You might have seen in the news, or heard on the rumour mill, stories about Gostins Building (DoES Liverpool’s current home) being sold. It’s been on the cards for ages and is part of the reason why we’ve been looking to move and expand, but a planning application to turn the building into a hotel doesn’t sound like a new owner who wants to keep the building as a hive of alternative and interesting entrepreneurial activity 🙂
So, what does this mean for DoES Liverpool?
In truth, not a massive change. On a practical note, the new owners have changed the opening times for reception, so the front doors will be locked after 5pm (from Monday 3rd July 2017). We’ll have to sort out keys and a doorbell for evening meetups – more on this once we’ve worked out the details.
As to the bigger picture, it’s not ideal, but we’re weighing up two options for a move at the moment and either of those will work as a new home for us. One is the same size we are now and well within our budget. The other is twice our current size, which would let us fit more businesses in and expand the workshop (separate wood and metalwork workshops anyone?) and who knows what else? But we’d need to find something like an extra £1000/month to fund it. That’d be easy as it fills up, but we need a plan to get there.
How can you help?
Obviously we’re really excited about the bigger space and aiming for that. I’m sure we’ll be back with more concrete tasks as the plans develop but in the mean time there are two ways you can help out.
Firstly, become a Friend of DoES Liverpool. This is our bottom level membership, for people who want to support what we’re doing financially but don’t need any of our paid services. Either set up a standing order for £9/month (bank info is here) and ping an email to hello@doesliverpool.com to let us know, or click the button below to set up a recurring payment with PayPal:
Secondly, come and take a desk in the current space. That’ll help our cashflow and forecasting plus you’ll get to hang out with an amazing community of people and (most importantly 😉 ) get first dibs on desks when we move. If you don’t need a desk yourself, tell whoever you know who might.
And if you want to keep abreast of developments, join the community discussion group or our (lower traffic, a handful of emails each year) announcements mailing list: