Former Post Office sold

Tue 29 Jun 2021, 21:08

WWith its road access via a parking lot this would have been a brilliant, centrally sited, community MakeSpace or FabLab, such as thoses which have been opening more and more in the Old English speaking ex-colonies, and some here too!

I was frustrated at us not having time to organise a community buy-out which is hapening more and more nowadays with prime sites.

400k isn't really that much to raise in a small town, and MakeSpaces easily cover costs from the examples if one isn't having to charge commercial gain rental rates, which community buyouts don't have to fully gain as non-profits (with ploughback).

In the mid noughties MiT in the USA would supply a fully fitted out FabLab in a shipping container or two for $1 million on delivery. You'd have everything you need to make a jet airliner or space rocket in one of those - fully computerised CNC machines, the lot.

The price of digital controls is, what - 1/10?  - what it was in 2005 - and price deflation (in real terms) has lowered the price of Meatspace traditional workshop tools markedly (although the Tories have spent since 1979 deliberately eliminating British tool/pattern making, so you can't buy "local" anymore, alas). So if they, or someone else, are doing anything like a FabLab the real-terms cost could be a fraction of the million bucks boxes of yore.

Tue 29 Jun 2021, 16:40

Sorry Richard, I just couldn't find that £400k I thought I'd stashed down the back of the sofa in time for the auction....

Mon 28 Jun 2021, 17:07

The Rightmove listing is reporting that the former Post Office on Market Street has been sold, subject to contract:

https://www.rightmove.co.uk/commercial-property-for-sale/property-80407494.html

(Anyone here owning up to having bought it?)