Spark York has just turned five years old – and alongside celebrating some amazing achievements, its founders are looking to the future.
And that includes searching for its next home after the business and community hub moves on from Piccadilly.
The team have identified a potential new location – but they stress talks are very much in their early stages.
We’ll come to where that location is soon enough. But first, how does it feel that Spark turned five last week?
“It’s kind of crazy that we’ve now been trading for five years,” says Sam Leach, who created Spark York alongside Tom McKenzie.
“It’s like one of those paradoxes where it feels really long and really short at the same time.”
There was a lot of turbulence in those early weeks and months. Some in York, a city famous for its ancient heritage and stunning architecture, were critical of the concept of putting a box park built out of old shipping containers in the heart of the city.
And Sam is the first to admit that when they began, at aged 22 and 23, he and Tom “were ultimately inexperienced” and made mistakes.
“When we started there was obviously a lot more controversy. It divided opinion,” he said.
“I like to think that a major success of the last five years is the fact that Spark has been really accepted. It’s now seen as a community asset for the city.”
Spark was always designed to be a mix of business start-ups, community hub and social enterprise. Getting that right took trial and error.
But as Sam says, Spark has gone on to notch up some impressive successes.
“We’ve had 20 businesses now that have moved into permanent units, which I think’s great. They’re success stories that have started here in different sectors, tested their idea and moved on.
“We’ve probably worked with over 100 community groups that use our rooms for free. Seeing those groups come in, use our space to meet, socialise and plan things – that, for me, is a justification for why we need venues that make life better for people.
“And we get a lot of footfall and visitor numbers – over 8,000 people come here every week, which is great. It’s driving traffic in an area, like Piccadilly, that’s really struggled for an identity.”
A move is coming
However, Piccadilly is not the end of the story. “It’s been great while we’ve been here, but we’re realistic that it won’t be our forever home,” Sam said.
Spark is not going anywhere imminently. Under their contract, landlords City of York Council could have given them 12 months’ notice to move on before the end of April – but they haven’t.
A clause in their lease means the council can’t trigger an eviction notice between May and August, which gives them until at least August 2024. And Sam is hopeful that this means they’ll end up staying till the end of their lease in November next year.
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As Sam understands it, the council wants the site where Spark sits to become social housing – “perhaps a four or five storey building on this land, that then tries to support housing need”.
Which means Spark will need a new home. And so we come to the potential new site.
The location under consideration is behind the back of York Station as part of the early phase of the York Central development.
“There’s nothing concrete,” Sam stresses. “The council have tried to facilitate conversations between ourselves and the landowners, Network Rail and Homes England.
“So we’ve had interim conversations in terms of, could this fit with that early phase when the Railway Museum’s trying to expand?”
Again it would be a short term or, in the jargon, “meanwhile use” development, and the relocated Spark York could be key “to try and bring people into that part of the city”.
“It’s still in its infancy in terms of what that looks like. But we’re having conversations to try and understand what that could be.”
He said Network Rail and Homes England “understand the need for York Central to be a development for the city that’s going to really engage with local individuals and businesses”.
And Spark could act as a conduit “to link with existing residents and the future residents that will live on the York Central site”.
Big advantage
For Sam and Tom there is also a big advantage for moving. In Piccadilly, Spark is close to people’s homes and so it is limited in the level of noise it can make and the hours it can open.
They would really like to put on live music gigs with amplification, and operate until later into the night. A new venue away from residential development would allow them to do that.
Sam said: “We don’t have the flexibility to be able to put on a really major event and say, we’ve got five rock bands on – not that we necessarily want to do that – but we’re quite restricted.”
Such restrictions needn’t apply if they were behind the railway station – a location that could work, Sam says.
“We’ve said that we’d want to be as close to existing footfall channels as possible, to try and give it the best chance of succeeding. And we would potentially be close to the station and the railway museum.”
Lifting the box park from Piccadilly and reconstructing it in a site like this would be “the absolute best-case scenario” because it would give Sam, Tom and all the people who work at Spark some certainty about their future.
“We’re constantly working to one or two year cycles,” Sam points out. “I think it would be easier for everyone if there was a bit more longevity.”
And given the successes of the last five years, more longevity for Spark could only be a good thing for York as a whole.
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