Market Place Shopping Centre
We’ve lived through the greatest shopping boom ever. We’ve heard from Mary Portas & Robert Peston’s excellent history of the high street and now the owners of Bolton’s flagship shopping centre has gone bankrupt.
For the record.
‘The conversion of the Market Place from the former Market Hall, in which 50 independent traders had stalls, was hugely controversial with more than 75,000 signing a petition against it. In 2005, the scheme had an estimated cost of £30 million, but by January, 2007, costs had jumped to £40 million. It was in that month that the stallholders moved out of the site, bringing an end to 151 years of trading there.’
Oh well.
Do you want to buy it with us and make a real go of it?
It’s for sale and only £20 million to own it. Lets step though this slowly.
Population of Bolton 289,000 ish – lets say around 250,000 of us coughed up £100 each. We own it.
At the moment there are about 20 empty units. No problem.
Ok, so now all those family businesses that were thrown out despite 75,000 residents of the town objecting can vote them back in again.
Forget those silly rents of £18,000 + £20,000 business rates to that outfit called @hmtreasury for a unit the size of a small kitchen and then stock it with what? Staff it with who, pay them what on a zero hour contract? – they’ve all gotta get real. It takes years to establish most companies in the real world and look at what’s happening globally.. nearly 40k for a kitchen size unit is madness – that’s why they are empty and that’s one of the reasons the centres owners gone belly up.
So now we’ve got more footfall and some passion on the high street again.
So do we have to pay the owner back? No we all own it, we’ve paid for it, its ours. We can forgive the rent while small family firms get moving and find their feet – yes it will be a learning curve for them but they need to succeed on the high street. And in tandum George @hmtreasury can forgive business rates on this one experiment and put people at the heart of the towns again while the new economy rises of it’s knees. Treat it like a special development zone where new ideas come to burn bright and clear.
Ok so the big traders in there also need their rent reducing too so they can pay their Bolton staff more on the strict understanding they also pay tax on their profits in the centre and they don’t compete with family firms but they collaborate to save resources and increase trust amongst humans and corporations (in case you are in any doubt humans come first). Sorry competition has to go it’s destructive and it’s why the High St is dead, clone town Britain. The 37,000 global corporations are competing against each other on every High St and Smartphone on Earth so they use more and more resources and short cuts to beat each other no matter what the outcome (trampled family firms) (offshore tax ledgers) (zero hours contracts) (Hacking for business secrets) and who can fix it all (parliament is in fukushima meltdown, banks are zombies, there may only be a few sane traders left on earth). Enough.
So now we’ve got a shopping centre with a catchment area of 400,000 people with about 99,000 weekly visitors at the moment, 700 car parking spaces & plenty of empty units available in the key town centre shopping centre available to provide services for the town that the town want to see there.
And we’ve all spent £100.
Could we accommodate some of those lovely people over at Bolton Market who provide fresh veg? Yes if we wanted, why leave them out away from the crowd to compete with the supermarkets? Bring back that lovely lively friendly atmosphere back in one place, the kind of thing we saw at the food festival in Bolton. Our place.
They could take over the central mall area and increase the food diversity. Delivery is easy right off the motorway and in time the 3000 or so acres of farmland that WE OWN (Bolton council) will provide food & jobs for the town reducing the need for outside inputs to the town for part of the year. Just the kind of resilience we need to see as the global economy takes a walk locally.
Innovation.
If Marks & Spencer can power 33 stores from their waste food, then we definitely want the veg market in the shopping centre? This way we can also use waste to power a shopping centre – a world first maybe? All local food waste goes there – no transporting it to venus.
Want something making or remaking in the town? Why not use shopping centres to ask people what they REALLY need making / remaking and then do live prototyping 3D printing in the centre, get fast feedback what Bolton needs and away you go .. fast forward relevant circular economy.
Bring in a FAB lab into the centre connected to the world – connected to @GMLowCarbonHub connected to the emerging Circular Economy and @BoltonUni @BoltonCollege @BoltonSchool and other schools go for it we need to understand this economy fast.
Watch the next gen collaborate and bring life back to the town. Watch them go. Free them from restraint overly bureaucratic or political rules about what town centres are. Introduce new ideas all over town.
NHS 3D services – there’s a great 3d printing design that moulds foot and leg supports to perfection. How about that on the high Street not tucked away in room 101 on corridor G.
You want some funky 3D opensource frames? Get the towns opticians involved – Come on down to the Market Place in town.
Chain food or – Fairshare Community Kitchen.
Many supermarkets are now giving tinned and dry food to food banks, the thing is that’s a short term measure. Learning to cook food builds confidence when shopping at the market, provides satisfaction & nourishing food with less of the chemical ingredients we don’t want to eat. Shopping at the market and learning to cook go hand in hand, costs less in health and money than shopping for ready foods and supports local growers and retailers of fruit and veg. A Community Kitchen could provide this with the help of the College and nutrition from the NHS & really get the towns shopping centre a focus of healthy eating for everyone and at affordable prices.
This could be part of a wider Food Action Plan for Bolton and the Greater Manchester Region that gives us all much greater peace of mind. Nobody should be short of food in the town and as supermarkets start to loose more customers and profits get harder to make we need to know there are alternative ways of organising our food chain like adapting the car parks of supermarkets and inviting farmers markets to trade there some days like they do in France. Allow them to sell direct to the public please. Growing salads in the summertime on the supermarket roofs and allowing complimentary businesses to co-exist not compete. Supermarket shareholders need to become less aggressive and actively support local food chains.
Homes.
Affordable homes. As a town we own the building.
Within the shopping centre part of it could become a pension for the town. Bear with us. A Modular passiv village allows town centre living and costs virtually nothing in the way of utilities. There are 10 multiple benefits for the town and they feed back into ‘developers’ notes below. Yes, you can pretty much fix the income from these and ride out the energy storm * Please contact below for more details for those interested.
Related – New homes for families that are also AFFORDABLE that are in the town and looking for Help to Buy.
Just so that you know where we stand. Help to Buy is a government tax payer loan that’s aimed at selling homes again. There is a way to do what this scheme that achieves a ZERO risk for future tax payers that the @hmtreasury should pay attention to.
Our initial research indicates that if we (the government / the town/developers/investors) are going to build NEW homes there is a way it can work for many parties involved that also reinforces the Modular passiv village concept and that could work for other empty buildings in the town and new sites on brown feild sites (@SeanHarriss already knows we dont agree with building on agricultural land because it will become a key resource in Bolton’s Food Action Plan above & we believe there are other ways to build than that route). We believe there could be significant interest in this way of thinking about the town. You can pretty much fix the income from these and ride out the energy storm too. Perhaps they would fall under a different asset class but they have the potential to hold a steady construction pattern for the town / region and the skills and products are exportable. * Please contact below for more details for those interested.
Notice to developers below.
Transport fun
Over at Greater Manchester Low Carbon Hub @gmlocarbonhub they are begining to try and sort out low carbon transport ideas for the region, here’s one that could be made in the region and sold / serviced / repaired / via local cooperative car dealers, at
www.osvehicle.com you can buy an electric vehicle for 3.5K loads of fun for next gen, easy to park, no tax and who knows .. one of the services to the town could be an electric taxi service. Food waste from the towns venues could be moved cheaply by similar electric trolleys to the market place power station.
Overnight we could charge the cars and turn off a few of the street lights and power wasting stuff. Bet there’s some electricians that could do that in a snap.
What was that? Maybe even get a light tram railway back in Bolton. Easy to repair, very low cost public transport no need for rocket scientists, plenty of examples in Manchester Science Museum. Anyone know a few footballers who want to chip in? Charged over night, yeah turn a few more electricals off we dont need – a positive power cut and a positive benefit the morning after.
Fleece to Lease – a new concept pushing though where garments are made and retuned back into the manufacturing chain. So its’ kind of like you buy but you lease. When you’re sick of it or wear it out it comes back as something else you buy. Behind that it’s the circular economy – reducing resource waste.
Yeah that’s right – disruption everywhere – China has millions of tons of cotton stacked up. Reusing resource intense fabrics is the future, get over it. How much do we need in our Bolton economy? Ehhh maybe a few thousand tons going in a loop, bring in a few tailors back to the high street where anyone can get custom fit (Give Aults a ring he knows) designs back out to the FAB lab … there you go Mr Jones perfect fit – any one doing it on the High St – yes Bolton could .. come on, lets be having you now. Ring up your head office and pull their ear, they might even throw a few quid in the pot to get the supply chain moving?
Elders respect
Make them welcome in the centre, learn from them they have seen hard times 1000 % worse than any of us lot. They can teach our children all sorts of ways of running some of the town centre shops. You name it they know it, social cohesion and respect. That’s the town centre management sorted, intergenerational respect simple.
Creche you bet.
Lets not mess about – working mums need 100 % more help – if the town can’t provide affordable creche in the town then its not a town it’s a joke. It’s well known fact, if you provide love and care for all families as they grow up you get confident children and functioning families of all persuasions.
The Greenhouse
Enough of the waste heat from the building is gonna be really useful to warm the greenhouse on the right of the main entrance. In there all sorts of useful perenials and regional fruit bushs, trees can be raised and used as a way of the town learning how to grow useful plants in our gardens, parks, hedges and orchards that become a part of the food fabric of the town. As this expanded you’re sure to have a few local chilli & herb growers near town keen on supplying the community kitchen & local restaurants. But of course first you’ve got to own the market.
This could extend out into Boltons farmlands using the Food action Plan above – Bolton butter, Barley, Wheat, Maize, Bread – stuff like that.
So the greenhouse could act as a direct link to the farms around Bolton feeding back farm to fork info and liasing with the new and revived veg Market and if they behave themselves the supermarkets may want to collaborate for the greater good?
Wonga’s opposite – a Credit Union
People should be able to buy things from the Market Place without paying over the odds, they havent got it. Can we design a way for that to happen please, perhaps move Bolton’s credit union in there, that way the good get sold and there is creative movement / flow?
Interested?
With so many people owning the centre and having a say you can see how quickly a town can recover from a 30 yr recession of public involvement in towns and revive the 150 trading history of the Market Place shopping centre.
Yes, there will be merchants of doubt – maybe they don’t want you to re own what your ancestors built & make your own low energy future - perhaps they want to feed off the town for as long as possible to pay off their huge unpayable global debts by charging nearly 40k for a small kitchen sized unit and pay no taxes either. Or maybe they really are clueless as to what’s coming. We dont know.
“I think we need to change the culture, not blame the people that are playing the only game that exists.” via @casrose10
Take your choice. Who do you trust with your future?
Only 250,000 of you need to respond with £100 and IF Bolton Council and the Receivers will listen to the town this time we can have it. If not, you know where the death of the High Street lies and believe us it will be a national and global end to the High St a disgrace to civilisation.
This is all very dynamic at the moment – just like the global economy. The main benefit to chipping in with the town is that what we put down now will be something we can live with for generations. We are looking way past the political 4 yr timescale but dragging us into the circular economy.
1. Please email
This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. if you want this to happen and actively want to do something like the above.
Please include your name, address and contact details and what bit interests you the most & anything else that you think the centre and town needs. This will be the new town blueprint. In a few weeks or months we’ll know peoples feelings for the project and we can progress towards the outcome.
Until then there is nothing else we can do but raise support in principle.
2. If you have a bit more time – Please contact your local councillor tweet the Cheif Exec directly @SeanHarriss and express your support and write a letter of support to the Bolton News – We’ll need some of that grant money Bolton council were offering traders to return to the town to put a more formal plan together containing the towns ideas and then we can put a better bid for the Market Place to be a Community Asset and work with the town and other partners to revive it before more units become empty.
Shopping revolution?
You bet. Bring it on.
The market is the people. Without People it there is nothing but bland faceless ‘bank asset owners’ pushing retailers around in a spreadsheet, the treasury demanding unpayable business rates and arguments in Parliament.
No thanks we’ll do it ourselves. The Region and the treasury need to look forward 100 yrs timeline of using much less in new ways not 4weeks, 2 tweets and a news headline. This is a now or never moment.
Thank you for your time.
Mr Lee
On behalf of the committee at TT Bolton.
NOTICE for the press and anyone interested in contacting us.
Please note we are an unfunded voluntary organisation designing a new operating system for the town. We are made up of a wide range of very knowledgeable and practical people. Most of what you need to know is above. We can only give a press release when we’ve heard back from the Public.
We’ve copied @SeannHarriss in the Cheif Exec of Bolton Council – he’s paid twice the Prime Ministers Salary and is the leader of the local government in the town (we think) and so TT Bolton is looking for his support and guidance on this matter. He’s got the keys to this one so lets see what he says to 150 more years of local trading with a difference. Good luck to everyone.
Notice to DEVELOPERS
What?
The family will only pay around £20 to heat their home for the whole year. Still waiting for a reply from @cabinetofficeuk @hmtreasury @gmlowcarbonhub
www.theguardian.com/environment/2013/nov...ls-oldham-passivhaus
Once you pay attention to this you’ll understand that new Buildings in Bolton don’t need heating systems.
www.transitionlinks.org/?p=691
Offices: Worlds first passiv haus 20 storey office building accomodates 900 people and uses 80% less energy:
www.treehugger.com/green-architecture/pa...d&utm_medium=twitter
Amazing new school just built where a traditional heating system is no longer considered essential.
www.governmentbusiness.co.uk/features/62...ect-gets-green-light
51 affordable homes with a mixed 1,2,3,4 bed units. 80% GASHEAT savings. Sent to @gmlowcarbonhub @Dieter_Helm #passivhaus
www.building4change.com/page.jsp?id=2042
Anyway those are the ways to avoid global war for GAS heat and arguments in parliament, they provide jobs locally, keep an extra £1000 a year in peoples pockets locally, save the farming landscapes of UK from fracking for heating gas. Done properly you can use a slightly different version of passiv haus and feed the simple spreadheet readings into the supply chain, there’s a company in Scotland can renovate a flat in 4 days using similar methods and saves 30-40% passiv takes it that bit further and once we get the hang of it we’re off. We think Emerson Group / Orbit and Blue Mantle / Seddons etc would love to hear about these new ways of construction & renovation, it’s not just about money it’s about the passion to reinvent solutions to the approaching energy crisis. Anyone want to give them a ring before they commit to building new 1700 gas burning homes in Horwich? That way we’d have the skills right here. Heck, part of the Horwich Loco works could be come a passiv haus assembly line for new homes & green deal refurbs in the region.
Prospective buyers ‘Given em a ring, ask them if they could build Passiv Homes’
(you’d save 50k on gas bills over the mortgage life – oh yeah, that’s like help to buy but different man – yeah never thought about it like that.. thanks man i think i’ll buy one of them homes and the taxpayer / government money can go towards something useful instead of dropping it on the shoulders of the next generation.
If there is a GOVERNMENT they need to wake up and ask the owners if they can organise the old railway engineering works as a new age assembly line for these things and passiv renovation linked to the green deal & green investment bank, real long term jobs to pays for the new homes, probably 300 years of jobs if #fukushima doesn’t melt down. As you can see the new age financial engineering really adds up. Hurry up now get your passiv home from these guys – no need for Help to Buy.
The Emerson Group – Alderley Edge Cheshire – Tel: 01625 588400 | Fax: 01625 585791
Bluemantle Ltd, Alderley Edge, Cheshire t. 01625 582548 f. 01625 590449
A lot of these skills are missing in the UK workplace but mostly in the minds of Government / ‘investors’ / ‘architects’ and builders who either don’t know or don’t care that you can build like this. You know if Emerson & Mantle did their sums that’s a heck of a saving to locals and that money would go into the economy for 25 years. If only they could see past the present site and economy and take a longer view as 1700 homes and leave enough of the old train assembly sheds they could form the backbone of the low energy refurbishment revolution in the NW. Clean non polluting jobs building modular passiv homes for the region.
You can make in any style ‘pop star balconies’ to marmite kid, hospitals, schools, offices. Heck they could even save themselves a few million on energy bills at Reebok all fed from the loco works. TT Bolton have access to research conducted several years ago and local residents and trades were very supportive of this type of scheme by the way.
New research thinking we’re doing suggests that Pension funds are most likely to get the benefit from this asset class if only they know what they were looking at. We have a diagram of at least 10 benefits as to why pension funds should be thinking this was on housing.
So we’ve all got a stake in change across the region. Permission to breath clean air in the new economy is understanding it and reconfiguring our minds first and our defunct thinking about our trades and what we think assets are. There is an energy crisis and there is something we can do locally to adapt. It’s up to us all to recognise the way forward and clear the path of old debris before the energy squeeze really arrives.
Please don’t duck and say you didn’t see it coming this is a global rethink of some pretty major trends that are happening to towns all over it’s how we manage this change that matters. Those storms in the Philippines are going to have global knock on supply chain issues. Don’t think they won’t reverb down to Bolton.
