Developer bids to save threatened £100m brownfield plan for 1,000 Sheffield homes
The developer behind plans for a 1,000-flat tower block has drawn up a new scheme to try to save the project.
Developer CODE has raised doubts over whether the firm will continue with construction work on the CODE flats development, at the corner of Wellington Street and Rockingham Street in Sheffield city centre, and say it could leave the city forced to build on more greenfield sites to meet accommodation needs.
The firm is concerned because it says Sheffield Council is insisting it includes types of accommodation in the tower that it would not make money on because of market changes.
It has warned it will mothball the site unless it is allowed to build only ‘studio’ apartments.
The company has now submitted a new planning application the site which would see the tower one floor lower than originally planned. If approved it would be 25 floors.
CODE says it is offering the council the chance to approve the £100m scheme before it ends up in a long appeal process that could cost taxpayers many thousands of pounds.
CODE Students managing director, Jamie Lewis said: “We have reduced the plans by one floor.
“We are still working on the site. If we go ahead with an appeal and lose, we won’t be working on the site.
“Does anyone really want us to be stopping work? Does the council really feel that strongly? Who wins at the end of the day if we can’t get the funding because of what is effectively a row over whether there are cookers in 240 rooms?
“It would just mean there would be an abandoned building site at the edge of the city centre.”
CODE say the difference between studio flats, which it wants to fill its new block with, and en-suite flats, is that studio flats come with a kitchen in a self contained room, rather than offering accommodation which shares a kitchen and lounge.
Instead of shared lounges, the new CODE scheme would have a whole floor of shared facilities such as a gym, cinema, and common rooms for the whole of the building to use.
CODE say whilst viability has worsened, their main reason for wanting to change things is because the previous mix of different accommodation types was not attractive to the co-living market and because potential funders are not keen to invest in a unit type which already accounts for 79 per cent of the existing market.
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Mr Lewis said there had been other schemes in Sheffield approved that were made up of only studio flats, at Hive, in Kelham Island, and on Scotland Street. He says similar schemes are happening all over the UK.
He previously said: “Does the council really want to argue this, when there have been demonstrations going on in Sheffield over the loss of green belt to housing?”
A Sheffield Council report on the previous planning application to change the mix of flats in the scheme stated: “What is proposed would be the largest single collection of homogenous substandard units anywhere in the city, over 1,000 identical units stacked within a tall building on one of the key city centre development sites.
“Amending the floor plans to allow a 100 per cent studio scheme would not only be negative in the context of the overall diversity/ quality of housing options within Sheffield city centre but would also result in a monotonous monolithic development denuded of the vibrancy which a mix of accommodation types could bring in terms of attracting different types of resident and breaking up the otherwise repetitive internal layout and floorplan.”