Creative hub Box Studios opens in North Liverpool
Box Studios has converted a Liverpool warehouse into a creative and digital incubator – complete with recording studios and a brewery.
Box Studios, in Boundary Street, was derelict until last year when two families came together to convert it into a home for musicians and digital businesses.
Managers Sarah Davidson and Liz Rothwell want the five-storey building to be a north Liverpool equivalent to the creative incubators already up and running in the Baltic Triangle.
Ms Davidson said: “The idea came from the building itself. We saw that it was becoming more and more derelict and we thought there was something we could do with it.
“There are things like this in the city centre and towards Sefton Park, but this area doesn’t benefit from this kind of building.”
The building was bought last year by Ms Davidson’s father, Tony Mutch, and Ms Rothwell’s father, Tony Rothwell.
They and their daughters started work on the conversion in January, with the first tenants arriving in July.
The conversion work was backed by business support service Stepclever, which has also supported several Box tenants.
The top floor of the building is home to Mersey City Music, which runs two recording studios and several practice rooms.
The other floors house several creative firms, including Cait Jewellery and Design24Seven, while Ms Rothwell and Ms Davidson are now on the hunt for more tenants to fill the remaining space.
Ms Davidson said: “Some of the businesses here are start-ups. Some have expanded, like Collabco Software – they originally took a couple of offices and have now moved downstairs to take a bigger space.”
Ms Rothwell said the building was set up to encourage tenants to work together.
She said: “We’ve got bands on the top floor, and then the storage units on the ground floor being used by the bands.
“The businesses are interacting with each other. Everybody utilises each other. It’s becoming an incubator.”
In the basement, Mr Rothwell is running Stamps Brewery, which will supply beers to his bars Stamps in Crosby and Stamps Too in Waterloo.
The brewery is also proudly green. Its water is heated using a solar thermal system while the water used for cleaning will come from a rainwater tank.
Mr Rothwell says he has long been interested in green technology.
“I have a caravan with wind turbines and solar power,” he said.
The whole complex has been designed to be environmentally-friendly.
Its roof is covered with solar panels, which generate 10,000 kilowatts of energy a year.
And this week Box is installing a biomass boiler, which will use green fuels and will meet most of the building’s remaining energy needs.
The building will also benefit from other developments nearby, including the plan to redevelop the Grade II-listed Tobacco Warehouse at Stanley Dock into hundreds of homes.
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