The Blue Mountains Youth College has found a home in the Rural Fire Service building at Lawson but the council decision, which also looked at usage of two back rooms in the Mechanics Institute, has left the Friends of the Mechanics Institute "gobsmacked".
The college may have been left homeless and the school's co-ordinator Brad Ellis is "elated" their application, which offers a "life skills program" for adolescents "excluded from mainstream schooling", was accepted by Blue Mountains City Council.
It means once the RFS site is empty within the next 18 months, and if they can get a grant to refit the building in the next 12 months, the college can move in.
"It is a good feeling," Mr Ellis said. "I now have a permanent base for disadvantaged and disenfranchised young people to continue their educations."
Mr Ellis said the school has had an "unnerving few years" but are now hopeful to get a $25,000 grant to upgrade and refit the garage spaces. They are currently in a private building on Yileena Avenue in Lawson and council subsidises their rent by $17,000 annually but the building's owner has an approved development application to demolish the building.
Jane Birmingham, the secretary of the Friends of the Mechanics Institute Lawson [FOTMIL], the fundraising arm of the 377 committee which looks after the hall, called the situation "a saga" saying other applicants - the Brook Theatre and the Blue Mountains Woodturners - were "shoved aside" at the October council meeting.
Ms Birmingham said both the Woodturners' application for use of the old RFS building and the Brook Theatre's application for the Mechanic Institute's back rooms "required little or no financial commitment from council".
"Brook Theatre put in a tender ... simply to protect those rooms for non-exclusive use, after an earlier move by council to put the BMYC into those back rooms. The 377 committee objected ... on the grounds that the back rooms must be available to hirers as dressing rooms and storage for instruments and props."
Clr Chris Van der Kley said the council premises review panel was in the process of fixing up the hall's back rooms at the moment for non-exclusive use.
Ms Birmingham said the groups' aims had been "thwarted by council's decision to award the custodianship of the RFS building, and potentially the two back rooms, to the youth group - who come with a promise of a substantial funding application that may or may not eventuate".
Council had indicated that Brook and the Woodturners were frontrunners then, "late in the decision making process and apparently for economic expedience, chose to introduce the Blue Mountains Youth College, whose education facility could easily and more effectively be housed elsewhere," Ms Birmingham said.
She said the group had "no objection to the youth college in Lawson". "We are simply trying to ensure council listens to the people of Lawson as to where they are best housed."
"We have suggested the Mid Mountains Community Centre ... and feel any funds raised by the college would be better spent augmenting the educational facilities there, rather than attempting to fit out an RFS building that was never designed for such purpose0."
She suggested they could use demountable classrooms at the MMCC grounds"
And Ms Birmingham added "contrary to a council resolution no liaison re the college's application occurred with the hall's committee".
Clr Romola Hollywood said the Mid Mountains Centre had researched the community needs extensively and "the top priority was providing support for young people".
Clr Mick Fell said there were two excellent applications and the Woodturners, who are sharing a council building in Mt Riverview with two other groups, were in a "very good position if anything becomes available in the future".
Five representatives from the Blue Mountains Woodturners attended council and the Lawson project co-ordinator, Rhys Jones, who addressed the meeting, said afterwards of their failed bid - "We tried".
Mr Jones later told the Gazette: "While this decision wasn't what we wanted, we accept that our application was treated fairly."
FOTMIL said the decision was "a travesty" and they would take the vote back to the people by holding a public meeting next month at the Mechanics Institute.
Mr Ellis said there "has always been a small minority of the community opposed to giving an education to our young people ... At the end of the day I'm graduating kids that would never have graduated."