The people of Hämeenlinna find it sad that the huge shopping center in the first block of the city center has been empty for a long time.
A police car tires were punctured with sharp objects. The windshield was broken with a foam extinguisher. The gym's sauna was burned down.
Everywhere there are broken windows, garbage, unsold clothes, leftovers after the fire.
The emptying of the shopping center started almost 10 years ago, when Sokos decided to stop its operations after the opening of the shopping center Goodman.
The gym's sauna was set on fire in September. The perpetrator managed to escape from the scene.
We are in the first block of Hämeenlinna. In the best places in the center, in the closed premises of Kauppakeskus Linna. Kävelykatu Reskan, torin and by Jean Sibelius between the wooden birth house.
You have to proceed carefully, advises the property manager Joni Hautaniemi torch in hand. Electricity has been disconnected from the property for a long time
“Once I wanted to fall from that police car to the lower floor.”
Hautaniemi presents empty pizza boxes and sleeping bags found in the premises of a former sports store. On the walls downstairs, there are huge spray-painted Z letters: symbols supporting Russia's war of aggression in Ukraine.
The letter Z is the symbol used by Russia in the war. After the start of the war in Ukraine, it became a central symbol in Russian propagand
a defending the war of aggression started by the Kremlin.
The last time Hautaniemi was inspecting the premises was about a month and a half ago. Back then, metal pipes were used to go through the old shops. They were used to knock on walls and structures. We wanted to give a warning to potential unauthorized overnight stayers.
“You don't know if someone was here even now.”
Valuables, starting with copper pipes, have been stolen from an empty shopping center.
All kinds of things have been abandoned in the premises, such as a toaster.
Commercial center The emptying of the castle started almost ten years ago. In the fall of 2014, the Goodman shopping center was opened on the highway passing through Hämeenlinna. The new facilities attracted Linna's shops.
Sokos left first, followed by other clothing stores. Later, it was the turn of the restaurants, recalls a 30-year resident of Hämeenlinna Mari Auluwhich is only passing by in the quiet Reska.
Mari Aulu remembers the time when Sokos, which operated in the Linna, opened its doors to the pedestrian street ten years ago.
The last Mohicans in the premises were the Kiinteistövälytysliike Kotijukkuu and the sports store Urheilulinna, whose floor is now decorated with pizz
a boxes and sleeping bags.
Finally, the lights of the Castle were turned off in the summer of 2022.
“It's a bit sad,” says Aulu.
He remembers Linna fondly, especially Cafe Pannu. Aulu used to eat there when the children were small.
Now Pannu's former premises are dark, filled with empty cardboard boxes, abandoned shelves and old shopping carts. Valuables have been stolen since copper pipes, says Hautaniemi.
“I would love to tear it down and build something nice in its place,” thought Hotel Emilia's reception manager Emma Syrjämäkiwho looks at the dilapidated shopping center from the windows of his workplace every day.
“I wonder when the bricks will fall from there”, thinks Emma Syrjämäki from the shopping center opposite the hotel.
Why not tear down an empty shopping center that has fallen into disrepair?
It has been tried. And we keep trying.
The demolition permit has been awaited practically since 2018, says Gapcon Oy's property manager Mikko Sädevuori.
“The development of the block has been prepared under the current owner since 2016, when a development plan for the block was drawn up together with the city,” says Sädevuori in his email reply.
Gapcon is part of a millionaire from Seinjajoki Raimo Sarajärven from a group of companies, which also includes City Kauppapaikak oy., which owns the former department store properties. Sarajärvi is known, among other things, as the owner of the Seinäjoki football club SJK.
It is quiet in the center of Hämeenlinna at noon. An empty shopping center in the background.
“The plan change application was already made in 2017. During 2018, several negotiations were held with the city of Hämeenlinna regarding the development of the block area, but the plan processing has not progressed,” Sädevuori says in an email.
“The plan is to build new commercial and residential apartments in place of the castle.”
The gym's price list reminds of the times when there was still business in the shopping center.
The castle demolition works are at a standstill due to the land use agreement situation, says the land use planning director of the city of Hämeenlinna Jari Mettälä.
“The city and the property owner have had a slightly different view of the price of the building right,” he says
At the beginning of the year Hämeen Sanomat told about the city's intentions to find out if it could buy the vacant shopping center or part of it, so that the demolition and construction of new houses would finally move forward.
Mettälä states that there is “some kind of pressure” around the castle. That the properties in the first block of the city center would not be empty for many more years.
In any case, nothing will happen this year, says Mettälä, and he hopes that construction will start in 2026–2027.
“The general economic situation is also affecting, construction is now a bit at a standstill.”
A train installation called No Trespassing.
Demolition decision over the years, attempts have been made to come up with a variety of uses for the waiting shopping center.
A little before the start of the corona pandemic, the interior spaces were given to artists. Art installations, which are now dilapidated, originate from that time, such as a police car that has since been hacked and a train car found in the premises of a shopping center.
The police car installation called Räjättäjät is inspired by the tension between the police and graffiti painters.
Attempts were made to enhance the facade last summer. During the street art festival Räikei, all the walls of the shopping center were covered with graffiti.
Returning to the office from a working lunch Rosa Laurinolli finds it encouraging that some use has been found for the premises.
Rosa Laurinolli finds it sad that the city center is empty.
“I see no reason why a shopping center with a similar concept had to be built a couple of blocks away,” says Laurinolli, referring to the shopping center Goodman.
He thinks it's sad that Linna is being demolished, even though it has become quite a tragedy.
“There are a lot of empty business premises in the city center these days,” Laurinolli thinks.
Last summer, legal graffiti was done on all the walls of the Castle.
“Boring and car driven”. With those words, those who came to the shops at Goodman The Moors and Heikki Hämeenniemi describe the center of Hämeenlinna.
In the wake of Linna, which was located in the first block of Hämeenlinna, the whole city center has disappeared, the couple thinks.
Maarit and Heikki Hämeenniemi recall that the center of Hämeenlinna has already started to quiet down in the early 2000s.
Good and the bad news is that Hämeenlinna is not alone with its problems.
The difficulties in the center of Helsinki have been written about for years. In December HS told about Seinäjokiwhose downtown stores have disappeared one by one after the completion of the Ideapark shopping center.
“It's up to us residents, where we shop”, thinks Maarit Hämeenniemi.
After Goodman was completed in the fall of 2014, shops and customers gradually moved to new premises away from the center and shopping center Linna.
From the Iskelmä bar only the ruins remain. Still, an experienced visitor can recognize the footprints of the familiar night club located on the side of Kauppakeskus Linna.
“Blackjack was played there. There was a karaoke room there,” says Hautaniemi.
The remains of the bar counter can be seen on the side of the dance hall. Water pipes rising from the floor, electrical wires hanging from the walls.
It's underway in Hämeenlinna's first block post Festum.
The time after the party, which continues at least until next year.
The last dances at the Iskelmä bar have
been danced a long time ago.
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