MY LIFE CO-EDITOR RACHEL MITCHELL
BEACH STREET INTERVIEW BY SOPHIE DEBENHAM
Supporting local small businesses always brings a community together. But summer being over isn’t stopping this local business from doing just that all year round! Beach Street based in Felixstowe in Suffolk supports many small businesses in the hospitality and retail industries. Based near the Mannings arcade this place has everything you could possibly need and a great day out too! I spoke with Charlie Manning who owns Beach Street and asked him a few questions.
How did the idea of Beach Street come about? We were investigating the various uses of the space we have on site – for the arcade, crazy golf, market and events etc. The space for Beach Street was being used previously for a few rides – waltzers, dodgems and a small carousel. This brought in the fewest visitors, and lowest
amount of rent being paid by the ride owners. We needed to update and develop the site with a concept that created more appeal for visitors and boost the visual impact and business overall. We looked into a multi storey commercial building, but the cost was prohibitive. So we thought about small spaces, creative use of space etc and decided to visit Box park and other similar destinations in London to see how feasible it would be due to the limited amount of space we had available. The more we considered and discussed the site, the more excited we became realising the potential of how it could work and be suitable for us. We loved the different box park concepts and decided we had to be creative and innovative in terms of the layout and design to maximise the number of units
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