‘Meanwhile spaces’: the empty shops becoming a creative force across the country | Life and style | The Guardian
▻https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2019/may/02/meanwhile-spaces-the-empty-shops-becoming-a-creative-force-across-the-c
From hat-makers to carpenters, art centres to gift boutiques, new life is coming to properties abandoned in the retail slump
Aida Edemariam
Thu 2 May 2019 10.59 BST
Photography students from the Northern School of Art preparing for a show of their work at Empty Shop in Hartlepool.
Photography students from the Northern School of Art preparing for a show of their work at Empty Shop in Hartlepool. Photograph: Gary Calton/The Observer
Meanwhile seems such a bland word. Ostensibly, it is a scrap of time between one event and another. But in every hard-boiled thriller, it is where the real excitement lies: meanwhile, our hero shimmied down the drainpipe; meanwhile, on the other side of town …
… there’s an empty shop. Businesses have gone bust. They haven’t been able to pay business rates; they haven’t been able to compete with Amazon; the way we make and buy things has changed so radically, so fast, and they haven’t been able to keep up. Or a shopping centre has opened not far away and the trade has moved there or collapsed because of the competition. Or a developer has bought the space but has not figured out what to do with it or is awaiting planning permission. Whatever the reason, it’s empty.
According to a recent report on empty space in London, more than 20,000 commercial units have been empty for at least six months, and 11,000 for more than two years. And planning permission for development has been granted for 2,700 hectares (6,672 acres) of land – the equivalent in size to the London borough of Lambeth – but construction has yet to start.