Future of 7 VT working group: Eighth meeting

+ + Future of 7 VT working group: Eighth meeting + This informal summary by Henry S. Thompson, Convenor + Held at 7 Victoria Terrace, Edinburgh on 3 April 2009, 5:30 p.m. + + +

+ Attendance +

Present: Alison Burnley, Madeleine Harding, +Brian Mayes, Laurie Naumann, +Eileen Schott, Henry Thompson (in the clerk's chair)

Prevented: Phil Lucas, Rufus Reade

+ Real Estate Market review +

AB identified some commercial estate agents, and spoke with a local +agent: his estimate for 1 large room, 2 smaller rooms, kitchen and lavatories +was 150 to 200 thousand pounds, in the centre of Edinburgh.

This would require not only selling 7VT but also at least one of the +flats.

Our current Meeting Room is 792sq ft, as is the hall.

Not clear how quickly we could sell, or what a realistic cost for a +building that would suit us would be, that is, not clear that we could get a +building with an 800sq ft room for 200 thousand.

If we remain a central meeting, we need at least that much space, as the +Meeting Room is full on busy Sundays. If we are split up, what does that do to +our community?

ES looked at out-of-town 'units', semi-industrial, no costings retained. +Windows are an issue, and of course conversion costs would be high.

+ Comparison with other meeting venue rentals +

ES looked at our rental charges and those of some other church hall +rentals in the area. The figures look broadly comparable to ours, so there is +not much scope for raising prices to get more income. ES was impressed by the +quality of the website the Meeting House uses to present itself to potential +renters. Having a manager on site also meant our response time was much better +than most of the other sites.

+ Status for form distribution/collection + + LN waiting for review of his proposed +questions, will interview individuals. + ES has done this, see above. + MH has distributed a questionnaire, and has +between 1/3 and 1/2 of them back + Forms were available at the rise of meeting +on Sunday 29th March, 25 replies in hand. + AB has given out some forms, more to go out +next Wed. + No news from PL + No news from PL + +

We'll try to have tabulated responses by our next meeting, at which point +we can combine across different groups

+ Next steps and next time +

We agreed that dividing up the writing work makes sense, and HST agreed +to try to move us forward on the draft table of contents so that we can begin +to agree who will contribute what writing. HST said that he envisages having +both a report on our work, covering all the information we've gathered, +probably quite substantial, and a much shorter 'executive summary'.

What about soliciting forward-looking input from various +constituencies? Time is short, but we need to give people an opportunity to +contribute to the vision.

We will have two open meetings to give people the opportunity +to share their visions of the future with us: 3 p.m. on 3 May and 7:30pm on 4 May.

ES shared her idea of a public participation (experiential) means of +presenting our findings and helping the AM to understand our findings, maybe at +AM on 6 June, or afterwards.

+ Actions review and new actions +

HST to get the Kath Russell report [done]

HST to ask John Phillips for an electronic version of his notes for us [done]

HST to ask Ken Jobling where to find the details of how food hygiene regulations +apply depending on exactly what's happening. [overtaken]

HST to invite Mark Hutcheson to one of our meetings at his earliest +convenience, as Convenor of AM Trustees. [done]

ES to get some costs of out-of-town units

HST to get publicicity out about the vision input meetings.

+ Next Meeting +

Our next meeting will be at 7 Victoria Terrace at 5:30pm on Friday 24 April. We +tentatively agreed on Friday 1 May 5:30pm for our next meeting after that.

+ +