An email from Paul Thornton of the Save Grünerløkka Campaign came cruisin’ through my inbox. He has now set up a blog, and he says “It contains a running commentary of what is happening in the Campaign to Save Grünerløkka as well as links to related information… You can even subscribe to the blogs RSS feed if you like. Please feel free to make lots of comments and tell us what you want out of the campaign.”
There is also a Facebook group with over 1000 members. The word on that is: “You can only become a member of the private group by being invited by one of the current members. If you don’t know anybody that is in the private group already send an e-mail to grunerlokka@gmail.com with a description of the skills you can bring to the campaign.”
The really interesting news is what has been happening in the last week. To quote from Paul:
“We are in the process of setting up a new, non profit organisation that will likely be called Grünerløkka Kultur og Næring. It will be possible for both businesses and individuals to join. I will discuss more in a future blog posting.”
“We presented our case to local politicians and got a very favuorable response. They seemed amazed that we had already collected over 6000 signatures. That was nearly a week ago though, now we’re close to 7000…”
“A borettslag [housing association] in Grünerløkka agreed to only rent their shops to small businesses and not chain stores. Aftenposten ran an article…”
“Due to the campaign, one of the businesses that has had a lot of criticism, has agreed to our demands for them to integrate better into the community. I can’t say too much yet as we have not finalised the deal, but when it is signed and sealed informatation will appear on my blog.”
Paul’s email also highlighted the case of Sultan, the shop that has had a 1000% increase in rent in the last few years.
It also called for more volunteers!
Read campaign updates on the blog.
