Man constructed secret residence in procuring centre and lived there for years undetected
Michael Townsend was facing eviction from his apartment and needed somewhere to live quickly, so built an apartment inside Providence Place Mall, in Rhode Island, US
It was said to have been located below Providence Park shopping centre(Image: ArrowStreet)
An artist who was being evicted from his flat made a home in a shopping centre and managed to stay undetected for years.
Michael Townsend was in urgent need of a new place to live after developers served him an eviction notice. His inspiration came when he heard a radio advert for a shopping centre in his city, which talked about how great it would be if people could live there.
The advert sparked a recollection of running past the newly-built shopping centre where he’d noticed a room in an unused area below the shops. He first spotted the empty space beneath Providence Place Mall in Rhode Island, US, during his daily run in 1999.
Believing there might be hidden space inside, he took a closer look and found a room that seemed to exist solely due to the formation of the purposely designed areas around it. In the following months, his historic mill district home was threatened by the same developers who had built the mall.
He decided it was time to “develop the developer” and established a set up a secret home in the space he’d found in the mall. On his website, he said: “During the Christmas season of 2003 and 2004, radio ads for the Providence Place Mall featured an enthusiastic female voice talking about how great it would be if you (we) could live at the mall.
“The central theme of the ads was that the mall not only provided a rich shopping experience but also had all the things that one would need to survive and lead a healthy life.” He returned to the space and found that it remained empty, so he decided to see if he and his friends could make the shopping centre their home.
“The new plan wasn’t just to live in the mall for just a week, it was now simply to live in the mall,” he said. The 750-square-foot flat was created in 2003.
It was fitted out with a sofa and a PlayStation but lacked running water, so the group had to rely on the centre’s public toilets. According to NBC News, Michael and his friends also built a breeze block wall and utility door to keep it hidden.
They lived in relative peace for four years before the scheme began to fall apart, as security guards discovered the secret hideaway. One day, the artists, who had vowed not to discuss the flat with anyone else, found their utility door smashed in and their PlayStation, artwork and photo album missing.
In response, they took additional precautions, including only using the flat during nighttime hours. But the security guards who had been responsible for the break-in had been monitoring it ever since, ready to catch its occupants.
And one afternoon, Michael was spotted and subsequently charged with trespassing. He insisted that “the entire endeavour was done out of a compassion to understand the mall more and life as a shopper.”
Michael was placed on probation by a judge but was prohibited from the mall for life. The Providence Journal reported that only Michael and his now ex-wife Adriana Young identified themselves as being mall residents.
But he stayed in contact with the rest of the artists who were implicated in the hoax. Years later, he said: “I really wish I could go back.”
And he recently told the Sydney Morning Herald that the artists were “bound to each other”, as shown by a scene in which they held up their apartment keys. He said: “We had an intense amount of love and trust and determination and artistic integrity. Nobody was getting paid, but we were committed to each other and to what we were doing … those keys mean a lot to each of us.”
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