and cultural incapacitation resulting from a mounting sense of anxiety, paranoia, fear, and frustration at a time of mounting suspicion, despair, hopelessness and flux.
The show features work by Sarah Ball, Henry Hussey, David Kim Whittaker, Tim Shaw, Sax Impey, Jamie Mills, Roger Thorp, Jim Carter, Richard Nott, Andrew Litten, Laura J Adams, David Cooper, Samuel Bassett, Carlos Zapata, Abbie Trayler Smith and Paul Benney.
