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2025/02/04 15:05:11
Subject: Bad Squiddo Games seeking a new home in Nottingham
It's the end of an era as Nottingham Council closes down Lenton Business Centre, where many a wargaming company has set up & come to be household names. In wargaming households anyway. With it they take the Marcus Garvey Centre, an essential hub for services to the Black community, particularly the elderly as the day centre is a key feature.
We've all been given 28 days notice (from tomorrow apparently when the legal letters arrive) to find new premises. This is an unworkably short amount of time, especially for the companies with decades of equipment and staff to manage. Paperwork can take a month or more when signing to a new place, let alone the logistics and arranging viewings.
While I am angry and upset about this decision, I am a woman of action, so we have various office viewings booked. However the Council has closed several business centres at once, so there's a sudden demand surge, making it the hardest time ever for a small business to find an office in Nottingham.
[I know people will say "there's loads on rightmove", there are lots of expensive and small serviced offices, but we're a lot bigger than most realise! Please don't send links to any offices, I've looked at everything online many times. There's a whole heap of different requirements a place will need to hit for it to function, and that's without being fussy]
We'll be operating mostly as usual until further notice, as we have to! But I will be packing anything non essential in the background and be SLIGHTLY distracted until we have a new place. Orders will be going out as usual - and even more appreciated than ever to help with the move costs.
Also amazingly the new GSPR compliant packaging has all arrived, but the information on it will be out of date in a month and I'll have to get all new - yay!
Thanks as always for your support, you rock! I had some lovely chats at Vapnartak. We'll get through it, it's just gonna be a grim month! And, as always, saying we, it's just me - Annie, trying to get a new premsies sorted while doing everything else - hooray! I am in surprisingly good spirits though, and I'm sure this time next year we'll be all "hey isn't it so cool this latest place we're in that has internet and everything"
Cheeeeeeeeeeeeeers
Off to pack the weekends orders (I was off yesterday recouping from Vapnartak!)
Annie ❤ ❤ See less
I don't really know anything about Nottingham geography and politics but it sounds like a tough situation on top of the Brexit/EU issues we've been hearing about.
If nothing else might be a good time to buy from them.
I don't really know what things in Nottingham are like, but it must be really difficult when they close down multiple business centres at once. To me, that sounds like a bad climate for small businesses and, of course, it's also not exactly great for employment.
Thanks all, I did what all good minis people do and made a diorama to illustrate the situation!
I'm all good for help at the moment, I'm not tin rattling or anything. Anyone who's followed us for any time knows I am a "sorting things beast". I have some viewings later this week but it's so stressful as places just keep getting snapped up before I can see them, hopefully one of these works out though. I've had to consider plan B's and C's too, including Yellow Storage if nothing works out in time. To then move when something comes up, or move city if I have to (which I would hate)
I want to make it super duper clear that Bad Squiddo Games is going strong and it won't kill us or anything, it's just going to be really annoying for me for a while.
I posted to let people know what absolutely crappy stuff we're being put through - there's over 60 businesses in our business centre alone, and loads more at the Marcus Garvey and the other places they've shut. Also that there may be the odd bit of delay with things if I am out looking at places or screaming into the void. I have started packing to get ahead of it all, but keeping anything that's for order packing til the very end for minimal disruption on that.
Some folk have said they don't know whether ordering at the moment will help or hinder - totally help! Packing and shipping an order is easy, it's everything else that is "argh!". Also if you were already planning an order then now is good as it means I can whoosh it out to you sooner (and less to move to the new place, wahey)
I'll put a big note up when we do find somewhere and where we're going to.
We were told last week unoffficially so I have had lots of time before today to obsessively ponder every option possible, so answers to "have you thought about" will almost certainly be "oh yes indeeed"
Also despite us just turning 10 years old, day to day is just me, so I gotta do this on top of every thing else, so the law is that everybody has to be extra nice to me (and it's my birthday on Sunday, mahaha)
That seems a very short timeframe, seems quite an absurd situation to just suddenly be told they have to move. Hopefully something can be sorted out. I went to North Star miniatures last month to get something but didn't realize Bad Squiddo were in the same place too, wonder what they are going to do about this.
2025/02/04 17:23:15
Subject: Bad Squiddo Games seeking a new home in Nottingham
North Star are in the outbuilding workshops so currently aren't affected (although their space inside the business centre is) but the feeling among the outside workshop folk is "not.....yet"
Hopefully you manage to find something adequate soon, you make some really nice stuff and it would be a shame if people couldn't get it because you were locked trying to find an affordable space to setup shop.
Fingers crossed
Gamgee on Tau Players wrote:we all kill cats and sell our own families to the devil and eat live puppies.
Kanluwen wrote: This is, emphatically, why I will continue suggesting nuking Guard and starting over again. It's a legacy army that needs to be rebooted with a new focal point.
Confirmation of why no-one should listen to Kanluwen when it comes to the IG - he doesn't want the IG, he want's Kan's New Model Army...
tneva82 wrote: You aren't even trying ty pretend for honest arqument. Open bad faith trolling.
- No reason to keep this here, unless people want to use it for something...
2025/02/18 13:22:07
Subject: Bad Squiddo Games seeking a new home in Nottingham
Has there been any updates? I don't see anything on FB.
I'm hoping one of the local companies / stores will at least let them share enough space to keep running in the short term, it's usually a pretty great community. It could be problematic if there are a few companies needing to find new homes at once though.
2025/02/18 14:30:40
Subject: Bad Squiddo Games seeking a new home in Nottingham
Regardless of the reasons, 28 days deadline for a business to up sticks and relocate AND maintain any sort of business activity in the mean time is just insane. My employers are in the process of closing the site I work at, and while admittedly it's a much bigger company and site, we're going to find it tough to get it done in the 18 months we've got to do it in...
2025/02/18 15:11:25
Subject: Bad Squiddo Games seeking a new home in Nottingham
Yeah, even if they found a place immediately it'd probably take more than 28 days to sort the paperwork.
All they could reasonably do is rent a self storage unit for the stock and borrow space from somewhere friendly until they can get their own premises back up and running.
2025/02/21 02:19:23
Subject: Bad Squiddo Games seeking a new home in Nottingham
I found a place! Oh cripes has it been stressful. The van is booked for tomorrow, the place let us have keys before the tenancy officially starts which is immensely cool. I've got a team of mates in helping me pack, and then again pretty much a crew tomorrow to move.
Amid all that I got the Pulp Heroines KS shipped, which I'm super happy about! I've been non stop tying up lose ends, viewing offices, campaigning the council, keeping day to day stuff running and remembering to eat. But I'm so determined to nail all this (which I am totally).
Others in the building haven't been as lucky and are campaigning to stay, I think it's going to get ugly soon. We've had lots of press around and coverage even on national news and there's plenty behind the scenes, so I'm still involved in that for the benefit of the others who haven't been able to find somewhere. There's a leaked council document going around talking of their plans from last year to sell the whole site, including the workshops who haven't formally been evicted yet.
Although I'm just a business of one, I've got a wicked support network and wouldn't have been able to get all this together without them <3 And despite all the disruption, I just want to get it done, set back up, and carry on, even better than before! Also the lighting at the new place is amazzzzing
Glad to hear you've got something sorted, Annie - if what you're saying about the leaked document is correct (as in, the document isn't a fake), then that's terrible behaviour from the council.
Gamgee on Tau Players wrote:we all kill cats and sell our own families to the devil and eat live puppies.
Kanluwen wrote: This is, emphatically, why I will continue suggesting nuking Guard and starting over again. It's a legacy army that needs to be rebooted with a new focal point.
Confirmation of why no-one should listen to Kanluwen when it comes to the IG - he doesn't want the IG, he want's Kan's New Model Army...
tneva82 wrote: You aren't even trying ty pretend for honest arqument. Open bad faith trolling.
- No reason to keep this here, unless people want to use it for something...
2025/02/21 09:50:45
Subject: Bad Squiddo Games seeking a new home in Nottingham
Annie wrote: There's a leaked council document going around talking of their plans from last year to sell the whole site, including the workshops who haven't formally been evicted yet.
Although I'm just a business of one, I've got a wicked support network and wouldn't have been able to get all this together without them <3 And despite all the disruption, I just want to get it done, set back up, and carry on, even better than before! Also the lighting at the new place is amazzzzing
First up awesome to hear that you've got a new place and can move out safely and continue!!
For that council document considering the insane amount of building work going on right now in our area in what feels like every town of new housing - it wouldn't shock me if they did want to just push everyone out and sell the site to a developer for more housing.
Dysartes wrote: Glad to hear you've got something sorted, Annie - if what you're saying about the leaked document is correct (as in, the document isn't a fake), then that's terrible behaviour from the council.
I suspect it's possible that the leak is correct and they were planning to sell (annoying, but something they would be entitled to do, with appropriate notice to the tennants), but in preparing for the sale they found whatever safety issues have made them close the place in a mad scramble (and probably scuppering any sale unless it comes with permission to demolish the whole site)
2025/02/21 18:50:53
Subject: Bad Squiddo Games seeking a new home in Nottingham
I'm a fire engineer. There is a much greater scrutiny of fire safety these days, but one of the unfortunate outcomes is that buildings that had previously been tolerated in poor condition no longer can be. Fixing some compartmentation problems can lead basically to needing to rebuild the building. This is especially true of buildings like this one from the 30s, subject to loads of largely uncontrolled changes over its life (regardless of the listed status changes will have been made)
However, it doesn't look like the council have covered themselves in glory in how its been handled.
Glad you managed to get yourself sorted!
Please excuse any spelling errors. I use a tablet frequently and software keyboards are a pain!
We feel you more than others since we had the same issue 1,5 years back. The landlord raised the rent 53%, so essentially he was kicking us out. Thankfully we have now moved on to private property but I understand most won't have that opportunity so yeah, this sucks. A 28-day notice is F'kd up, it took us 3 months to prepare the new premises and to move to the new location. The amount of stuff that piles over the years is... a lot!
Happy to hear you found this new place to move to. Genuinely happy.
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