PLANNING | Liverpool student flats tipped for approval
Proposals for a 420-unit student housing block at the former Hondo supermarket site on Upper Duke Street, and a seven-storey apartment block on Roscoe Street, are set to receive consent this week.
Another scheme, proposing 33 houses and 24 flats in Croxteth, are among those recommended for approval at Liverpool City Council’s virtual planning committee meeting on Tuesday, after the meeting was postponed last week due to technical difficulties.
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Developer: Fusion Students
Architect: Corstorphine + Wright Architects
Planner: Broadgrove Planning and Development
Size: 420 apartments
The proposals are to demolish the former Hondo Chinese supermarket building, close to Liverpool cathedral, and construct a four- to seven-storey student accommodation block.
The accommodation would provide a mix of studio and cluster apartments.
The supermarket closed in 2017 after its owners retired and was being marketed by agents at CBRE. The red brick building has been vacant since.
An earlier application proposed a nine-storey block containing 430 bedrooms but this has since been scaled back.
Architect: Fold2 Architecture
Planner: The Planning Studio
Size: 87 apartments
Fold2 Architecture, on behalf of a private investor, is seeking approval for a four- to seven-storey apartment block on the corner of Roscoe Street and Oldham Place, having already secured planning consent for 111 student apartments at the site.
“While our client will have the benefit of the student accommodation development, and may well implement that permission in due course, they also wish to have the alternative permission for a residential led apartment scheme for the site,” the planner said.
The 87-apartment scheme is the developer’s preferred option as opposed to the student accommodation project, according to the architect.
Developer: Cobalt Housing
Architect: Ainsley Gommon Architects
Size: 57 residential units
Cobalt Housing is set to win approval to bring forward a residential development on the 3.5-acre site of former tower blocks known as Altbridge Park, close to the East Lancs Road in Croxteth.
The tower blocks were built in the 1970s and demolished in the 1990s and the brownfield land has been vacant since.
The proposed flats comprise mix of six one-bedroom and 18 two-bedroom apartments and 20 two-bedroom and 13 three-bedroom homes.
Your Comments
How many student flats do we need
the hondo site is one of the best in liverpool, the blanket avoidance of any of the existing built form rides roughshod over the city’s existing urban grain. This is more bland nonsense. Come on developers , expect better.
Typical. More student flats but no offices.
That scheme on the Hondo site is painfully bland. Please Liverpool planners help stop the dross.
Post Coronavirus…we may live in the world of bland….or whatever best suits for distancing and functioning…aesthetics perhaps will take second place…….Functionalism will take on a whole new meaning
Surely the council can demand better from a prominent site. There isn’t even any council tax due from this building, so it’s not adding any value whatsoever. Should of been rejected as no cultural or social value.
Red brick seems an odd choice in this location and very bland/ugly for Upper Duke Street, not sure the designs have sufficiently addressed the steep incline either.
Read an article recently that approximately 1 in 5 students in Liverpool are from mainland China. When this is all over, will the Chinese youth be coming to the UK to study….I dont know. If not, all the developers are going to have to think outside of the box about the end use of their developments….much less students will pay havoc with their funding models…..and shyster bridging loan companies just live to take half built developments off in trouble developers so they can develop it out for themselves.
Liverpool has a massive Chinese community and connection, thumbs up .
Disgraceful Liverpool City Council are allowing yet MORE student accommodation it’s just terrible the people have been pushed out. We are over filling with student accommodation think of other people it’s not all about making money
Liverpool does not have a massive Chinese connection
@Deborah, how is anyone being ‘pushed out’ here? It’s an empty former chinese supermarket that is now vacant? I assume developers don’t just crack on with student developments without any end consumers. They do want to make money… What can be said is that they and the council should be doing more to address the quality of design for such schemes. This one is largely a boring bland block. It’s not replacing anything anymore gracious looking but there needs to be greater ambition when it comes designs. Everything is value-engineered within an inch of it’s life.
Another warehouse type development. Very soon we’ll get lost in town because all the land marks will look the same. Give us something modern, will ya!
@Dan oldest Chinese community in Europe Shanghai copied The Three Graces and twined cities so yes we do!!!
There is already a huge oversupply of student accommodation in Liverpool I dont see this being viable.
Fusion Students:….”construct a four- to seven-storey student accommodation block”….looks like five to nine storeys to me.
Also too tall for that site.
This was already a bubble about to burst even before the virus, with ROI’s on a knife edge theres only one way this market is going. On the up site the over supply will possible lead to improvements in the Smithdown Kensington areas as the students shun the traditional student housing.
God, that Hondo development is bland. The Planning department have to get a better grip on letting this kind of rubbish pass! Overdeveloped and uninspiring to say the least. This prominent site sits on the junction of Chinatown and The Georgian Quarter with all that contextual richness and all the architects can come up with is a few brick boxes with tiny windows – barely any engagement with the street and the only interesting feature being a slight tilt to the window recesses.