The car park above Tesco in Chatham is VERY grotty, it smells very badly of wee, and there is lots of litter and pigen poo, and even some human poo! and one time there were even some used drug needles - yuk!
The lifts go from store level to market level (which is just 10cm above store level! and open on the other side, but the lifts havn't stopped there for years). then continue to restaurant level which is locked off in the lifts but you can walk up the stairs to this level from inside Tesco, and call the lifts but some of the grills are down which meens the doors open but you can't get in or out. After this, the lifts continue to the grotty car park. Car park levels 3 and 4 were closed (very securly) in 2012 due to drug dealers hanging out up there. Car park levels 5 and 6 (and the roof level 7) have been closed since the 90s. Despite the upper levels being gated off very securly, you could still get up there by riding on top of the lifts.
This building is very intesting. It was built in the 1970s. It is a very fasinating place, the Tesco shop itself was very old fashioned and still had a lot of original features from the 70s. The lifts are O&K lifts which were modernized in the 90s by a generic company (when levels 5 and 6 were closed). The logic was replaced with some very crap logic which made the lifts very unreliable. They would regulary get confused with what floor they were on, and would often jam up, this gave them lots of character. In 2011 the lifts were modernized by Otis. The cables were replaced with Gen2 belt cables, the logic was replaced and the motors were stripped down and re-built and now ran of variable frequency. The lifts lost a lot of their character after the Otis mod.
There is just somthing about this building that fasinates me. Everywhere you look the place is old fashioned and grotty. The acretecture is really interesting. And the layout of the building makes it fun to look around, especilly when I managed to explore the abandoned upper levels.
On the 4th April 2015 this branch of Tesco closed.
Firstly, here are some views of the building (2015).
Here are the floors of the lifts (2015).
Store Level
Market (10cm above store, opens outside)
Restaurant (Very spookey, I will come back to this)
Car Park Level 1
Car Park Level 2
Here is the very grotty levels 3 and 4 before they closed (2011).
Here are the O&K lifts before the Otis mod (2010).
Here is the abandoned upper car park levels (2015).
Here is the grotty staircase and ramps (2015).
Here is the shop itself just before it closed down (2015).
Here is the spookey Restaurant level (2015).
And here are some dramatic pictures around the building (2015).
