A Space To Break The Rules of Modern Life
I am working in Sheffield City centre again. Six months of working from home has resulted in a particularly nasty bout of cabin fever so I booked a hotdesk at a showy/cheesey co-working space. It will do, but next time I will organise a desk at Union St. It’s a little more real and devoid of naff sales people in ill-fitting suits strutting around importantly.
Anyhow. One bonus is that I get a chance to check up on progress of the Sheffield Heart of The City II development. I am happy to report that the project is taking shape in a very attractive way. Some of the materials and structures put me in mind of European cities – Toulouse perhaps. Sheffield-sur-Sheaf anyone?
This I think, is a good opportunity to revisit my earlier musings on the abandoned John Lewis store in the city centre. If you missed my Sheffield-focussed contribution to the subject of retail demise / doughnut cities (the closure of this store has also been written about by Emily Maitlis in The Times and John Harris in The Guardian) please read my article here. The big idea was that the building formerly utilised as John Lewis Sheffield should be transformed into the world’s first festihotel:
“The goal would be to incorporate all the elements of the festival experience listed above into a single building. Thus one would repurpose the capacious floors of one of these empty buildings as follows.
Roof - artificial beach / outdoor area
3rd floor - dormitories and showers
2nd floor - art installations, chill space
1st floor - music stages and bar
Ground floor (open to non-ticketholders) - street food, other vendors, bar
Basement - DJ areas (i.e. club)Punters would be able to eat, drink, sleep and party in the building”
This suggestion received a fair bit of love on Twitter, and I was invited onto BBC radio Sheffield to chew the fat about it.
A few months have passed since then. Enough time to reflect upon my self-declared “bonkers” suggestion, and I was keen to re-evaluate it in the light of the rapidly progressing developments in the vicinity. On regarding the sad and lonely edifice earlier today, I am more convinced than ever that this would be a great way to repurpose the building. Please allow me to enumerate the reasons why below:
Self-financing
A number of suggestions for the future use of this building have been aired. These include museums of various natures (for example a Museum of Sheffield or a football museum). While some ideas of this nature might attract decent footfall, not all would be financially viable and would require funding support. A festihotel has the potential to not only be a popular facility (consider the popularity of festivals in the UK at the moment, and multiply that by the increased number of seasons an indoor festival venue could support). There is no reason why this could not be a self-funding and popular enterprise.
Anti-corporate
The festihotel is of course not the only idea that would be self-supporting financially. Converting the building into apartments, car parks or even that football-themed leisure facility might well generate sustainable amounts of revenue. However, the ownership and philosophy of such enterprises would be capitalistic. We’re talking big money, big business; shady and remote shareholders. Such enterprises would be run primarily to make money with all other considerations secondary.
The Sheffield festihotel turns this on its head - at least in theory. Its purpose would be the same as that of a good festival; WOMAD for example. Peter Gabriel’s Wiltshire event strives to be ethical, human and hedonistic. The festihotel would aspire to similar goals. In the words of Rachel Horne, its primary purpose would be that of a space to break the rules of modern life.
This is a radical and 21st century departure from the traditional idea of a city centre and points definitively to post-retail thinking.
Injection of youth
I understand that the designers of Heart of The City II might resile from the idea of thousands of scruffy music lovers polluting the gleaming new environs currently being created. In their architect mock-ups the new streets are filled with shiny happy people carting goods home in prestigious-looking shopping bags. However, the reality is that this is Sheffield not Mayfair W1. In an old Jamaican phrase “all kind of people come to the dance” here. Sheffield is socio-economically diverse and glitz is not necessarily an adjective one would apply to those wandering up and down The Moor. What could be enlivening for our city streets, in addition to the grannies out for a shop or the good folk of S5 or S9 sitting down for a coffee on Fargate, is having a shedload of enthusiastic (mostly but not exclusively) young people from all over the country milling about, creating a unique atmosphere.
The soul of Sheffield
Most importantly I think, and taking all the above into account, this would fit with I believe is the soul of Sheffield. Sheffield isn’t Brighton, or London (both places I’ve lived in). It is different and unique and beautiful and accepting. It is politically diverse and honest and doesn’t believe in fancy for the sake of fancy. It’s a city built on grit, graft and steel, of invention and ‘doing it thisen’, of humour, of weekend good times to offset the drudgery of work. Of decency. Of love.
What reflects this? Another block of flats? A soulless corporate enterprise designed to suck money out of the city (to who knows which tax haven)? A shiny, moneyed dream which delivers purely transactional benefits to citizens? Or a venue which will strive to bring good times and (true) heart to the centre, and which might demonstrate that Sheffield can still break the rules, shake things up and point the world’s high streets to an alternative to retail and cafés.