Matt Griffiths-Rimmer, Communications and Impact Director at Hadley Property Group, explores how The LightHouse and Gardens in Stratford has evolved in response to local needs, showing how meanwhile use can support community activity, create employment opportunities and shape a development’s lasting legacy.

Meanwhile uses are often treated as temporary by definition. Sometimes they're driven by social value, sometimes by community engagement, and sometimes they're simply a commercial way of activating an empty site until development begins. At The LightHouse and Gardens in Stratford, home to our IQL North development, very few of the uses there today were planned or programmed at the outset. The space was allowed to evolve, and it has built a momentum of its own. 

When Hadley acquired a three-acre patch of brownfield scrubland opposite Stratford International station in 2022, we didn't want to parachute in a fixed programme of meanwhile uses. The aim was to create the conditions for activity. The starting point was deliberately modest: a community garden connected to a former marketing suite, opened as an invitation to come in and start a conversation about what the site might become. 

From there, with time, energy and resource, the project grew slowly, with each addition responding to what had come before. What exists today is far more layered: a community centre for hire, growing gardens, a sauna and ice baths, a street food stall, a training facility for people leaving prison and others far from the job market and, the latest addition, a new home for a garden centre. Each has its own purpose, and often its own management, but they're connected by how people use the site as a whole and by a shared ethos. 

The LightHouse and Gardens came first, opened as an affordable, bookable space for events and activities. Demand from local people and groups soon showed how far it could reach into the surrounding community. Further uses followed, some expected and others less so, through a mix of serendipity and introductions as our network grew, each one coming out of a better understanding of local need. 

The Gardens now has over 40 planters used by local residents to grow produce, alongside regular visits from forest schools and nurseries, making it a place for learning and everyday participation as well as a shared amenity. 

At the beginning, the space was barely visible. People walked past without recognising it as somewhere they could enter, use or spend time in. As Helen, a local resident and now manager of The LightHouse, recalls: “When we first opened, people didn’t know where it was. Now it’s fully booked months ahead.” That shift came less from promotion than from the space gradually becoming part of local, everyday life. 

That has enabled a wide range of activity, from children’s classes and community events to corporate away days and training sessions. The diversity of activity reflects both how accessible the space is and how little similar provision there is in the area. For those managing it day to day, the impact shows in demand as much as usage, with capacity often exceeded. “It’s definitely a needed space,” adds Helen. “Sometimes we have to turn people away. We just don’t have the space.” 

As the site has matured, responsibility for its day-to-day operation has shifted from the developer to the community itself. People who first came to the space as visitors or volunteers, many of them lifelong Newham residents, now run the gardens, manage centre bookings and coordinate activities. Those roles have grown over time into paid positions rooted in the local area. 

The range of activity the site now supports is what stands out. At one end, Stratford Gateway, a rail training centre run by Elite Project Services, provides pathways into employment for people leaving prison, combining practical training with a support network grounded in lived experience. Elsewhere, Crepe Clubhouse began as a pop-up, unsure of demand, and has become a permanent presence, filling a gap in the local offer and drawing a steady flow of visitors to the site. 

Alongside this, Community Sauna Baths CIC runs a busier, more social space centred on wellbeing. Commercial saunas have become increasingly common across London, but the Stratford sauna has kept a strong community focus, hosting social prescribing sessions and dedicated weekly sessions for refugee groups. It has made an activity often associated with exclusivity accessible to people who might not otherwise try it. 

The site continues to evolve. Growing Concerns set up a new home at The LightHouse and Gardens this summer. The not-for-profit garden centre began in 1988 as a residents’ garden club on Wick Lane and, led by David Leadbetter, will bring new opportunities for community participation, learning and volunteering to the site. 

Having a permanent, open presence on site has also shaped how we engage on IQL North. We can keep going back to the same people, and the conversations held in the growing beds, at events and over coffee have informed what the finished development needs to provide. The consented scheme includes 8,700 sq ft of community space on a peppercorn rent, so what has started here has somewhere to go. 

If there is one lesson from The LightHouse and Gardens, it is that meanwhile spaces can’t simply be programmed into existence. They need enough structure to get started and enough flexibility to respond to the people who actually use them. Developers rarely know exactly what a place needs on day one. Those answers emerge through conversation, experimentation and trust. 

Leaving room for ideas to evolve is what turned an empty brownfield site into a place with real social value. That is the opportunity in meanwhile use: it fills the gap before development begins, and it can leave something behind that lasts long after the temporary buildings have gone.