By CASEY NEILL
WARNEET Motor Yacht Club will be waiting until 2018 for a new lease on life – two years later than originally planned.
Club Vice-Commodore Ken Drane and other residents attended a City of Casey budget meeting last Thursday to put pressure on the council to fund a $750,000 redevelopment.
“It’s always been a community hall as well as the yacht club clubhouse,” he said.
“The building is falling to pieces.
“It’s really the only venue in town for community events.”
But there’ll be no money coming to the dilapidated building in the next two years.
Mr Drane said Warneet Motor Yacht Club (WMYC) last year unsuccessfully applied for a $50,000 council grant to engage an architect.
The group instead found out the council had allocated $150,000 toward the project in its 2013-’14 budget.
In his autumn newsletter last year, Councillor Geoff Ablett heralded the project.
“The stages of renovation will be a priority of mine in the next two to three years,” he wrote.
“Plans will be drawn up in the near future. We will make this club the showcase of the local community and beyond.”
But Mr Drane said that after spending $40,000, the council told the club the remaining funds had been transferred to “revenue” and no further spending would occur.
Capital works manager Darren Rooth this week said the council’s 2014-’19 capital works program included the $750,000 WMYC upgrade.
There is to be $200,000 allocated in 2016-’17 and $550,000 in 2017-’18.
“Council invested more than $65,000 in 2013-’14 to carry out improvement works at the yacht club, ensuring the public hall is functional and accessible, including a serviceable kitchen and accessible toilets,” Mr Rooth said.
He said there were a number of other community facilities within the Coastal Villages, including the Blind Bight Community Centre and two public halls for hire, one in Tooradin and the other in Cannons Creek.
According to Warneet Motor Yacht Club – A strategy for the Future, a report prepared by an independent town planner, the facility is integral to the town.
“It may be said that, given the only other place to gather in Warneet is the local milk bar, the WMYC is the anchor of the town,” it said.
The report said the building was “in increasingly dilapidated condition with both structural and cosmetic issues”.
“The balcony exhibits rot and water staining and will be subject to further weather penetration and will further dilapidate,” it said.
The Warneet Motor Yacht Club was first established in 1952 and is the oldest yacht club in Westernport Bay.
Its members erected the original single-storey building, and added a second storey extension in the 1970s.
The Department of Environment and Primary Industries (DEPI) owns the land and the Warneet Foreshore Committee manages it.
The WMYC’s committee of management is in its 12th year of a 21-year lease.
An annual art exhibition, council seminars and workshops, public meetings and information sessions all make use of the space.
