DesBox High Wycombe - box park is nearly ready

London firm Container City is now craning shipping containers into place at the project on Baker Street.

When it opens – currently set for next month - DesBox will form the latest part of Wycombe District Council’s regeneration of the area that began with the opening of a new Aldi store last year.

The complex will be used as a hub for artists and a community space, and will feature around 50 studio units made from 135 recycled shipping containers.

It will also feature at least one café.

ALL THE PICTURES HERE: Take a look around Wycombe's new DesBox box park 

The completion date was originally set for ‘early 2019’ according to Container City, but the council now says the project will be finished by May.

However, when the public consultation ‘timeline’ was originally published, the date was listed as ‘February 2018’.

At a council meeting in February, Cllr Khalil Ahmed said: “Judging by the state of the area I hardly think that it will open on time.”

Fellow councillor Steve Broadbent replied that ‘the construction contract was based on a March completion’ and was held up by ground clearance works and the discovery of a shallow gas main on Baker Street.

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More than half the units are now reserved, the council says, including 13 artists and makers so far.

A special pop-up exhibition space, as part of Bucks Art week, will be held at DesBox from June 8 to 23.

The shipping containers were fitted out in Suffolk and delivered to the Baker Street site over three months in three phases.

DesBox is similar to projects seen across the country. Container City, which designed the park and is currently building it, erected a box park for the London 2012 Olympics that was used as a broadcasting centre.

It has also finished buildings that are used for everything from youth centres to schools, studios and office space.

High Wycombe’s DesBox will feature dozens of art studios – which will house many of the artists displaced by the demolition of their old base in Leigh Street to make way for housing.

Commercial property company Chandler Garvey is currently offering units in DesBox for rent, but has not listed a price.

They are offered with ‘easy in/easy out’ leases.

The building is expected to remain in place for at least 20 years.

The nearby Leigh Street building is in the process of being refurbished in a £65 million project.

Altogether, 228 flats will be created on a two-and-a-half acre site in the street, an area off the West Wycombe Road that was part of the town’s industrial heartland when Wycombe was known as the furniture-making capital of Europe.