Welcome to the peaceful town of Mikkeli. This building here is a market run by a large dairy co-operative. It sells products needed in milk production as well as dairy products for consumers. But this is not why I am here.
And that there is my beautiful summer car, Alice. It is actually missing half of its exhaust pipe at the moment. It almost fell off and had to be cut for safety reasons. But that’s not the point of this post, either.
The reason why I’m here is this rather large regional dairy processing plant, which closed its doors way back in 1994. Since then it was owned by the town and its premises were rented out to small businesses, as storage facilities and other miscellaneous uses.
All tenants were thrown out in early 2022, as the town wanted to demolish the complex to make way for new apartments. I thought I would arrive too late, as the demolition was scheduled to start the same year. I was positively surprised, that the buildings were still there.
That gap was too small for me. But it was a good start.
The original parts of the dairy plant were more beautiful than the newer additions at the back.
What had originally been the side was now the front.
A lovely little detail.
To me this was the most interesting part of the building. It was however well sealed.
The building looked like several windows had been blocked over the course of years.
All in all the place was in a very bad condition considering, that it had been abandoned only some months ago. It seems that the town wanted to use it until the very end but not invest in repairing it.
The other side of the yard.
I next made my way back to the other side of the complex, where my car was located. I wanted to see, if there was a way in at the back. I didn’t expect to find one, and I was in a bit of a hurry, as I had a dance practise session coming up in Southern Finland in a few hours.
From the back it was even more evident, that the complex had been constructed in several phases between the 1950’s and 1970’s.
Let’s explore this side in the following post.