A Good Day Was Had By All

[ParkStarter is an initiative to reclaim poorly used urban spaces, starting in Manchester. We are saddened that stalled development sites have become “zombie” car parks over recent years. We are upset that this is often done without appropriate planning permission. We think that more imaginative uses, such as creating new parks, are viable propositions. By way of context, see Why ParkStarter? and other earlier posts on the blog]

On June 2nd 2013 at 9:45 am we began building our first “prototype park” on the Dobbins site.

On the back of £200 raised online and a few further donations on the day we:

Bought 62 sqm of turf

Laid our turf over 6 car parking spaces in the Eastern corner of the site

Paid for our car parking spaces for 7 hours

Hired a van to remove the turf at the end of the day

And most importantly of all we joined with our community to sit on the grass and bask in the glorious (no joke, it was glorious) Manchester sunshine. We sat, we knitted, we read our books, we picnicked, we drank a few alcohol-free beers, we chatted and we dreamed.

Fears of a short-lived prototype quickly subsided as we realised the goodwill of the city seemed to be with us. Bus drivers and passengers waved to us. Busy people on their way to work stopped off to say they loved what we were doing and were sad they couldn’t join in. Passersby stopped to smile, to laugh, to take pictures, to ask what on earth was going on - and to talk to us. A lot of people had a lot of love for the old Dobbins building, and as we heard their many stories about its place in Manchester’s history and their different visions for the site’s future, it was striking that not a single person re-imagined it as a car park (not even a decent, non-dangerous, planning permissioned car park).

We gathered around 200 more signatures for the petition and many exciting offers of help and expertise from folk who stopped by to chat. It was truly wonderful. A huge thankyou to everyone who came, contributed, saw, sat, or viewed from afar.

Meanwhile on the other side of the car park…

Around 11am a member of staff from SiP was spotted talking worriedly into his mobile phone. Sam had a brief chat with him to explain what we were doing and that we would clean up after ourselves. Whilst a bit bemused he was quite nice about it but said that he was just doing his job and would have to talk to the boss.

A little later Haseeb Anwar, the managing director of SiP rocked up in his shiny blue Jeep. He asked us politely (through gritted teeth) to leave, and we explained politely that we had paid for our spaces and would be staying. He then asked us not-so-politely to leave, crying, “They’re for cars! Only cars!”, did a strange kind of dance around the car park with Loz, and called 999 to report to the police that some people were having a picnic in his car park. He seemed disappointed that they didn’t turn up and spent the rest of his afternoon sulking in the opposite corner of the site.

Around 3pm the first guy was sent back over to check our tickets. He was nice and smiled but declined to have his picture taken for the paper!

The cleanup

One of our major concerns was how we would be able to dispose of the turf once we had finished for the day. Particularly as we had promised to fully clean up after ourselves and didn’t want to be an environmental menace.

Luckily, Hulme Community Garden Centre stepped up and offered to look after our turf until such a time as we want to use it again. They were unsurprisingly very keen on the project, and we’re really looking forward to getting them involved further down the line.

But then we had a transport problem - how to get half a tonne of turf to the other side of town. Fortunately Josh is a member of a car club who operate a great service for urban dwellers who only occasionally need a vehicle. As he had other commitments we’d missed Josh during the day, but at 4:30pm he appeared with a big white van and we packed the turf off to its new home in Hulme.

At the end of the day we retired, slightly muddy to the ever supportive Castle Hotel to reflect on the day and toast our community who truly care for the place in which they live.