We are finally ready to share with you the big news about Reimagine’s new building, which we will be moving into this Fall. We had this blog post written and ready to post six weeks ago, then Covid struck. Although the pandemic brings uncertainty, we hope that it won’t affect our plans too much. Keep reading to find out our new location and our plans for the new building...
An end (hopefully) to the confusion
We are sorry for the confusion over the past few months, where first we said that we were leaving our current location at 211 King St (the old Novack’s building), then we said we were staying, and now we’re telling you again that we’re going to be leaving.
The reason for the confusion is that back in November, we found the perfect building and had an offer accepted on it, and we gave our notice at Novack’s and started planning for the new space. However, due to various reasons, it turned out to be more difficult to get financing on the new building than we imagined so we resigned ourselves to not getting the building and started making a Plan B and Plan C.
That’s when we decided to stay at 211 King St after all, while we figured out our next steps. And then, lo and behold, our wonderful mortgage broker was able to find us financing through Libro that we could just about afford, and we were able to complete the purchase of our new building on February 28.
Time to get ready and plan our move
Our plan was for Reimagine Co to remain at 211 King St until we move into our new building some time in September. The current tenants of the new building will be there until July, and then we will need time to carry out some renovations.
For a moment, it seemed like Covid had thrown a wrench in the works but, while the pandemic brings a lot of uncertainty, it doesn’t affect the direction of our plans. We don’t know how long lockdown is going to last, we don’t know how construction will be affected, but we are still aiming to move into the new building in September, knowing that our plans might get delayed.
Just to be clear, this does not affect Reimagine’s second location at the Western Fair Market, which opened in February. That location was always intended to be a second location and not a replacement for our main store. We intend for the Western Fair Market location to reopen when lockdown lifts and to remain open when we move to our new building.
Space to grow and have more impact
Our new building is at 206 Piccadilly Street - just off Richmond Row, next to Kal-Tire. The building is still in London’s downtown core, it’s significantly larger than our current location and it has its own parking. It’s all ours and we can do whatever we want with it :)
Our new building is over 4000 square feet, all on one level, with 8 parking spots out front and a municipal lot right next to it. It gives us room to have a zero waste grocery store, a coffee shop/smoothie and salad bar, a children’s area, and event space for 100+ guests.
Above all, our vision for our new space is for it to be a community hub, a place for folks who care about our earth to gather, a space for conscious connection, a multi-generational, diverse, welcoming place to drop into at any time, not just to buy zero-waste groceries or attend a workshop or event.
We will need to do some renovations to the building, but first we need to decide what we want to do with it and how to configure the space. It’s all a bit overwhelming and we’re going to need all the help we can get!
Let’s co-create this new space together
We feel very grateful to have the opportunity to bring this space to the London community. It’s something that we’ve dreamed about for years. It also feels like a great responsibility, as we want to be sure that we are serving the community’s needs as best as we can. We want our new space to be not just something that a few people at Reimagine create, but something that the whole community creates together. Will you help us with that?
What would YOU like to see in Reimagine’s new space? We want to hear it all! Next week, we will share a link to a survey to ask your thoughts about our new building and what we could do with it.
Following the survey, we’ll be holding community co-creation sessions - watch this space for more info. We would have loved to do this in person, with pizza and cake, but we can still have lots of fun together over Zoom :)
For now, leave us a comment on social media and let us know what you think! Thank you for your support and thank you for reading this long post 💜