A BESPOKE Italian pizza and bakery business, coffee roaster and gelato bar will soon be opening at Tremain's Mill, those who attended an update on the site were told this week.
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Around 50 people attended the fifth and final public seminar on the emerging Australian Milling Museum, which will be part of the Tremain’s Mill precinct.
As well as getting an update on the progress of the museum from its CEO, Jess Jennings, they heard from Tremain's owner Steve Birrell on the rest of the site’s development.
Mr Birrell - who bought the Tremain's Mill site with Glenda Deans in 2015 and added the adjacent Victoria Hotel last year - reported on the renovation and reopening of the Victoria by general manager Heath Smith.
The Victoria opened in January after months of renovations.
Mr Birrell also reported on progress in the plans to build luxury apartments in the site's timber silos and the latest on the retail businesses that will soon move into the ground floor in the former Victoria Stores building and on to the Tremain’s Mill forecourt.
“Once these businesses have moved in, they will add to the life and activity of Keppel Street, on top of what the Vic has been achieving already,” Mr Birrell said.
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Mr Jennings said the Australian Milling Museum was progressing rapidly since its inception in August last year.
“With the board and secretary now in place, we’ve been actively pursuing a range of new equipment donations for our growing collection plus receiving multiple milling archives and stories and artefacts from locals and interstate," he said.
“The official collection policy is in its final stages now, and the draft curation plan is looking very good, particularly when you absorb the professionalism and detail of the 174-page draft document that will guide the feel and function of the museum’s operations from the day it opens."
Australian Curatorial Services director Stephen Thompson presented the draft curation plan for the Australian Milling Museum.
“There are many issues a new museum has to get right from the start, including conservation techniques, security, staffing, insurances, volunteer recruitment, education programs, marketing, pricing, revenue sources, event and exhibitions, partnerships with donors and similar organisations, and all these have to amount to a sustainable economic venture – even for a not-for-profit group," he said.
He said the difficulty in establishing museums was demonstrated during Australia’s bicentenary, "when many, many new museums got government funding to start off, but within 10 years about 90 per cent of them had gone out of existence”.
Mr Jennings said the five-seminar series at Tremain's, supported by the NSW Government’s Heritage Near Me program, had attracted more than 300 attendees.
He said the "overwhelmingly positive response" from the Bathurst community, showing pride in local heritage not just being preserved, but celebrated throughout the Tremain’s Mill development, was "a credit to the owners Steve Birrell and Glenda Deans".