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Community kindergarten in South East Melbourne given vacate notice from Church
Freya Lucas
Sep 24, 2024
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Gardiner Preschool, in the inner south-east Melbourne suburb of Glen Iris, has reportedly been given a notice to vacate by the end of 2025, leaving community members concerned about the future of the 80 year old service.
The Uniting Church, which owns the property on St Andrews Lane, is said by local news source The Age to be intending to sell the land at the market rate.Stonnington Council, along with parents and educators of the service, is said to be ‘very concerned’ about the impact such a closure would have on the availability of early childhood education and care (ECEC) in the community, lobbying for the church’s Victorian and Tasmanian synod to reconsider the sale.
Speaking with The Sunday Age, a church spokesperson indicated that the sale “has been flagged since 2018” and that the synod had made efforts to minimise disruption to the children at Gardiner.
“We have worked with the preschool to ensure that children presently in three-year-old kindergarten may complete their four-year-old program in 2025, and have explained the reasoning behind the site not being available for the preschool’s use unless it was to be acquired at market value by the preschool or another purchaser willing to continue the arrangement,” a spokesperson for the church shared with The Age.
“The Uniting Church in Australia Synod of Victoria and Tasmania understands the concerns, but after an extended period of advance notice of our need to dispose of the site, there is no further tenancy possible after the end of 2025.”
A repeated situation at Windsor
The situation faced by Gardiner is all too familiar for the Windsor Community Children’s Centre, which faces a similar fate with landlord Swinburne University also looking to clear the site of its present occupants at the end of next year.
As a vacant and rezoned development site, the land could be worth over $13 million, The Age Economics Editor Noel Towell speculates.
This reality, he notes, is a common one facing non-profit kindergartens in Melbourne’s inner suburbs, where rising land values threaten to price out community-sector occupants.
While the Council has expressed an interest in buying the site at its present value to keep the kindergarten in place, councilors have noted that it is “difficult to make the argument” to the university for a sale at the lower price, with councilors agreeing to ask the state government for financial help to acquire the property and keep the centre open.
An advocacy campaign run by parents from Windsor Community Children’s Centre is well underway, with the Gardiner centre’s community now also beginning to mobilise.
For current parent Jaclyn Fahey, the loss of the preschool, which worked around her son Theodore’s cancer treatment to deliver his kinder program this year, would be devastating.
“If Gardiner ceases to exist it will leave a gaping hole in the community and impact families across the region,” she said.
To read the original coverage of this story please see here.
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