This is the gist of Incredible Edible Mytholm’s 3 minute presentation at the Hebden Bridge Partnership AGM this evening (10th October).
HOW DID IEM COME ABOUT?
IEM came out of people talking about what the best use of the Mytholm Works designated employment site might be, for Hebden Bridge and the whole Upper Calder Valley.
WHERE DO WE WANT TO BE IN 5 YEARS TIME?
In 2018, we want to be opening an exciting, tasty eco attraction like no other. This will connect local people and visitors with:
- a permaculture market garden, experimenting with hands-on ways of creating a sustainable food system
- a cradle-to-cradle – or zero waste – business incubator that will bring out the mad inventor in people and show how a low carbon town might work
- a passive house eco hotel with edible walls
- rain gardens that show ways of reducing flood risk
- children’s natural play areas
- informal and formal agro-ecology and cradle to cradle education and training
HOW DO WE GET THERE?
IEM has a rough 5 year schedule – from now until opening day – and a work-in-progress outline business plan.
The plan includes buying the site for £600K. This is based on the site valuation which we carried out, thanks to a grant from the Community Foundation for Calderdale. Of course, this value would rise if Calderdale Council Planning Committee were to approve the speculative planning application for a supermarket and hotel.
The outline business plan puts the capital costs at around £4.9m and shows an annual turnover of around £650K with an operating surplus of around £46K.
Our immediate tasks over the next 6 months are to:
- fact check all the assumptions in the outline business plan, to make sure that the project is commercially viable
- fundraise to pay for the costs of setting up as a community benefit society and development trust
- write the job description and person spec for a business manager/development worker, fundraise for the first year of this post and have the person in place by April 2014.
WHAT’S THIS GOT TO DO WITH HB PARTNERSHIP?
First off, IEM needs support from other HB Partnership members and groups.
And our plan for the eco attraction to help HB make the transition to a low carbon economy means that it has to be integrated with wider plans for the local and visitor economy.
To this end, IEM would like to work with the HB Partnership local and visitor economy task group.
There’s more info in other posts on the IEM blog. Please contact us if you’d like more info or would like to get involved.