London’s Old Street underground station has taken advantage of its unused ticket hall space, becoming a pop-up retail destination.

The area of a Tube station outside the ticket hall and the platforms is normally just a space to pass through on the way to the Underground. At Old Street Station, however, Transport for London (TfL) is testing what it hopes will be a future source of revenue from retailers.

A few mid-sized retail units – a key-cutting and shoe repair outlet, a bookshop, a newsagent and a fresh food retailer – have long been fixtures in this location but, since the end of April, Old Street has also become a pop-up retail destination.

In that time, the available units have been occupied by, among others, Tate Modern, a seller of electrically powered bicycles and a maker of marshmallows dubbed Mallow
and Marsh.

The aim is to provide temporary retail space that will be continuously rotated. With 23 million journeys through Old Street station every year, that will give people something different to look at on a regular basis, alongside the existing retailers in the station. If this proves successful, it is reasonable to suppose that other London Underground stations will prove fertile ground for pop-up retailers.

This initiative by TfL is not entirely surprising, given that there are large amounts of space in ticket halls across the network and it would seem to represent an unrealised resource. However, with rents at £2,000 a week for the biggest units at Old Street and £500 for a ‘market stall’-style space, this does veer towards brand promotion, since an enterprise needs to shift a fair amount of stock to make a profit.

It is still an interesting development and it’s hard not to wonder why something of this kind has not been tried out before now.