Listed Liverpool office hits the market
Landwood Group is seeking offers of £1.5m for a grade two-listed building on Castle Street after its previous owner went into receivership.
Last year FRP Advisory was appointed as receiver to Prosperity Castle Street Development, the owner of 17-21 Castle Street and a vehicle of Prosperity Capital Partners.
Prosperity UX Manchester Developments, part of the same group, was the developer behind a 556-home project on part of the former Boddington’s site. However, the vehicle went into administration last year.
Lying within Liverpool’s Maritime Mercantile City, 17-21 Castle Street provides 14,500 sq ft of office space across four storeys.
The property has extant planning consent to be converted into 33 self-contained serviced apartments, although this is subject to the agreement of a Section 106 agreement.
Helen Jude, director of property at Landwood Group, said: “This stunning and ornate building has been at the centre of Liverpool’s vibrant culture and historic past for more than 140 years.
“With a large physical footprint and an enviable location, the building offers the buyer a chance to be a part of Liverpool’s history, as Castle Street lies at the centre of the city’s exciting future and economic growth.
“Many of the buildings in the vicinity have been converted into hotels and aparthotels, and the building itself has been stripped out internally, so it’s a great opportunity for someone looking to take on a similar project.”
As the s106 hasn’t yet been agreed any attempt to agree the s106 will trigger a re-evaluation of the entire application due to a change in the Council’s development plan. This means it will be assessed against the new policies in the recently adopted Local Plan, which ridiculously insists that City Centre apartment schemes provide a greater amount of 2 bedrooms rather than 1 bedroom apartments, not to mention 90% M4(2) and 10% M4(3) compliance, meaning they’d need to incorporate a lift.
It would be great to see this developed and brought back into use, but the planning department will make a right meal out of it.
By Anonymous
Re the aforementioned section 106 issue, the council is boxing itself into a corner , not for the first time , by alienating developers through their insistence on supplying a certain percentage of 2 bed homes , therefore making schemes more difficult achieve.
We have acres of land throughout the city to build homes of all sizes including 1 beds, which are mainly in demand by younger folk.
However we don`t want valuable inner city land being wasted on low volume, low rise,suburban type housing, and the council should accept that the way to overwhelmingly re-populate the inner city will via high-rise.
By Anonymous
Could the two Anonymous part of a prospective buyer looking to develop the building. Good luck if you are
By IR
While some may say that insistence on what others might view as minimum standards is ridiculous, the altered economics make retention as much needed offices more likely.
Not every building needs to be dedicated to giving value abstraction speculators an easy profit,
In fact, hopefully none will be from now on.
By Jeff