By Jenel Hunt
The old Carramar site on College Road is a latter-day example of a miracle for the Stanthorpe congregation of Your Church, which bought the disused complex in the main town area for just $100,000 last month.
Even people who aren’t religious are finding themselves believing in miracles now, according to Your Church Stanthorpe senior pastor Markus Repo.
Settlement was in mid-January, when Churches of Christ sold the property to Your Church in Stanthorpe (part of the Australian Christian Churches denomination). Worshipping from rented premises, the church has never before owned property in Stanthorpe but has certainly taken a leap of faith to begin with such a mammoth project.
“I’m still in semi-disbelief that this is happening,” said Pastor Markus.
“But it’s my hope that this facility, such a huge undertaking, will be a blessing to the church, to the community and that the Kingdom of God may be extended.”
Your Church has around 200 members, with more than 100 people in attendance at church services most of the time. There’s a band of about nine members there every week to provide music and multiple people are involved in running the church services, which have a charismatic, contemporary flavour.
The story behind the purchase is one of many twists and turns.
Pastor Markus first became fired up about Carramar a year and a half ago when he and his wife Michelle looked into buying it on a personal basis. (Another congregation member had previously been interested in buying it as well, he discovered.)
Back then, the property was on the market for $1.1 million.
“I’m relatively entrepreneurial by nature; always looking for an adventure, for something a bit bigger than ourselves. I started driving past it, we started believing for this place and pursuing it.”
His plan even went as far as securing a contract.
“I crawled through every roof space, had various people come out and look at it. There was only a week to go before the contact went unconditional and I was confident we could secure the funds to buy it. But then there I was one night; it was 2am and I was wide awake. I felt like God was saying to me that this place was not for me or my family; it was for the church. I wrestled with this until about 6am then made a deal with God and said, ‘Lord, if anyone says anything about that place being for the church, I’ll let it go.’”
So of course, he was on tenterhooks all day. Nothing said. Church board meeting in the evening. Still nothing. The board meeting finished around 8.30pm … and it was right after that a good friend asked if he’d ever thought about Carramar in relation to the church.
“So I let it go. Even then, at first I tried to extend the settlement … and then I let it go.”
Then a few months later a sermon preached by the church’s other pastor, Damien Hobson, impacted a lot of people. One of them was traprock pastoralist Scott Jamieson.
“Last year there were a lot of stories coming to me around youth couch-surfing, prison stories, homelessness, sudden financial disasters, devastating illnesses – they were coming to me thick and fast. I’m not normally driven by social justice issues but the thought of 20 College Road did come to my mind as part of the solution to these problems. Damo had just preached, and I asked Pastor Markus about 20 College Road. He asked me if I had any contacts in Churches of Christ and I said I did. I phoned someone who put me in contact with the property manager. The second contact I had was quite thin, but I’ve learned not to despise small beginnings so I followed it up.”
That led to him meeting the CEO and eventually Your Church learned that an offer of $300,000 (exclusive of GST) would be supported by Churches of Christ to divest themselves of the property.
Pastor Markus picked up the story.
“But the church didn’t have $300,000. It didn’t have $100,000 in the bank. But the church board took a tour of the building and we sat in the rose garden in the middle of the complex and discussed it and the decision was that we’d put in an offer of $100,000 on a seven-day contract. That was cool. Who buys a place anywhere for that? I would put the rebuild value alone at $10 million, let alone the site itself in the middle of Stanthorpe.
“But the Churches of Christ have been nothing but favourable to what we’re doing for the community.”
And then things started getting hairy, because the conveyancing solicitor had to tick a box that asked if the amount was fair market value for the property. And clearly, it was not.
“And suddenly we realised that the stamp duty might be $350,000 or $400,000 if we didn’t have stamp duty exemption. We’d only just become a company limited by guarantee. Had we even asked for that?”
Back they went to their usual solicitor who had set up the company paperwork and he said he couldn’t remember but he might already have made the application.
Just two hours after Markus had phoned the solicitor, he called back. He had indeed done the paperwork, but the reason he was ringing was that the application approval had just come through to his email.
Markus then rang Your Church’s conveyancing solicitor with the news.
“He said, ‘Holy … Jesus Christ, this is the miracle of Christmas!’ Then he said, ‘Sorry for swearing. I’m not a pastor, I’m a solicitor. I am a believer, though. At least, I am now!’”
All of that happened on December 16, then Churches of Christ asked for settlement to be changed to mid-January and there was time to get the rest of the paperwork sorted.
The next challenge is to prepare the complex, or part of the complex, for its new life.
“We don’t know exactly what we’re doing with it yet, by the way. But what we do know is that it will benefit the community.”
Pastor Markus said at present the complex was under the 9c building classification (residential accommodation of aged persons) and there would have to be a Material Change of Use implemented.
“We are working with the Town Planner and certifier to see what we can do with it and we’re trying to organise a development meeting with the council as well. We need to work out what our options are. It might be rolled out in phases but however it happens, we’re determined that it will benefit the community and that it needs to be able to pay for itself.”
Having been disused for a number of years, the old Carramar had a neglected atmosphere inside, but the other weekend about 50 members of the congregation came with vacuums, mops and scrubbing brushes to clear away the years of encroachment by nature. That included purging a great deal of grass that had squeezed inside and grown as far as the ceiling in some places. They also discovered that the central rose garden still had rose bushes beneath the waist-high grass.
Pastor Markus said seeing Carramar being used again would be an emotional time for many people whose parents or grandparents had lived at Carramar in their latter years.
“I believe they would say, keep doing what you’re doing,” he said.
“It’s going to bring life to so many people in our community.”
He said an email address, carramarenquiries@gmail.com, had been set up so people within the community could communicate specifically about the old Carramar with Your Church.
