By Violet Li
Locals swarmed to their beloved social enterprise café L’Arte Central to celebrate its last day at the Casey Administration Building on Saturday 29 June, despite the unfriendly rain.
Nothing really showed the sign of the last day. The staff was as busy as usual, grinding coffee and serving the pies. More than 60 tables were reserved, and people came in and out.
As the director Anthony Cheeseman said, this was not the end, and they were just at an in-between season.
After having to be detached from the anger, disappointment, and devastation brought by a three-month eviction notice from Casey Council in March of this year, Anthony scurried around and did everything he could to find a new location.
Time was ticking, and he could not afford to waste a day. He had 30 staff and he looked after another 15 people with disabilities. In an unpromising economic environment like now, a day without pay could impose tremendous pressure on not just one individual, but an entire household.
“It was a shock. I remember when they (council) told us, Sharon (Anthony’s wife) burst into tears because this is our life,” Anthony recalled.
“We’ve built this place for five years, and it’s really 20 years [of experience] that you put into building something like this.
“You can do two things. You can fight to stay or fight to leave in a way, and we chose we’re going to leave because, at the end of the day, this building will not be here.”
Starting in July, L’Arte Central will be spread across two locations with the café and florist at Cranbourne Park Shopping Centre and the pie production and catering at Lanterns Viet Kitchen in Clyde North. The Cranbourne Park Shopping Centre site is planned to commence on Thursday 4 July.
While this was not the finale, a sensitive community soul could still trace the sadness in the air, from the pats on Anthony’s shoulder and the best wishes to the staff to that “alright, this is last day here” you overheard when passing a table.
Local CFA showed up with Captain Koala to support the café, and the community was taking photos and tying their memories to the ambience, on this last day.
The L’Arte Central opened in October 2019.
Anthony used to run Madcap Café, another social enterprise, then went on to work for Retail Food Group as a territory manager looking after franchisees around the country.
One of the Casey locals Drew Gormlie, later the first managing director of the L’Arte Central, rang him up one day and asked if he wanted to jump on board, and Anthony said yes, why not?
“We’ve got this idea of calling it Latte. And it was going to be with art space because doing art courses is really good for people recovering from mental illness,” Anthony said.
“So I said, well, we put it together, and that’s why the name is L’Arte.”
Initially, L’Arte Central was proposed at the old shire building on the corner of Sladen Street but later the planning did not come through.
“It was about a month later, the late ex-mayor Amanda Stapleton said we’ve got this building here [Casey Administration Building],” Anthony said.
“It’s perfect because people with mental health challenges don’t really want to think about how to travel to work, how to catch public transport, and the parking issues if they are driving, so this building ticks every box that we were after.
“And it is a place that isn’t in a business shopping centre where people could just come and feel welcome. And the size of it is huge. It’s 400 square metres.”
When Drew suffered health challenges in early 2020, Anthony took on the managing director role.
The opening clashed right on with Covid.
“It was Saturday morning. We had to have a staff meeting after work and I had to address staff and make them more redundant, except for a couple, because we had to go into lockdowns,” Anthony recalled.
“I promised the staff that I would employ them within six months. It was a pretty big statement to make at the time. But we did.
“Lockdown was pretty hard for Victorians, especially with cafés.
“But because we were deemed a central service because we were giving opportunities to people with disabilities, so we ended up doing 20,000 meals during the pandemic, and they were distributed by five local charities to people who needed them.”
The florist business was an unexpected beauty out of the pandemic.
“We’re an art thing. When the pandemic hit, we couldn’t run art programs. We couldn’t run meetings. We couldn’t do anything. So we had to get creative,” Anthony said.
“One day one of our friends Deb asked Sharon, my wife, what do you really want to do with your life? Sharon’s passion is to be a florist, and Sharon says, I’d love to be a florist. And Deb says, why aren’t you doing it? Now’s the chance to do it.
“Here we are three years later with a fully-fledged florist. Sharon stepped into that space. We delivered flowers to people, to hospitals, to retirement villages, and just to individuals. Because of lockdowns, you couldn’t go out, but we could because we were delivering.
“We also ended up doing pies. We made thousands of pies during Covid that we delivered to people’s houses and stood at the front door with masks on talking to people, counselling people.”
With all the memories and history, leaving after a three-month eviction notice hurts when the thought of it creeps out.
“The building is old. It is a 60-year-old building. We knew it was probably going to come to its end of life sometime,” Anthony said.
“We’re on a five-year lease. We knew there were no options at the end of it, but that means you go on a month-by-month lease, and that’s fine because you can be on a month-by-month lease for 20 years.
“It’s costing us a lot to move, and council is not paying one cent. It’s probably costing $60,000 to $70,000, and I have to put out there a GoFundMe page. Waiting on that money is stressful and we have a lot of money going out of our own pockets at the moment and on credit cards and things like that to pay for a move that we shouldn’t really have.
“If it was a 12-month notice, we could have fundraised a bit better for it.”
A faint-hearted is not for running a social enterprise, as Anthony says. He is not one of them, and that’s probably why it took him two weeks to find the new locations and forge ahead when people thought that might be the end for L’Arte Café.
Two nights before the last day, the Cranbourne Chamber of Commerce, which is also moving after an eviction notice, held its regular meeting in L’Arte Central, the last time in this venue. Anthony, as a guest speaker, talked about the drivers for small businesses and social enterprises.
“We do things for reasons. Like, there are easier ways to make money,” Anthony said.
“It’s about people. After three family members have suicide over 25 years, I suppose, it affected me to the extent I didn’t want people to suicide.
“It’s an unconditional care of people. It’s a different love. You know, you can walk in here, and no matter what’s happening in your life, we’ll have a chat.
“Employment changes people’s lives, but not just employment. It’s just having somewhere they can meet because sometimes employment’s the last thing people want to do, but they just need to get out and have something to eat, good food, good coffee, good company, and next thing you know, they progress to the stage where they can work.”
Back to almost a decade ago, Anthony was running Madcap Café in Masters Home Improvement Stores.
“So I used to run cafés in shopping centres, and I am glad I never said I’d never go back,” Anthony said.
From July, L’Arte Central will wait for you in Cranbourne Park Shopping Centre with music and coffee on again.
Lifeline 13 11 14
