Star date: 2nd November 2016

CHAPEL STREET'S HOME OF HONEST COFFEE SHUTS AS DEVELOPERS MOVE IN

The Home of Honest Coffee, set up as a community space and financed by Kickstarter backers, has closed just over a year after opening, as the cafe got starved of customers by the mass redevelopment of the area for luxury apartments.

"Everything has happened at once and nobody who is responsible ever asked how all this is this going to affect those businesses in the middle that pay business rates and employ people" says Mark Ashmore, from Future Artists which ran the cafe. However there is a silver lining...

Full details here...

In August 2015, the Home of Honest Coffee arrived in Chapel Street backed by over 150 Kickstarter crowdfunding backers (see here). Part cafe, part community and creative space, it offered good cheap locally sourced food and coffee, free `weapons grade' internet, local art on the walls and free workspaces for customers. Even its profits were to be distributed to local good causes. This week, the Home of Honest Coffee closed.

"We normally take around £8,000 a month but I noticed at the back end of September that the takings had started to go down by around £50 a day and then, in October, down by fifty per cent" explains Mark Ashmore of Future Artists, who developed the idea of an anti-Costa Coffee shop

"At first I was, like, `OK it might just be an anomaly'" he adds "By the second day I was stressing, by the third day I was calling the staff in for a meeting and by the sixth day I needed to look around the local area with fresh eyes..."

On a walk around the immediate neighbourhood of the cafe, it's obvious to anyone that the `neighbourhood' has gone and the customers have disappeared...

The Media and Business School on Blackfriars is boarded up with half the roof being torn out for redevelopment. Next door, the MASA artists studios in Ferguson House is closed, also awaiting redevelopment. And Crawfords accountants at the top of the road is now a pile of bricks, cleared for Fred Done's luxury apartment development.

Even the 300 space car park by the Lowry Hotel which provided footfall for the cafe has gone as JCBs moved in to begin building Dandara flats. The walkway along this area is a pedestrian ghost town. The only person around is a homeless man asleep in his tent in the grounds of the Sacred Trinity Church. The life and soul of the place has been sucked dry by developers.

"They've taken down all those businesses and car parks and there's no other reason to come to this area" explains Mark "This is just redevelopment. In this entire square everything has happened at once, and nobody who is responsible ever asked how all this is this going to affect those businesses in the middle that pay business rates and employ people.

"It would have been interesting for them to come in and see what's happening under their noses in the biggest regeneration area in the history of Salford" he adds.

What was happening under the noses of Salford Council, ECf and the planners was something culturally exciting. As well as the vibrancy around Honest Coffee, the Future Artists gallery next door had hosted unique, accessible exhibitions, ranging from an interactive music photography exhibition to a hands-on retrospective video games arcade (see here and see here).

It was all fired by the Future Artists mantra that `Without deviation from the norm progress is not possible'. Most people would agree that dumping a load of unaffordable flats in the middle of the oldest part of Salford, and elbowing creative enterprise out of the way, is hardly progress. Five people have lost their jobs at Honest Coffee.

Now left with massive debts and a nine year lease on the cafe, Mark is planning to change it to something equally exciting, with Salford's first ever Virtual Reality arcade which will be open in time for Christmas.

"I did feel a bit crestfallen but I'm not giving up and so, living by our mantra, we've decided to pivot and do something different" he explains "We've decided to get the pop-up arcade of retro video games and put it together with a VR arcade - Oculus, Play Station and HTC Vive on rotation, so it will be the evolution of video games.

"It's about the Future Artists network coming together to support us" he adds "I was a bit down for a while but VR is the biggest thing this Christmas, few people can afford to buy it so we'll do it here."

When Future Artists launched the retro video arcade in the next door gallery, they gave free tickets to kids via the Wood Street Mission, and they intend to do the same with the VR exhibition.

 "Even though we're on our arses we don't forget there's people less fortunate" Mark concludes "I want something positive to come out of all this..."

On 24th November, in spitting distance from the former Honest Coffee, The Lowry Hotel, billed as in `Manchester', hosts a Property and Regeneration Lunch, to be attended by over two hundred developers and associated redevelopment industry lackeys.

One of the main panellists at the speculators' beano is Salford City Council Chief Exec, Jim Taylor. Perhaps he could explain to the assembled suits how the property market is annihilating creativity and imagination. Even the iconic Stewy stencil of John Cooper Clarke under Blackfriars Bridge has bird poo and filthy water dripping down it...