ASDA redevelopment

ASDA parking lot from the Café office

Over the past few years there has been much discussion regarding the redevelopment of the ASDA site which Café Forever backs onto. The developers have visited Café Forever to show us what the changes will look like - it's still a bit of a rough idea, but it is getting nearer to a final design I think. The whole current ASDA building will be replaced with a new one where the picture is. The parking will be underground and above the ASDA will be some residential units, a number of which will be social housing so as to fit in with Government regulations. There will also be quite a number of big name shops like NEXT or H&M in the development as well as provision for small start up businesses. We all really like the plans, it will put some sort of a community centre right on our back door! We are interested in it and hope that we will be able to join in with the development if some miraculous financial provision is made for us. We often talk about the rebuilding of the café in dreamlike ways and envision a much bigger place - somewhere our church can grow, our children can be safe, we can hold kids clubs for more than 10 kids. Space on the island is at a premium. The Isle of Dogs population is expanding at a rate of about 1500 per year! and has been doing so for the past 4 years. That increase is projected to continue for the next 3 years. We are a very small team on the Isle of Dogs, on an average day about 4 or 5 of us in or around the café.  We need to be able to reach this population, but what we constantly find is that we are too few - the harvest is plentiful! We have begun serving food again this year and the sales are increasing (more sales = more visitors = more gospel opportunities) but it is a long way from making any sort of profit - not that that is our intention, but it would be nice to be somewhat self-sustaining; at least to cover our outgoings! Please think about how you can support our work, maybe not financially, but what about prayer or personally volunteering?