Sheffield flats: Crumbling Weston Tower at West Bar set to be replaced by £70m 'not student' flats

Weston Tower at West Bar Green is set to be snapped up by developers, subject to a planning application being approved by the city council, The Star has learned.

Packaged Living and Buccleuch Property have unveiled plans for 375 flats on the plot, which overlooks the new ‘Dutch’ cyclists’ roundabout at West Bar and is opposite the Hampton by Hilton hotel. A new cycle track connecting the city centre with Kelham Island runs past the front door.

The former office and distribution centre was owned for a time by fashion chain Next and has been empty for more than 20 years.

Today it is graffitied, crumbling, stained and overgrown and increasingly out of place in a development hotspot where millions are being spent on new offices and flats.

Colin Gregory, of neighbouring Feast sandwich shop on Queen Street, said the first thing people see as they approach Sheffield is a “real blot” and it is “pulling the whole area down.”

A statement by Sheffield planning specialists Urbana on behalf of the developers said the flats would help meet an “undersupply of homes in Sheffield.”

Up the hill on Tenter Street two side-by-side towers with 753 flats are going up rapidly. Across the road the former HSBC headquarters have been converted into offices called Pennine Five.

Down the hill on Corporation Street, 368 flats are nearing completion at Soho Yard in the West Bar Square development.

Various schemes to revive the nine-storey Weston Tower had previously fallen by the wayside.

In 2006, proposals to create a 23-storey tower at the site, which would have been one of Sheffield’s tallest buildings, were approved but work never began and seven years later the building was sold for just £700,000.

In 2015, fresh plans were unveiled to extend the building, creating an 11-storey ‘blade-like’ tower with nearly 150 apartments, but these also came to nothing.

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A sales brochure by Sheffield firm colloco states: “The property is currently held by way of long leasehold and freehold interest. Romiga West Ltd and Sheffield City Council are working in partnership and are able to offer the freehold interest to the market…subject to planning for a private residential scheme.”

It adds: “Other uses will be considered including office. However, student housing will not be considered.”