Mid City House: Concerns over lack of plan for demolition site in Sheffield city centre

The demolition of a large building in Sheffield is under way - amid concerns it will leave another empty site in the city centre. 

Workers have started to take down Mid City House on the corner of PInstone Street and Furnival Gate and hoardings have been set up around the building. One said the job would last until Christmas and include working at night.

Four storey Mid City House, a brick two-storey office on Pinstone Street, and the last remaining Victorian building on Union Street will be demolished.

But concerns have been raised about a lack of plans for the plot, which sits opposite the city council’s new £470m Heart of the City II development.

A Sheffield resident objected to demolition saying Mid City House should be used until a ‘finalised and financed’ replacement was agreed.

They wrote: ‘To meet the sustainability goals outlined by the council and its City Centre Stategic Vision, permission to demolish the buildings should be rejected until a clear case had been made for why they could not be made serviceable through refurbishment, retrofit or re-use.”

They added: “In order to ensure that the city centre is a vibrant and welcoming place no buildings should be granted a demolition permit without a finalised and financed proposal for a replacement.

“The council has made great progress in reducing the number of empty and brownfield sites within the city centre, and allowing for demolition without any proposals for replacement will mean the location will become an empty brownfield site.”

Nearby Fargate is home to a longstanding empty plot after the unplanned demolition of a former Next store in April last year.

The Mid City House application is from Patrick Hanlon, of Union Street Ltd, who is based in Gibraltar. His agent is James Beynon of Leeds agents Quod. They did not respond to The Star.