When year nine Helena College students Penny Blyth and Izzy Eastman were asked to complete a project with community impact, they turned their attention to a long-term empty and derelict office building in the Kalamunda town centre. Standing at the top of Kalamunda’s central mall, 12 Mead Street is a two-storey building that has been vacant for a decade and is now surrounded by security fencing. Many of its windows are broken, rubbish is collecting in the underground car park and it has been dubbed the “pigeon hotel” by locals. As part of the year-nine curriculum, students at Helena College must do a project that does something to help their community and present their results. Izzy and Penny decided to launch a campaign to ask the Kalamunda City Council to put pressure on the owners of the building to sell or improve the site. “We thought that we would do 12 Mead Street because so many people have been complaining about it, and it’s just such an eyesore on the community, and it could be so nice if they just refurbished it,” Izzy said. 12 Mead Street has been vacant for about a decade. Radio Perth Emma Wynne The broken building stands in sharp contrast to the rest of the mall, which has recently been upgraded by the council to include new gardens, seating and paving. “They’ve just done a facelift to the area and spent over $1 million on Kalamunda central, and they’ve left this building on the end, with vandals breaking into it and pigeons, vermin, and it looks awful,” Penny said. The students have launched a petition, both online and placed in local businesses, calling on the Kalamunda City Council to do what it can to pressure the owners of the building into improving the site. They have more than 900 signatures. Creating a force for change Izzy and Penny know the council does not have direct control over the privately owned building, but said they hoped it could bring pressure to bear on the owners. “Hopefully, with all the signatures we’ve gotten from the petition, [the council] will be able to suggest the property owners do something about it, and show them the petition,” Penny said. “And hopefully they’ll be persuaded to either sell it or turn it into something more beneficial to Kalamunda.” Socks have been tied to the security fencing to bring attention to its derelict state. Radio Perth Emma Wynne As well as the petition, the girls have asked the community to “put a sock on it” by tying socks to the security fencing surrounding the building to call attention to the issue. “We got the idea from a campaign in Guildford when the Guildford hotel burned down, and people started putting socks on their fences to ¦ draw attention into it,” Izzy said. Collecting community feedback The students have also set up a booth at the weekly Sunday farmers’ markets in the mall to collect signatures and talk about the campaign. They have found a range of views. “A lot of people that come up to us are very supportive of what we’re doing, and they congratulate us on the idea,” Penny said. “But some people do have a bit of a negative reaction to it ” they say that we should spend our time doing something more worthy, because they don’t think that anything’s going to happen from us doing this,” Izzy added. The vacant building stands at the top of Kalamunda’s newly revitalised central mall. Radio Perth Emma Wynne Maria Hart, who runs an antiques store in the mall, said she was supportive of what the girls were doing, as many people remarked on the derelict building at the top of the hill. “I certainly would like to see something done,” Ms Hart said. “It seems like a unique space that is not being utilised effectively.” Izzy’s mother Angela Eastman, who operates a framing studio on the mall, said the project had been a great way for the pair to gain new experiences. “They’ve been around meeting different shop owners, making connections, and they’ve had both positive and negative feedback from putting this petition out there,” Ms Eastman said. “I think they’ve dealt with it really well.” Concerns around health and safety of building Ms Eastman said as a business owner, there was a great deal of local frustration with the building. “We put up with roadworks and not having any access to clients really for 12 months for them to beautify the area, and then we’re stuck with this huge eyesore at the end of it,” she said. WA boarders to grow own produce Bunbury Cathedral Grammar signs a 16-year lease to use a portion of a neighbouring farm. She said community members wanted to understand why more action could not be taken on health and safety grounds. “The feedback I’ve had from clients ¦ who’ve been signing the petition, is they feel that they have to do fire breaks and cut their trees back and all of these things for the safety of the Kalamunda citizens, yet they’ve got broken windows and pests living in this fairly accessible area,” Ms Eastman said In a statement, a spokeswoman for the City of Kalamunda Council said it had “not yet received a petition relating to the building/site however, the city is supportive of community-led advocacy”. The students plan to present their petition to a City of Kalamunda Council meeting on Tuesday. Perth in your inbox Get local news, stories, community events, recipes and more each fortnight. Your information is being handled in accordance with the Privacy Collection Statement . Email address Subscribe