A man secretly lived in a make shift apartment inside a shopping mall for over four years with his friends. Michael Townsend had previously been forced out of his old apartment by developers and desperately needed to find a place to stay.
A radio advertisement sparked his memory of a newly built shopping centre in Rhode Island he had spotted on a daily jog in 1999.
The inspiring commercial spoke about how great it would be if people could live in a shopping centre which reminded him of some unused spaces beneath the shops in Providence Place Mall he had seen four years prior to his house dilemma. Michael, an artist, had looked into the hidden space inside and noticed a room that looked like it's only purpose was to keep the formation of the purposely designed areas surrounding it, the Daily Star reports.
In the following months, the man's home came under threat by the exact same developers who established the shopping mall in which he later resided in for years behind closed doors. Michael decided it was time to "develop the developer".
In other words, the plan was to set up a secret home in the space he'd seen 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.” Townsend revisited the room he had spotted back in 1999 and discovered that it remained unused so he decided to see if he and his friends could in fact live at the mall.
He said: “The new plan wasn’t just to live in the mall for just a week, it was now simply to live in the mall.” The 750-square-foot apartment was created in 2003.
It was furnished with a sofa and a PlayStation. They didn’t have running water, though, so the gang had to use the centre’s public toilets.
According to NBC News, Townsend and his pals also built a breeze block wall and utility door to keep it hidden. They lived in relative peace for four years before the plan began to unravel. Before being caught, Townsend had plans to install wood flooring, a second bedroom and a kitchen.
Eventually, security guards found the secret property. One day, the artists, who had sworn not to speak about the apartment with anyone else, found their utility door kicked in and their PlayStation, art and photo album gone.
In response, they took extra precautions, including only using the apartment at night. But little did they know that the security guards had been responsible for the break-in and had been staking it out ever since, ready to pounce on its inhabitants.
And that's exactly what they did when they spotted Townsend one afternoon. Townsend was consequently 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.”
He was given probation by a judge but was banned from the mall for life. The Providence Journal reported that only Townsend and his now ex-wife Adriana Young identified themselves as being mall dwellers.
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