Britain’s overabundance of empty bank buildings has seen many turned into restaurants, hotels, and flats – but one in Plymouth is about to become a Buddhist centre.
A huge former Barclays bank branch in Plymouths’ populous Mutley Plain has just been sold, for an undisclosed sum to Kadampa Buddhist Meditation Centre, which has planning consent to to use the ground floor as a meditation centre with the upper floors being converted to ancillary residential accommodation for visiting monks.
It comes as business bosses, not just Buddhist ones, meditate over the future of the high street and how, in particular, the once retail-dominated Mutley Plain has now seen a range of new uses take over former shop and bank outlets.
Yoga Blend already has permission to turn a former sweet shop into a yoga and pilates studio and there are also numerous barbers’ shops on the Plain.
Anna Simpson, commercial agent at Vickery Holman in Plymouth, said: “We are pleased to see the sale of such a prominent building on Mutley Plain and believe the Buddhist Meditation Centre will fit well with the range of new non-traditional retail users we are seeing in Mutley such as the yoga studio, baby music classes, tanning salons and barber shops.
“I think we are likely to see struggling high streets develop into more mixed use areas as time goes on with lots of destination uses.
“This can only be a good thing for those areas as it draws footfall back to the high street.”
Elsewhere in Plymouth empty bank branches have become bars, including the Bank public house in the city centre, bookmakers’ and restaurants.
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Businessman Dilbrin Ismaeel has already hired a head chef and says it is optimistic about opening a new Turkish restaurant in the former Halifax office in Anglia House, Derry’s Cross, Plymouth by Christmas 2019.
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Nationally, between 2010 and 2018, about 5,035 bank and building society branches closed in england – that’s almost two a day.
In Mutley Plain, the prominent four-storey former Barclays - with its basement storage, ground floor retail area and two upper floors of office accommodation and staff facilities – shut in 2017 as part of the bank’s branch closure programme. and subsequently put up for sale by Vickery Holman in late 2018.
The property finally sold in August 2019 for an undisclosed sum to Kadampa Buddhist Meditation Centre.
The new owners, whose beliefs include that nothing is fixed or permanent and that change is always possible, want to create a mediation hall with 80 seats, and will move the centre they have had in Sutherland Road since 2005, lock, stock and barrel into the former bank.
The former HQ will be used to "increased housing provision within the Mutley area".
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A design and access statement for the new base said: "The centre provides assistance in managing and reducing mental health issues, in particular the courses and classes are attended by a wide range of the public and deal with issues such as reducing and managing stress, overcoming anxiety, improving relationships, developing a positive self image, overcoming depression and so forth.
“The meditation centre has a broad community of members within the local area who will still seek to benefit from our facilities as this move will be approximately 500m from the current premises.
"By moving the meditation centre will also free up the existing building to make it available for increased housing provision within the Mutley area.”