Designers drawing up a scheme for nearly 300 ‘co-living’ apartments on the site of an Exeter city centre car park have been asked to go back to the drawing board.
Members of the Exeter City Council planning committee debated the proposals for the Mary Arches car park, but could not agree on the final designs.
The council wants to get rid of the car park, saying it is obsolete and costs too much to run. Instead, it wants to see the site being used to help address Exeter’s housing shortage. A co-living block of small apartments with shared communal facilities is the council’s preferred use for the site.
But the design of the building has drawn criticism since it was unveiled by Eutopia Exeter Arches in May last year. The latest plans have been cut back from 309 units to 297, but some objectors say the revisions do not go far enough.
Public comments on the city council’s website include one saying: “This plan has not been thought through and is a poorly designed high rise mess.”
Another adds: “This is not how we as a city should aspire to treat our residents. The only beneficiaries are the landlords.”
The co-living apartments are aimed at local people and are not designed to be used as student accommodation. The latest application includes 60 units for affordable private rent.
A report to the planning committee explained that the development would redeploy a brownfield site and reduce cross-city car traffic. The development would be car-free and the size of the communal spaces meets national guidelines
The developers will pay £87,000 towards local GP services; £139,000 for travel improvements; £146,436 for ‘car club’ vehicle provision and hundreds of pounds per bedspace towards local parks and playing fields.
But after a lengthy debate, the plan stalled amid questions over its design.
An amendment by Cllr Gemma Rolstone (Lab, Topsham) was passed, asking council officers to go back to the developer to address issues over the scale and massing of the building, as well as design issues around the way it looks from the street.
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