ATMOS Totnes Hub has welcomed its 500th visitor coming to hear about and discuss the future of the Dairy Crest site.
Visitors have contributed their vision for the eight-acre site which has been vacant since the dairy closed in 2007.
The site office building next to Totnes railway station is home to the community consultation.
Local organisation Encounters Arts has established a range of creative activities in each area of the building to capture visitors’ memories of the past and ideas for the future.
There are also weekly opportunities to discuss the project with the architects and project team.
With three more weeks of this phase of the consultation to go, the project team has already involved hundreds of people of all ages from across Totnes and beyond.
Ed Vidler of Totnes Community Development Society which is managing the development at Atmos Totnes said: “We are delighted to be seeing so many people who are interested and passionate about how the land is used.
“People are being really creative with how they share what they know about the place already as well as what they want to see here in the future.”
In August this year a historic agreement was made with Dairy Crest to allow the community to buy a proportion of the site for one Totnes Pound through the Totnes Community Development Society.
Bournemouth-based developer McCarthy and Stone also has an agreement to buy a proportion of the land.
The site as a whole is being masterplanned through the current consultation.
McCarthy and Stone will be joining the Atmos Totnes Hub on November 21 from 5pm to 7pm and November 22 from 11am to 1pm to participate in the dialogue with the community about development of the site.
More detailed work, and further consultation, will follow in the new year on certain parts of the site in preparation for using a new route to planning consent: The Community Right to Build Order which Totnes Community Development Society aims to submit in early summer. If successful this will be the first of its kind in the UK.
Atmos Totnes Hub at Station Road is open on Fridays from 10am to 7pm and Saturdays from 11am to 4pm until December 6.
On the final weekend of this initial consultation phase there will be a series of special workshops to bring together some of the themes emerging from the consultation. For more information visit www.atmostotnes.org.
Original here.
We are proud to have received funds from All Our Stories Heritage Lottery Fund which has supported work during this stage of consultation at Atmos Totnes. 
