Manchester-based developer Beech Holdings has been granted planning permission by Sheffield City Council to build a £55m ‘Sheffield Gardens’ housing complex on Meadow Street, St Vincent’s Quarter.
The announcement comes following the council’s conditional approval of the project on 27th March 2024, with work expected to commence before the end of Q4 2024.
It is intended to deliver a six-to-nine story residential development comprising 158 one-, two-, and three-bedroom rental apartments alongside a variety of amenities, including a private gym, landscaped courtyard, and rooftop gardens.
The company has pledged to create ‘over 100 immediate jobs for the construction phase, and [employ] a permanent staff of at least 10 to deliver residents a premium level of service and maintenance’, as well as promote the same 100% bio-diversity net gain achieved at their other properties ‘through the inclusion of external amenity and bird/bat boxes’.
The development will replace the dilapidated and long-unused William Rowland Ltd factory premises, which are set to be demolished to make way for the new apartment block.
Stephen Beech, CEO of Beech Holdings, said: “This unused and unloved commercial site is in exactly the location we want to breathe new life into. Our company has a 20-year history of delivering exceptional apartment developments and I’m thrilled to be able to offer local people in Sheffield that same standard.”
Groups supporting the project include architect Leach Rhodes Walker, and planning consultants Urbana, who previously applied for permission on behalf of a then-unnamed applicant to build a larger block of 370 flats on the same site in 2022.
The development is set to go ahead despite objections from neighbouring business F&W Collins Waste Materials Ltd, who stated in a letter to the council via LFBB Solicitors in December 2023 that ‘the Developer is being disingenuous’ by claiming that the company are actively looking to relocate to new premises and will have no impact on the proposed residential site through pollution or noise disturbance in a November 2023 planning statement.
Neil Baumber, Development Director at Beech Holdings, said: “We are actively looking at other sites in Sheffield [to develop, as] we feel we can offer the standard of accommodation that local people desire.”
