We all know what happens when a coal mine shuts up shop and the industry leaves a town. The closure of the Hastings & St Leonards Observer’s printworks was the same for the residents of Hastings, on the east Sussex coast. Nothing replaced it, or the hundreds of jobs that vanished with it. Since the lights went off in 1984, the old seven-storey Observer building spanning 4,000 square metres had largely lain empty.
Over 30 years the dormant structure had changed hands a dozen times. All but one had made money from it, typically by gaining planning permission to inflate the value and then selling it on. The building was doing nothing for the community, but generating returns for investors.