Gabriola Island Commons: Facilities

If your community club, group or organization wants to use the property or buildings, contact the Property Management Team (see Teams) or send us your request (see Contact Us).

Main House
The large, original farmhouse provides space on the ground floor to People for a Healthy Community (PHC) programs, food depot and other services. The upper floor has a large meeting room, a smaller meeting room, the Commons Office, a kitchen and two bathrooms. Teams and various community groups often use these spaces for meetings and workshops. Main Outbuildings
This property has been farmed for over a century and was a goat farm that produced goat cheese in the 1980s to mid 1990s. The three structures shown below are the original goat barn (left), the cheese factory (centre) and a workshop (right).

Some Future Plans
Most of the following plans are tentative and some will require community input and regulatory approval.

The barn will be renovated to provide a venue for rehearsals, performances, classes/workshops and many other community uses.
The original cheese plant will become a community/commercial kitchen for large group meals, workshops, food storage, and canning and food preparation requiring a commercial kitchen.
The workshop will operate as a maintenance and repair shop for the Commons, but will also provide a venue for various courses and possibly a workshop cooperative.
A timber-frame building donated by the Island School of Building Arts will be erected in October 2009 to house the biodiesel project and to serve as an educational centre for alternative building and energy technologies.