Kings Tower Sheffield: D-day looms for 40-storey skyscraper which could become city's tallest building

The old Primark at the corner of High Street and Angel Street, in Sheffield city centre, would be demolished to make space for Kings Tower. The planning application does not appear to state a height for the proposed skyscraper but if approved it would likely replace the 32-storey, 101-metre high St Paul’s City Lofts Tower as Sheffield’s tallest building and would easily surpass the 78-metre tall Arts Tower.

It was expected to vie with Code Living’s new city centre tower block, at the junctions of Wellington Street, Rockingham Street and Trafalgar Street, for the title of Sheffield's tallest building. But proposals for that development were scaled back from 38 storeys, rising to 117 metres, over what the developer described as viability issues relating to the cost of living crisis. A 26-storey building with 963 apartments is now planned there.

Kings Tower is described in the planning application by CJS7 Ltd and SFGE Properties Ltd as a ‘co-living’ residential building, which would have 428 homes. Plans were previously approved in 2020 for a 39-storey tower at the site, containing 206 apartments.

What have people said about 40-storey Kings Tower planned for Sheffield city centre?

A decision on the new proposals was due to be made back in October 2022 but the deadline has been extended, with councillors now set to vote on the application at Sheffield Council’s Planning and Highways Committee meeting on March 14.

Critics have branded the proposed tower a ‘disgusting carbuncle of a building’, likening it to a ‘prison block’ due to the size of its apartments, with Green Party councillor Ruth Mersereau saying she and her fellow City ward councillors ‘don’t see the value of yet another student block in the city centre’. But there have only been six objections submitted, with nobody writing in support of the scheme.

The developer has claimed the tower will enhance Sheffield’s skyline, cementing the area’s regeneration and creating a ‘new destination in the heart of the city’. The planning application adds: “We believe the positive contributions and benefits of the proposed development by way of design quality, sustainability, placemaking and regeneration benefits support the inclusion of a building of scale in a tower configuration in this location at the core of the city centre.”