When Michael Townsend was being turfed out of his apartment by developers, he needed a place to live – fast.
Thankfully, inspiration came in the form of a radio commercial. A radio advertisement for a shopping centre in his home city talked about how great it would be if people were able to live in the mall.
In a lightbulb moment, it triggered a memory. Four years earlier, he had been jogging past the newly constructed mall when he spotted a room in an unused space beneath the shops.
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Michael, an artist, first spotted the unused space beneath Providence Place Mall in Rhode Island, US, on his daily run in 1999.
Suspecting the could be hidden space inside, he looked a little closer and spotted a room that looked like it was only there because of the formation of the purposely designed areas around it.
In the months following, Townsend’s historic mill district condominium home came under threat from the same developers who had been responsible for creating the shopping mall.
He 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.
But he remained in touch with the rest of the artists who were involved in the ruse.
After all these years, Townsend, who still lives in the area, said: “I really wish I could go back.”
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