Seaview contemplates expansion

•   Seaview Village residents Jean Targett and Gayle Edson. 

By Tony Scott,
July 14, 2021

It's been 40 years since the first two units at Bridport’s Seaview Village were completed and the organisation managing the complex says it’s entering a new phase.

The current secretary of the committee that manages the village Gayle Edson said there are now 16 residential units with 22 residents.

“But we’ve got room for another 40 units up the back and plenty of demand.”

However, things have changed, especially values and development costs, since the days when the village was mooted in the late 1970s.

“It was suggested as a way of looking after the widows of the Waterhouse soldier settlement farmers, who were all getting on in years by then.

“What was the Bridport Development League formed a committee and started fund fraising.

“They had white elephant sales and chook raffles and crayfish raffles, they even raffled a horse at one time.”

But Mrs Edson said that financial demands for development now had gone a bit beyond chook raffles.

The first committee had negotiated a lease for the nearly four hectares the village takes up the eastern fringe of.

The committee would prefer to have the parcel of land freehold for ease of further development. 

But today’s cost of the land is well over $1million, add to that a similar amount for the extension of services like sewer, water and electricity.

“Obviously with something of the scale we’re considering we’ll need funding support from governments.

“So we’re also trying to recruit some younger people with the sort of backgrounds that  might be helpful for us in that vein.”

Mrs Edson said the committee has some members who are also residents, like herself, and there have been times when members have had relatives, like parents, who have been residents, but generally membership is drawn widely across the community.

She said the present committee acknowledged the foresight and determination of the predecessors over the past 40 years.

There remained a call for accessible, affordable housing for seniors, the disadvantaged and veterans, so many avenues of funding were being considered as Seaview prepares for it's next phase.