| starcommunity.com.au
Page 2 Tuesday, 18 March, 2014
Connecting people and communities STFY
Numbers reveal cost of buy-in
SIGNS OF THE TIMES AN exhibition by a Victoria University researcher features historical hand-painted signs that were rescued from a Footscray demolition site in 2012. Dr Stefan Schutt has curated the exhibition, which includes an aerial map of the West with signs painted by the Lewis and Skinner signwriting firm from about the 1950s. It also displays job sheets, contracts, agreements and drafts for advertising signs, including one for Cadbury’s Bournville Cocoa. Dr Schutt has studied the history surrounding a pile of documents uncovered at a Footscray demolition site when he saw a 60-year-old invoice blowing down Whitehall St, Footscray, just outside his office at Victoria University’s Work-based Education Research Centre. “These signs tell us how old inner-urban communities used to live, shop, travel, eat and meet,” he said. The exhibition will run at VU’s Footscray Park Library until 17 April. 116589 Picture: JOE MASTROIANNI
By CHARLENE MACAULAY
City’s festival focus By CHARLENE MACAULAY MARIBYRNONG City Council has cemented its reputation as the Festival City - and now plans to go bigger and better. The council last week endorsed its Festival City Policy for 2014-2017, which aims to build on its success by establishing three distinctive streams for festival funding and support. Over the 2013/14 financial year, more than 180,000 people attended festivals across the municipality, up 54 per cent since the council first announced its ambition to become a Festival City in 2010.
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across the municipality as part of its Maribyrnong City Council’s Festivals and Events Grants Program, including the Ethiopian New Year Festival, Carols in the Gardens, Midsumma Meets Maribyrnong and Jazz Out West. Meanwhile, the East Meets West Lunar New Year Festival and the Quang Minh Tet Festival were recommended for the council’s invitationonly triennial grants program, which supports more established events in the municipality. Go to www.maribyrnong.vic.gov.au and follow the links to find out what’s on in March and April.
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The council has made a concerted effort to organise a balance calendar of festivals all year round, and for the first time last year hosted a New Year’s Eve celebration including fireworks along the banks of the Maribyrnong River. Over that time, the council has also attracted a number of high profile festivals previously confined to central Melbourne, including the Melbourne Fashion Festival, Melbourne Food and Wine Festival and the Melbourne International Comedy Festival. This financial year, the council allocated more than $300,000 in grants to 12 festivals and events
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AS ANY home buyer would know, the devil is in the detail - and the Real Estate Institute of Victoria is offering house hunters more information on their chosen suburb than ever before. The REIV has released new house and unit prices by suburb, broken down by the number of bedrooms within the home. The data reveals the price of a two-bedroom home in the City of Maribyrnong varied wildly, with prices reaching $602,500 in Seddon, $598,000 in Yarraville, $489,000 in Maidstone and $400,000 in Braybrook. Similarly, a three-bedroom house in Maribyrnong will set you back $717,000, or $644,750 in Kingsville and $610,000 in Footscray. REIV CEO Enzo Raimondo said the data would be an enormous benefit to investors and owner-occupiers looking to gain a more detailed analysis of the Melbourne residential real estate market. Mr Raimondo said that, in particular, buyers targetted larger homes in the suburbs of Brighton East, Glen Iris, Beaumaris, Templestowe and Prahran, along with a smaller group of suburbs further from the city - Ringwood, Mitcham, Berwick and Bundoora. “It seems families were focusing on these suburbs due to their affordability, and close access to important facilities such as schools and parks,” he said. “It (the data) provides owner-occupiers and investors with a window to the size of homes and areas that are attracting the highest median prices at present.” The REIV’s median house prices for the December 2013 quarter reveal the Seddon house median jumped 13 per cent from $650,000 to $733,500, making it one of the top 12 growth suburbs across metropolitan Melbourne. The increase has seen Seddon out-price Yarraville, which suffered a five per cent price drop in the last quarter to post a median of $705,000.