How meanwhile use is the best affordable option

There weren’t many parties marking the 10th birthday of empty rates regulations earlier this year. But the widely despised policy has not been entirely without an upside: it has forced property owners to put their thinking caps on. Creative minds are coming up with ever more creative uses for buildings as they sit in that sometimes uncomfortable place between former and future use. It’s especially, though not uniquely, apparent in London. For many seeking start-up, community or living space, meanwhile use is the only affordable option. For property owners giving over space that may otherwise lie vacant for years offers security, an income and, perhaps most valuably, community engagement. “In any of the meanwhile projects we’re involved in, they are principally about giving people access to cheaper workspace whether that is to develop a food business or a graphic business or whatever it might be,” says Eddie Bridgeman, director of Meanwhile Space, a pioneering social enterprise at the forefront of meanwhile uses. “It’s about using the short term to create better, flexible, cheaper terms so people can get on with developing their business or project until they find their legs and move on to more commercial space. Doing that really helps to foster that sense of place and seed a destination and get a place up and running.” Some, like the colourful fishing huts Meanwhile offers for retail and workspace at Blue House Yard in Haringey, have won even awards, though that was never the goal. “It was principally to make something that would catch the eye and get people there and provide a usable working space,” he says. “We know we’ve got these spaces for a short amount of time and we need to make something happen quickly. So there’s a lot of creative design going in and using whatever materials you can get in quickly.” Community engagement Another business focused on meanwhile use is Global Guardians, which helps provide temporary cost-effective living space for working professionals affected by the expensive rental market. It offers landlords security for premises, and offers affordable housing at the same time. Some tenants have been staying in properties managed by Global Guardians for as long as five years. “We’re involved with lots of different types of empty properties from retail units all the way through to large empty schools, offices and industrial,” says chief executive Stuart Woolgar. Steve Sanham, managing director of Hub, says the developer began experimenting with meanwhile use for financial reasons but has now had its eyes opened to the possibilities for building closer links with communities ahead of development – a saffron farm in Croydon among the most eye-catching. “To be brutally honest, the initial conversations we had were around rates mitigation and having somebody in there in order so that we could we could mitigate that liability,” he says. “The more we went into it, the more we thought about it, the more conversations we had, the more we understood how positive this would be. “It’s no surprise to anybody that the planning process is long and complex and often longer than you’d like it to be. And so having a building or a property sat there empty for that whole process is expensive, boring and you are missing an opportunity to just do something really positive.” It’s not just smaller landlords and developers turning to these businesses for short-term, interim solutions. There is no more established a landlord than the Grosvenor Estate. As it works up a £500m masterplan for Bermondsey in south east London, it has turned to 3Space to help ensure what is a 12-acre, former biscuit factory site thrives in the interim. “We are doing fairly straightforward workspace for a high-grade start-ups,” says chief operating officer Harry Owen-Jones. “But we’re also running a buy and give work scheme where we give half the space away free of charge to local charities, community groups and experimental projects as well. We’ve got an agritech incubator space in there which is using the old industrial kitchens in the cafeteria areas to do a load of interesting stuff around algae hydroponics, aquaponics and growing insects. “We had a conversation quite early on with Grosvenor about what we could bring to the project for them. Because it’s build to rent they’re taking quite a long term view of how they can use meanwhile use as a tool for community engagement. “Actually bringing community groups in as well as just normal businesses for workspace was quite important to them. They’ve actually included the meanwhile use strategy in their local legacy strategy as well.” Alleviating concerns Some still have concerns around temporary occupation. The fear of getting short-term tenants out is a lingering fear when it comes to meanwhile use. “Whether it’s a myth, it’s certainly a very real fear for the development community or landlord community,” says Bridgeman. But, says Sanham, if you keep talking to tenants, it’s not a problem: “Our approach is to maintain a dialogue and to be really open and honest from the very start to make sure that people understand the terms under which they’re there. “The saffron farm in Croydon was a massively popular and massively well documented community project but we didn’t sit in the background and let this guy curate his project. We were constantly in dialogue with him about timescales, about what we wanted to do, how he could help us, how we could help him and when the exit would happen.” Woolgar agrees that with dialogue risk can be minimised. “There’s going to be a risk with any kind of property protection – even if you’ve got steel boards, or CCTV, intruder alarms or security guards, people will still get into those buildings. Those people will be squatters or unwanted people who will cause a lot more damage than, say, a person who’s a guardian. “A lot of clients have used us for years and yes there have been some examples where a guardian wouldn’t move out. But with each of those cases we’ve actually used our own lawyers taking them to court remove them and then provide the buildings back and the clients are pretty happy with that.” For the providers of meanwhile space, social media is massively important in reaching potential tenants, and for more established businesses now have their own lists. For each though being part of the community – whether it’s an individual or a business – is vital. “We make a big point from the start to actually go meet with the local residents in the area to actually have a nice chat and bring them over to meet the guardians because then you demystify it,” says Woolgar. “Over time we’ve built these links with the communities. In certain areas where we work now a lot of our guardians are quite computer literate so they help the older people in the area with their computer literacy skills, they do gardening for local residents down in Lewisham. “Yes, they are a protector of the building but they also help the local people and the local community via spending money in the local shops and becoming part of a community again.” But meanwhile use offers a wider benefit in uncertain times, says Bridgeman. “In London space is expensive and to have access for however short a period to do something on flexible terms on a lower cost than market rate to get yourself started is invaluable. “The other factor that meanwhile projects are bringing to London is maintaining London’s mojo. A lot of development is fairly bland and fairly consistent in its offer. And then you get these little gaps of interest and the very fact that it does actually move on maintains that sense that London is still changing and a creative place.”