Equipment between speakers...

No, unless you you can acoustically isolate all sides of the cabinet, front, sides,back and top. Failure to do so will subject all your components to the attack of acoustic energy when the speakers are playing. Such condition will cause all the components to 'ring'. If possible put all the equipment in an adjacent room or a closet in the room itself. If a closet, be sure to ventilate it. So, do a test of taking everything out of the room so that only the speakers are in it. You will be surprised at the improvement in the sound.

Thanks for the input. More facts may help you visualize, sorry it's a new house so no pics to help. My new room is about 13' around in a "U" shape with the front wall being the middle of the "U" (ie 13' sides to left and right). This room opens into a 21'x17' area, with the listening position just outside the U. My equipment rack is a 250lb wood behemoth custom made and I'll use SRA or similar under the equipment in time. Speakers are Verity Sarastros and they will be 4' from front wall (measured from back of speaker, these are rear-firing woofers).

So, I can:
A) have speakers on front wall and nothing else on that wall (seems to be the consensus thus far).

B) have bookshelves built across all of the front wall (18" deep, so about 3.5' behind the back of the speakers). Shelves will be full of books, LPs etc, and potentially some of my equipment if I ditch the dedicated stand.

C) Variations...have a single book shelf take up the middle-third of the front wall, with nothing behind the speakers OR have book shelves behind the speakers with nothing in the middle.

From a room aesthetic/usage, it would be easiest to have the equipment in the middle either on the dedicated rack (2' deep, so still 2' behind the back of the speakers) or on a book shelf. In my current room my rack sits between, but is roughly in line with the back of the speakers.

If the bookshelves work, I can have them designed to take the weight of my equipment and use SRA (or similar) stands to augment. I can have them designed of 2" veneered ply for rigidity and a cooler look. The turntable, however, would need to be on a shelf (3" high or so) within the book-shelf that is bigger and rigidly reinforced (it will sit on an SRA or similar stand as well). Again, the bookshelves can be completely excluded, or be only in the middle, or be only on the sides (of the front wall)

I can't do an adjacent room unfortunately.

Side placement of the rack can be OK, as I can build some sort of base-board runner to hide cables (great point). In a narrow room, however, having a chunky 250lb 2' deep rack taking up valuable side real-estate. The cost of cables to run bi-wire 13' or so is going to be horrific!

Not sure if the extra color helps or changes anything. Again, thanks for all the detailed and helpful comments.

I prefer the equipment to the side. Another option would be a low boy (maybe 20-22 inches tall) between the speakers, or even wall to wall shelving. This would be less disruptive than something floor to ceiling or a normal height rack between the speakers. Good luck.