Rural Youth's new headquarters a record build

Rural Youth’s home base as Quercus Park, Carrick, will be looking a million bucks for Agfest next year - because that’s what the organisation has invested in impressive new headquarters.

On Monday Tasbuilt Homes at Westbury completed its biggest project for the year and transported the building, which includes a meeting room, offices, kitchen, laundry and reception area, to the 94ha site in four pieces.

The Rural Youth offices are now in a prominent position on the southern side of Quercus Park near where the helicopter tours have operated at Agfest, and marks a major milestone in the site’s infrastructure development.

Rural Youth State President Amber Bramich said it was exciting to see the building completed.

“It’s finally time for our whole team to be together in the one location, and that’s not just good for Rural Youth but good for the rural community,” she said.

“It’s part of our plan to develop Quercus Park as a leading events space and having a cohesive team with everything in the one spot is crucial for that.”

Rural Youth sold its York St premises on the back of tough times during the Covid pandemic, with the money from the sale quarantined to fund the new headquarters at Carrick.

With six paid staff, including the CEO, finance and operations officer, club liaison and administration officer and combined groundskeeper and event management roles, plus an army of members and volunteers, having a central hub for desk work and day-to-day administration was essential, Amber said.

“Covid taught us that we can’t have all of our eggs in one basket when it comes to income so focussing on developing a hirable space for events is where our future is as well as hosting the field days.

“We’ve just signed another contract with Tasbuilt to construct a new ablution block so that members have upgraded toilets and showers and we’re working with DairyTas on building a new shed on the site utilising government funding.

“The original function centre building will continue to host weddings, seminars and other events and the recently built Bison shed is proving to be a great multi-purpose space, and will be the venue for the Rural Rumble concert on October 18.”

Tasbuilt Homes sales consultant Simon Best said that the new 240 square metre building was constructed in just six weeks and being so close to Carrick made it an easy logistical move to site.

“We build between 60-80 commercial residential buildings per year and this has been a major project for us,” he said.

“Our builders, painters and tilers are all directly employed by us and other trades like joiners, electricians, plasterers and roofers are subcontracted and kept very busy.

“The beauty of our construction method is that there’s no limit to how big we can go - it’s a matter of building more modules and adding them on, and they can be deconstructed and moved easily to pretty much anywhere.”