Next tranche of flats lined up in Leeds
A verdict is expected on McLaren’s plans to convert Springfield House with 330 student bedspaces, while the city plans panel will also give pre-application guidance on more than 1,000 further apartments across two schemes.
Leeds’ city plans panel meets this Thursday, 16 May.
Springfield House
The Springfield House developer is McLaren Property, working with Cartwright Pickard, landscape architect Ares and Atelier Ten, along with ID Planning.
McLaren wants to demolish the two 20th century wings of Springfield House on Hyde Street, Woodhouse, replacing them with buildings that will vary in height between four and 13 storeys. There will be alterations made to the retained listed villa building in the purpose-built student accommodation scheme.
McLaren’s plans will provide 334 student bedspaces, made up of 194 cluster flat bedrooms and 140 studio flats
The University of Leeds campus lies to the north and east, the Leeds Dental Institute is to the south-east and Woodhouse Hall to the south. There are domestic scale Victorian villas and terraced properties along Hyde Terrace to the west and The Faversham is to the north-west.
Since the pre-application hearing in 2022, discussions have taken place with the Little Woodhouse Community Association and Historic England, which continues to be an objector.
Approval is recommended. The scheme can be viewed on the LCC planning poral with the reference 23/06280/FU.
Blenheim House
A further PBSA development could be in the offing at Blenheim House, Duncombe Street, where Balfour Beatty Investments wants to create 717 bedspaces in a mix of cluster and studio apartments
As is customary with major applications in Leeds, the city plans panel will hear from the developer about the proposals ahead of a formal application being worked up.
Working with Day Architectural, the applicant wants to demolish the five-storey office building on site and replace it with a PBSA development of 717 bedspaces.
Plans at this stage include elements of 20, 14, 11 and nine storeys, with around 15,500 sq ft of amenity space at three levels. Around 30% of the bedspaces will be in clusters, and 70% in studios, with 5% being fully accessible.
The unallocated site lies next to Exchange Court, which is itself being converted for student living.
Members will feed back on these issues: is the site suitable for PBSA? Is the appearance and scale appropriate? Does it relate to the buildings to the north in an acceptable way? And is the loss of trees acceptable?
Wellington Road/Armley Road
UCR Leeds already has an extant mixed-use consent for this site, but is looking to expand on that in a 385-apartment project reaching yup to 18 storeys.
The developer proposes 208 one-bedroom flats, 130 two-bed and 47 three-bed at the west end site, close to the inner ring road and BAM’s Latitude development, which is now mostly built out with the last office building recently approved.
The existing consent, dating back only to last summer, is for 306 apartments, 1,000 sq ft of F&B space and 3,500 sq ft of offices. That was granted to Leedsgate Ltd, advised by planner Johnson Mowat with designs by Den Architecture. The plans provided for the upcoming city plans panel are by Woods Bagot, for Solaris.
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