New Office Report
As many of you know, Harm Reduction Victoria has been living in North Melbourne for18 years & in the past couple of years especially, we have outgrown our current office.
"I started at HRVic during the pandemic when we were working a skeleton crew at the office and mostly otherwise working from home. It was clear from my first day that once we were able to return to the office, we were going to need a larger space."
One day in July 2021, on his way out the door for some much-needed annual leave (yes, sometimes he does try to take leave!), Sione casually mentioned to me that it would be great if I could put together a list of potential new office buildings for us to check out when he got back.
What started off as a fleeting comment quickly turned into a project that I certainly did not see coming! After contacting numerous real estate agents and inspecting buildings in various neighbourhoods throughout Melbourne, we realised that for such a niche organisation like ours, we were going to need a unique office space.
After months of searching, Sam came through (as per usual) with a spot in Brunswick & off the 3 of us went to inspect yet another space (Oy vey!). When we visited the converted warehouse in November 2021 for the first time, we saw the potential to turn it into an office that would suit the needs of both our staff & our community. We knew that there would be a lot of work ahead of us to make that happen, but we decided to take advantage of the opportunity and saw it as an investment into HRVic’s future.
Throughout the first half of 2022, we negotiated our lease with the landlord, received quotes from several renovation companies and consulted with the HRVic Board & staff about what the new office space would mean to all of us and all of you. Just prior to finishing the financial year, we finalised our lease & engaged Aspect Interiors for the renovation. Being able to close that chapter of the project felt great, and we were eager to get into the next phase: designing our new space!
"As I am writing this, we are just days away from finally being able to head into our new office and finish unpacking and work from there! And after 18 years of living in one space, let me just tell you that there are a LOT of boxes to unpack! Luckily, we are all super keen to get started!"
We would like to give a special thank you to the Department of Health for providing us with additional funding to help make all of this happen. And we would especially like to thank our wonderful Board for their confidence & support every step of the way.
We know it’s been quite the journey.
For those of you joining us at this year’s AGM, we were really hoping to show off our new office space! Unfortunately, delays in our renovation meant we had to move the meeting to online-only at the very last minute. We are pretty disappointed that we could not host all of you but promise to keep you updated on our official opening!
Please stay tuned & please, please come visit us at our new space so that we can share what you’ve helped us build throughout the last 36 years!
xx
Jess,
Organisational Services Manager
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