Almost 300 ‘co-living’ apartments will be built on the site of an Exeter city centre multi-storey car park after developers went back to the drawing board.
Earlier this year Exeter City Council’s planning committee decided Eutopia’s plans for the Mary Arches Street car park weren’t good enough and asked them to think again.
Now the developer’s revised plans have been given the go-ahead.
“It is obvious that they were listening to what we had to say,” said Cllr Gemma Rolstone (Lab, Topsham).
Since January, Eutopia has made major changes to one of the two blocks proposed. Internal accommodation has been re-organised and a link between the two blocks has been redesigned. The height of the most contentious part of the building has been cut to four storeys and a new entrance has been included on the corner of Bartholomew Street and North Street.
Now the project to demolish the six-deck multi-storey car park can begin after the committee voted by a majority to back it. The full proposal comprises the six-storey Block A, which fronts on to Bartholomew Street and North Street and provides communal accommodation including lounges, gym and studio, co-working and laundry. Block B is now four storeys with an entrance from Mary Arches Street.
The council wants to get rid of the car park, saying it is obsolete and costs too much to run, and voted in 2022 to do so.
Cllr Tess Read (Green, St Davids) argued that the design still had too much massing, and would dominate the skyline, and Cllr Diana Moore (Green, St Davids) said the internal design remained ‘abysmally poor’.
Keith Lewis of the Exeter Civic Society said the society would prefer to see family homes on the site rather than a huge co-living block.
Cllr Rolstone told the meeting: “I am pleased to see that the developer has taken on board the points we made. It’s a better plan than the one we saw previously.”
But Cllr James Banyard (Green, St Davids) pointed out that Historic England still said the blocks were ‘excessively tall and bulky’.
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.
After the meeting Cllr Moore said the ‘tweaks’ made to the design were not enough.
She said: “Mary Arches car park will change from a big, bland, badly-designed, beige block to a big, bland, badly-designed, beige block for 297 people.”
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