Liverpool Crown House offices to mixed-use resi plans in
District & Urban Developments has applied to change the use of the vacant block on James Street in the city centre.
The developer is looking to transform the empty offices into a ground-floor retail unit and 16 residential apartments, with the latter at ground- and upper-floor levels.
They also want to create an additional three-storey rooftop extension as part of the proposals lodged with Liverpool City Council.
Crown House has been vacant for 20 years but previous change of use applications have been rejected, the most recent two years ago being a similar scheme refused on appeal due to concerns about a shortfall in the mix and size of the units.
This scheme would deliver a one-bed and 15 two-bed apartments, of which four would be classed as affordable.
It would also be a car-free development with no parking spaces proposed in the plans. The main access would be from James Street.
According to the planning statement submitted by Avison Young, there has been a lack of interest in Crown House during the many years it has been marketed as office space.
Just two months ago Liverpool City Council refused Cert Property’s plans to convert Centric House office block into apartments due to a lack of affordable housing.
Council planners will decide on these proposals at a future date.
Along with Avison Young, Craig Foster Architects, Curtins, Mason Owen, and AEC are on the project team for this proposal.
To view the plans search for application reference number 24F/2011 on Liverpool City Council’s planning portal.
Please don’t tell me the Council might refuse this application, the building has lain empty for 20 years, and it’s smack in the middle of town. The building next to it looks empty too except for a bar on the ground floor. Also nearby Castle Moat House has been empty for years and looks a bit sorry. The Council planners and planning committe need to get real and see that developers need to make their investments pay, I wonder if they drive past the Bonded Tea Warehouse and see it in a terrible state, and it was they that refused Mandale permission to convert it into flats.
By Anonymous
When property has just been left in an undesirable state, how can anyone claim it’s been “marketed” at all. This city is choc full of landbankers who should receive nothing except CPOs.
By Jeff
No further intervention from the commissioners now Labour Government in place bet LCC are dead made up.
By Anonymous
Agree Jeff’s point about investors landbanking and sitting on buildings for years. Crown House was last occupied 20-25 years ago, and has been allowed to sit empty and decay since then despite being a prime site next to the Merseyrail station, and the surrounding buildings all going to resi or hotel conversion in recent years. Leaving an agent’s sign in the window of an increasingly run-down building doesn’t really count as marketing if the will isn’t there.
Castle Moat House mentioned by Anon is listed, small, and has a difficult internal layout, all of which make resi conversion difficult, or difficult to do on the cheap, which seems to be where the local market is. No doubt it will also be left to decay in the hope they will then be allowed to put a 3 storey tin box on top or gut it, on the basis of saving the historic building.
By Rotringer
Just too many classic buildings empty and idle. The Wellington Rooms,the old Maigistrates Court the Pearl Assurance on St John’s Lane all empty, the latter was meant to be a hotel by Ion/ Promenade..
By Anonymous
Leave it as it is
By Anonymous