Milano: Soziokulturelles Zentrum #MacaoMilano wird unterstützt vom #MietshäuserSyndikat. @residentadvisor
Resident Advisor über das Macao: “… One of Europe’s most spectacular music venues is under threat. Christine Kakaire visits the former slaughterhouse in Milan to hear its story. …
Macao has no legal right to be where it is. Its founders occupied the current space, a once-abandoned building, in June 2012, and remained there more or less unbothered since then. But earlier this year, the property’s owners said that they now intend to sell, more than likely for the purpose of commercial redevelopment. Macao’s founders, however, have a unique two-pronged plan: with the infrastructural support of an independent housing project initiative based in Germany, they will purchase the building themselves, under the proviso that the property is never to be sold again. The funds used to make the purchase will be publicly crowdfunded via donations and subscriptions, and in keeping with their egalitarian principles of cooperative ownership, any individual’s contribution will ensure that person a part-ownership of the space. Their proposed solution is still being defined internally and assessed externally by the property’s current owners.
If there is to be a happy ending for Macao, its saviour will likely come from outside the collective, and outside the country. The German cooperative Mietshäuser Syndikat has offered financial and administrative support to self-organised groups in Germany for two decades, empowering them to collectively purchase what are primarily live/work creative spaces, and withdraw them from the commercial real estate market permanently. Fortuitously for Macao, Mietshäuser Syndikat would like to extend their operations across Europe. “We would be the Trojan horse in Italy to open this new network,” said Gama Malcher. The two organisations will embark on the process of forming a joint legal entity in Italy, so Mietshäuser Syndikat will then be able to act as guarantor for a loan application to a non-commercial ethical bank, to allow Macao the funds to purchase the property at a fair market price and operate as an official non-profit organisation.
It would be the ideal resolution, but it’s one that Gama Malcher and Alessandri are wary of becoming attached to. A few weeks after the party, we caught up on Skype, soon after Macao’s first municipal meeting regarding the sale of the building. Mietshäuser Syndikat submitted a letter of intent for Macao, but the best case scenario will still require a two-year period of financing, meetings and negotiations. “It’s still unclear,” said Alessandri. “Our hope is that they don’t stop this process. They’re constantly trying to push this agenda that we should not be here at all, and how this request from our part is an abuse of the municipality’s trust. Right now we are under even bigger scrutiny by the process of law, and of course police, and even media attention. I’m a little worried that this could be all for show and trying to save face and save their more left-wing electoral base. They never talk about Expo but it’s actually pretty evident that one of the main reasons for the selling of this land is basically the huge amount of debt that the city is in after it. They could come in full force and evict us.” … .”