A £110million plan to build nearly 400 waterfront flats in Plymouth is moving ahead – but the height of the vast buildings may have to be reduced.
Sutton Harbour Group Plc (SHG) has been in talks with Plymouth City Council planners about its vision to build three apartment blocks in the Sutton Harbour and Cattedown area.
The AIM-listed regeneration and development company had wanted three towers of 21, 18 and 15 storeys, but is now looking to reduce the height of the latter two to 16 and 13 floors, though planners still have their reservations about the scale of the proposed project.
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A pre-application enquiry for revision of the already approved scheme for a 21-storey Sugar Quay tower, containing 170 flats, was decided by planners in early January 2021.
SHG wants to remove a basement car park from this development and instead have three and five floors of parking in its proposed Sutton Road East and St John's Bridge buildings.
The company, which also owns the long lease on the former Plymouth City Airport site, also now envisages the Sutton Road East building being 16 floors in height, with 111 homes and five commercial units and three car park levels. This is two floors lower than previously desired, but has 36 more homes, now classed as “affordable units”.
The St John’s Bridge block is now envisaged as 13 floors high, with five car parking levels. It would contain 108 homes, including 32 affordable units and two live/work units. Previously this was going to be a 15-floor block with all homes affordable.
Council planners, including senior officers, have met with SHG and a report said they had raised “key points of concern” including about the height and bulk of Sutton Road East and St John’s Bridge buildings.
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The report acknowledged there had been “some reduction in height” since the officers and the Design Review Panel (DRP) examined the plans.
It called the proposals a “radical scale shift from visions for the area” and stressed: “Officers maintain concerns regarding the height and bulk and, particularly, the visual impact from the east.”
That means how the buildings will look when seen from Cattedown roundabout and Exeter Street. But the report also said that SHG has stated that it is “not willing to negotiate further on height”. The council recommended further discussions on the designs considering the “significant issues raised”.
Responding to SHG, planning officers wrote: “We hope this response is helpful and the advice set out above is considered alongside all of our previous advice so that the outstanding matters can be resolved prior to the formal submission of your planning applications.”
In December 2020 SHG took the significant step of buying two plots of land to enable it to start work on the vast housing project.
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It completed the purchase of about 1.5 acres of land, for an undisclosed sum described as “at market value”, immediately to the east of Sutton Harbour.
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The company envisages a “residential quarter” on the land between Sutton Road and St John’s Bridge, connected by a walkway leading directly to the waterfront and the Sugar Quay tower, which was given planning consent in December 2018.
The newly-acquired land has been used by industrial and commercial businesses, with warehouse buildings and open storage yards. Plans, if approved, would see the plot turned into a residential accommodation around a large public square.
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A pedestrian walkway linking St John’s Bridge to Sutton Harbour via Sugar Quay, to be called St John’s Link, would “provide much needed connectivity” for residents in Prince Rock, Cattedown and Coxside to Sutton Harbour and the city centre, SHG has said.
SHG has financed the land acquisition with a new loan from a private funder secured with a first charge on the purchased site, a first charge against another freehold site owned by SHG, and with the company's banker maintaining a second charge on that other freehold site.
Meanwhile, SHG is aiming to start work on a nine-storey apartment block, Harbour Arch Quay tower, in 2021 and even start marketing the flats by the spring.
Pre-construction preparations for the scheme, also at Sutton Harbour, have continued in recent months and selection of the construction management team and finalisation of the detailed drawings are in process.
The firm said it is expected that, subject to completion of finance arrangements, work on the 14-apartment, nine-floor building “will start during 2021, with marketing of the units to be launched in the springtime of the new year”.