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Bristol developer Deeley Freed working with LaSalle Investment Management is behind plans to redevelop the 4.8 acre site with 450 homes, 450,000 sq ft of offices and 750 student accommodation beds.
It will be the biggest single change to the city centre since the creation of the Broadmead shopping centre in the early 1960s.
Developers want to open up the area more with new streets and frontages
The hybrid planning application approval gives the go-ahead for demolition and enabling works, with further building details and phasing of eight plots to return to the committee at a later date for detailed approval.
Corner of Newgate and Merchant Street showing Block F
The basement and foundations of the existing shopping centre will be reused with the development linked to a heat network and solar panels installed to deliver a 40% reduction in carbon emissions.
The redevelopment plan is being driven by a sharp fall in the use of the shopping centre. Footfall in the centre is down 35% from pre-pandemic levels.
Max Freed, director of Deeley Freed, said: “The Galleries has been struggling since well before the pandemic. It’s poorly designed and car parking covers 40 per cent of the site. It has long been obsolete. Our proposal would completely transform the site.”
View of the Almshouses in its new setting from Philadelphia Street
The project team includes Arup acting as civil and structural engineer and Hoare Lea advising on M&E design.