Sydney Nomad Finally Returns Home
The much-loved Sydney diner returns to its original digs this October.
By Terry Christodoulou
Mon, Sep 14, 2020 2:29am
2 min
2 min
Nomad’s journey over the last 12 months has been challenging to say the least.
First, a fire in its Foster Street home caused severe damage throughout the venue. Requiring extensive renovations, the team packed up and popped up a new outpost named ‘Nomad Up The Road’, landing walking distance from its original digs in the former Commonwealth Street Longrain space.
However, not long after a certain global pandemic swept through the country – closing many restaurants – some, unfortunately, for good.
Despite all this, Nomad is coming home, and this time it’s for good with the restaurant poised to reopen in its original location on October 20, bringing with it a new-look Nomad featuring a larger kitchen, twice as much seating around the open kitchen, and the new addition of a stand-alone deli.
Executive chef Jacqui Challinor’s menu will centre around the woodfired oven with signature items like smoked ocean trout basturma, halloumi, date glazed wagyu tongue and olive oil ice cream sandwich, with sesame, pistachio and honeycomb to feature.
“I’m so happy to have the fire back so it’s no surprise it’s the primary focus of the new menu. There’s a lot of new dishes we’re working on, but the staples have remained, some with a few little updates and tweaks,” says Challinor.
The addition of the deli adds a number of take-home products which are to change weekly. Think a selection of house-cured meats, dips, marinated preserves, as well as chocolate fudge brownies and cookie dough. The wine list is also available to take home and delivery.
As for the renovated space’s looks, expect it to feel like home, albeit with a ‘grown up’ feel. The wood-fired cooking opportunities have been extended as well as the kitchen counter seating allowing more patrons to get closer to the action.
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Report by the San Francisco Fed shows small increase in premiums for properties further away from the sites of recent fires
By CHAVA GOURARIE
Wed, Aug 28, 2024 3 min
3 min
Wildfires in California have grown more frequent and more catastrophic in recent years, and that’s beginning to reflect in home values, according to a report by the San Francisco Fed released Monday.
The effect on home values has grown over time, and does not appear to be offset by access to insurance. However, “being farther from past fires is associated with a boost in home value of about 2% for homes of average value,” the report said.
In the decade between 2010 and 2020, wildfires lashed 715,000 acres per year on average in California, 81% more than the 1990s. At the same time, the fires destroyed more than 10 times as many structures, with over 4,000 per year damaged by fire in the 2010s, compared with 355 in the 1990s, according to data from the United States Department of Agriculture cited by the report.
That was due in part to a number of particularly large and destructive fires in 2017 and 2018, such as the Camp and Tubbs fires, as well the number of homes built in areas vulnerable to wildfires, per the USDA account.
The Camp fire in 2018 was the most damaging in California by a wide margin, destroying over 18,000 structures, though it wasn’t even in the top 20 of the state’s largest fires by acreage. The Mendocino Complex fire earlier that same year was the largest ever at the time, in terms of area, but has since been eclipsed by even larger fires in 2020 and 2021.
As the threat of wildfires becomes more prevalent, the downward effect on home values has increased. The study compared how wildfires impacted home values before and after 2017, and found that in the latter period studied—from 2018 and 2021—homes farther from a recent wildfire earned a premium of roughly $15,000 to $20,000 over similar homes, about $10,000 more than prior to 2017.
The effect was especially pronounced in the mountainous areas around Los Angeles and the Sierra Nevada mountains, since they were closer to where wildfires burned, per the report.
The study also checked whether insurance was enough to offset the hit to values, but found its effect negligible. That was true for both public and private insurance options, even though private options provide broader coverage than the state’s FAIR Plan, which acts as an insurer of last resort and provides coverage for the structure only, not its contents or other types of damages covered by typical homeowners insurance.
“While having insurance can help mitigate some of the costs associated with fire episodes, our results suggest that insurance does little to improve the adverse effects on property values,” the report said.
While wildfires affect homes across the spectrum of values, many luxury homes in California tend to be located in areas particularly vulnerable to the threat of fire.
“From my experience, the high-end homes tend to be up in the hills,” said Ari Weintrub, a real estate agent with Sotheby’s in Los Angeles. “It’s up and removed from down below.”
That puts them in exposed, vegetated areas where brush or forest fires are a hazard, he said.
While the effect of wildfire risk on home values is minimal for now, it could grow over time, the report warns. “This pattern may become stronger in years to come if residential construction continues to expand into areas with higher fire risk and if trends in wildfire severity continue.”
