UPDATE: We heard back from the owners. This building isn’t available as it is currently due to be refurbished as parks staff accommodation. This seems an excellent use for the space, and great to see them as an employer creating affordable accommodation for operational staff. It’s great to see it’ll be back in use early next year after nearly 3 years of being empty (we’ve removed the geolocatable references from the post).
So our search continues… (below was our brief suggestion for the site prior to finding out that it wasn’t available… it’s just the nature of what we do, we mock up things in order to pitch ideas and most of the time they don’t come to fruition, all those who are entrepreneurial understand this).
Whilst we are waiting for the licence to commence works from the town hall in La Laguna (North side of Tenerife, UNESCO world heritage site!) for our space in the Canary Islands, it’d be great to find sites in London and other European capital cities. We’re open to rent per sq/ft or revenue share models, so we are flexible and easy to work with. Also happy with rolling year to year leases, so if a better proposition or alternative plan is developed by the corporation then we’d vacate.
Happy to consider things at both small scale and large scale. So this is could be a very good example, although this is on the very much smaller scale of things it’s location is amazing. I spotted this site whilst doing some landscape work for some clients near to the site earlier in the year, however I had forgotten about it until driving by yesterday evening and noticed it was still empty. It’d be a perfect place to do something very niche and low key, whilst bringing an empty site back into use.
I can see in recent years it’s had squatters in due to the legal paperwork on the exterior of the building, so I’m unsure as to the internal condition, but we have some funds to renovate and bring the site back into use.
Concept in a nutshell, do you prefer Option 1 or 2?
Option 1
Imagine digital nomads and Startup entrepreneurs from across the world renting rooms to stay here for a few months at a time. A short term house share of sorts, a place focused on those coming to the city for a few months to work rather than those on a airbnb/leisure/holiday trip. See ‘What is Nomadhut’ for a more long form outline of our vision.
Option 2
Imagine that we opened up the ground floor adding large scale sliding door, then the entire ground floor and garden would be coffee shop for informal coworking and general visitors to the area, the upstairs would then be very small scale studios for small businesses and artists (apologies for the very simplistic visual below, it doesn’t really sell the idea lol, but it gives an idea subject to structural elements obvs).
We’d be able to fully renovate the building, including adding 1gb/1gb symmetrical fibre, door entry system, CCTV on the exterior of the building and thereby ensuring the overall security of the building.
I’m open to guidance from you as the custodians of the site, however my initial thoughts would be to maximise the inside space for living elements and I think if we moved the workspace element of what we offer to the garden / yard at the back to the side of the premises then that’d be the best solution. I’ve previously converted small 20ft new shipping containers that’d fit this purpose so well (see photos below).
Overall I’d love the opportunity to chat through some ideas and work on something that’d be mutually beneficial, hopefully we get the chance to chat in person.
Having previously converted 4 x 20ft high cube shipping containers and similar things on other sites this would be super easy to setup and provide additional useable space at speed.
