‘Overgrown’ public toilets will become architect-designed café space and community garden – it could be yours!

A unique opportunity has come up to run a community café in a newly renovated space in the heart of the vibrant community of Maindee in Newport. Local community group Maindee Unlimited is seeking Expressions of Interest from individuals, small businesses (either new or established) or social enterprises to develop a café that will form the hub of the ‘Maindee Triangle’ within the local Maindee shopping area on Chepstow Road.

Maindee Unlimited is a charity set up to protect community assets and transform Maindee into a sustainable community. Having saved and taken over the running of the local library, Maindee Triangle is the charity’s latest venture.

Following an asset transfer from Newport Council, the charity are this summer renovating a disused public toilet block to restore public toilet facilities and convert to a high spec the rest of the building into an architect-designed café space with both indoor and outdoor space, surrounded by a newly landscaped nature garden.

John Hallam, Trustee of Maindee Unlimited said: “Our goal is to support the development of a welcoming and inclusive café space in our multicultural and diverse community.

“A place where people can safely socialise and enjoy meeting up, surrounded by green space and nature. We’d like an operator to bring their own vision, ideas and initiative to the space and we will work in partnership to help them realise this vision.

“Here in Maindee, we have strong ambitions to become a much more sustainable community. We are greening our neighbourhood and looking at ways to reduce, reuse and recycle.

“We also support our local businesses and are supporting the growth of more local circular economies. We see the cafe and the wider Maindee Triangle community garden as an intrinsic part of these wider aspirations.”

If you are interested, the team at Maindee Unlimited would love to hear from you.

For any further information, email Ruth at info@maindee.org or register your interest at https://www.maindee.org/the-triangle