The building used to be Debenhams and in 2022 Freedom Works started renovating the section of the building that they bought and turned floors 3-5 into office working spaces. https://www.freedomworks.space/locations/the-palace-workspace-hastings/
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00:00 So we're here today on the fifth floor of Freedom Works, the Palace workspace in Hastings.
00:07 We renovated the fifth floor from an abandoned Debenhams building, so we've had a complete
00:15 refit out of this space. So what we're doing going forward is we're focusing on building
00:20 those collaborative communities. We've had members here for about a year now that have
00:25 stayed with us at 70% occupancy in the space. I guess what businesses can expect going forward
00:31 for us here on the fifth floor, we've got a few members on office space, so we're all
00:37 about making those collaborative workspaces for local businesses. So that's everything
00:41 from hot desking, private office space and meeting rooms. I think anything that's about
00:48 getting people in together and collaborating, I think that's our main focus with our existing
00:53 members and we're seeing a lot of footfall from new people coming into the spaces.
00:57 So obviously a lot of people tend to find this space as kind of connected to the Debenhams
01:04 building, Debenhams store, and it goes way far back. So what my job is here as the CM
01:10 is I'm going to be investigating and researching more into the kind of vast history that actually
01:16 is in this building and moving it up to the fifth floor and creating it in this space.
01:22 So the history actually goes further back than just Debenhams. So this is pre-war. So
01:25 this goes back to 1871 and it was first established, the store downstairs before Debenhams, by
01:34 William Plummer and George Roddice. They were drapers by trade and then they went into business
01:41 together and they created a business and then they moved on to other various locations around
01:49 the south coast and then they went to separate groups of the Debenhams group and Debenhams
01:57 brought them out.
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