Rumour, recrimination and regret: Fargate’s container park is gone, but the fall-out drags on

Good afternoon readers – and welcome to the Thursday Tribune. Just as a heads up, since it’s a Bank Holiday on Monday, we won’t be publishing our usual briefing.

It was really about time, Dan and I thought, that The Tribune wrote something about Containergate: the short-lived business park and long-term embarrassment at the top of Fargate. I’d expected to write a purely retrospective piece on what went wrong but quickly discovered that the battle rages on. The council and the company that installed the containers each seem to blame the other for the failure – and said company is reportedly trying to sue over money still owed. In their midst are arguably the true victims of the debacle: the independent businesses that lost out and, in some cases, lost money by taking part in the project.

Help us out: Do you – or anyone you know – live in London Court, St Mary’s House, Printworks, Kelham Works, The Hub or The Lightbox? If so, we’d love to speak to you. Get in touch by emailing victoria@sheffieldtribune.co.uk.

Mini-briefing

🎸 The current management of The Leadmill recently started a #TellTom Twitter hashtag, putting pressure on council leader Tom Hunt to publicly back them in their fight against the building’s owner. The owner, Electric Group, has applied for a “shadow licence”, which wouldn’t affect the existing licence but would let it continue normal operations immediately if its bid to take over succeeds. In response, the council has put out a press release where Cllr Hunt explains that the council “cannot directly intervene in the legal process taking place between the Leadmill’s landlord and tenant” and must consider the licence application in isolation of other factors. 

⛺ NowThen magazine has published a fascinating but depressing piece on widespread opposition to plans to formally designate a small plot of land near Beighton as a campsite for Gypsy, Roma and Traveller (GRT) households. Despite the need to provide homes “for one of the most disadvantaged groups in Sheffield”, those opposed have expressed concerns such as “falling house prices” and increased crime, drawing on offensive stereotypes of the communities. The piece suggests local Labour and Lib Dem politicians, regardless of their personal views, are unwilling to take a firm stand against this prejudice to avoid offending their voters. 

👦 Recently, we asked to hear from the parents of Sheffield Scouts who attended the 25th annual Scouts jamboree in South Korea, which suffered a number of setbacks and was compared to the grisly South Korean TV show Squid Game in the media this month. Phillip Tate, whose 15-year-old son Oliver attended, says that he nevertheless had a fantastic time and would do it again in a heartbeat. The Scouts “had a few tough days in camp” before returning to Seoul earlier than planned, where their unit leaders quickly prepared other activities for them. “They got on with it, they dealt with it and they stuck together as a team and made it a fun and fantastic experience.”

Things to do

🍻 This weekend is the Seven Hills Beer Festival in Dore, where you can enjoy a “wide selection of the best cask beers available from local and regional craft brewers,” as well as a bit of gin if that doesn’t appeal. Entry to the festival in Dore Moor is free, although you must purchase a £2 plastic glass and you can pay a tenner to camp overnight if you overindulge. Find out more on the festival website here. 

🎵 On Saturday, The Brothers Arms in Heeley are hosting their Summer Bash, with live music from 2.30pm until midnight. They promise a “great selection of musicians and DJs to propel you towards bank holiday weekend nirvana”. Food will be available from 4pm in the carpark with plenty of veggie and vegan options. 

👚 Also on Saturday, the “UK’s biggest vintage kilo sale” is taking place in Worth The Weight Warehouse in Manton Street, charging £15 for every kilo of clothes. They have “9 tonnes of handpicked vintage and pre-owned stock” on offer and promise to replenish the rails throughout the day. Entry to the warehouse is free – find out more here.

Rumour, recrimination and regret: Fargate’s container park is gone, but the fall-out drags on 

In March, the infamous Fargate container park was dismantled and hauled away. For Sheffield Council, it had been a series of mortifications; for the independent businesses involved, it was an ordeal. In both cases, sweeping the evidence into storage and out of the public eye did nothing to bring their troubles to an end.

Adam France, of Heist Brew Co, a brewery approached to join the project in September after another vendor dropped out, says his business was one of the luckier ones. “We broke even with the whole thing,” he tells me, “but I know there were other vendors on the site who lost money setting it up.” The council didn’t charge rent or bills but moving in took time and effort, plus staff still needed to be paid. For food vendors in particular, whose unsold product was wasted at the end of the day, the losses were considerable. 

France recalls that Get Wurst, a company selling Berlin-style sausage and schnitzel, were especially hard hit. When I visit them at their new home in Sheffield Plate, the young man behind the counter tells me that the company was cut adrift once the containers shut down. All staff were let go while Get Wurst desperately hunted for another location and it only re-opened at the beginning of March, a little over a month later. “It was awful,” he adds, largely because the council “promised so much, and it could have been really cool”.

It’s only a short walk from Orchard Square to Kommune food hall, where another container park alumni, The Fat Mex, has ended up. The owner Dom is covered in tattoos — he also owns a tattoo parlour — and has intricate patterns shaved into the sides of his beard. “I wondered when you’d track me down,” he tells me. My inquiries have been a topic of conversation in the WhatsApp group for former Fargate vendors and he even takes a selfie of the two of us to post in it. We set a time to talk the following morning but, when the allotted hour arrives, it appears he’s changed his mind.

France had warned me I might find it difficult to get people to open up about the Fargate containers. “We have been tarnished by the site, many of us don’t want anything to do with it anymore,” he says. Staff were frequently accosted by Sheffield residents about how ugly the containers were and some businesses felt even being associated with the project damaged their reputation. “It took its toll on some of the businesses to the point where it really negatively impacted how they were seen.”

What made this feel particularly unfair was that the businesses and their staff had little more information than the average Sheffield resident as to why the containers, originally meant to open in summer, had only partly materialised by October. “We tried to find out at every opportunity but we were kind of in the dark about everything,” Adam says. The only thing that was clear at the time was that the council and SteelYard Kelham, the company chosen to build and operate the container park, were not seeing eye to eye. “We didn’t hear what they were disagreeing about, but it seemed like there were issues between what was promised and what was delivered on both sides.”