A prominent site on the south bank of the River Avon could be transformed into South Bristol’s biggest ‘Co-living’ development, with single rooms for as many as 113 people.
Plans for the site on the corner of Coronation Road and St John’s Road have been submitted by the site’s owners, who want to demolish a three-storey office block that dates from the 1950s, and instead replace it with a large building of up to five storeys that will fill the corner plot.
The prominent site is on the opposite bank of the New Cut River Avon from the Louisiana and the Bathurst Basin, and with BedminsterAsda ’s car park across the other side of St John’s Road.
There have been a number of proposals over the past few years to demolish the 1950s office block and an old garage and large shed. In 2019, a plan to build a block of 46 flats up to six-storeys high was refused permission, but a slightly scaled back plan for 44 flats was granted permission back in 2022.
The developers said the plans have now changed for this development – effectively switching what they are going to build from 44 flats and two houses, to a development that is entirely a ‘Co-living’ one, which will house up to 113 people.
‘Co-living’ is a new phenomenon for Bristol, but is being increasingly proposed by developers, particularly on city centre sites. The idea is to effectively create ‘shared flats’ in a similar way to how purpose-built student accommodation works, where people live in one room which has a small bathroom, basic kitchen facilities and a bedsit, while sharing communal spaces either within their floor or their building.
Alec French Architects is working with the building’s owners Castlemead insurance brokers – which have an office at the site now. The architects are the brains behind one of Bristol’s biggest planned ‘Co-living’ projects, which will soon see the Rupert Street multi-storey car park demolished in the city centre and replaced with more than 300 student flats and a large-scale ‘Co-living’ development for 249 people.
There is only one large-scale ‘Co-living’ project already up and running, in a converted historic building in Old Market, but the concept is a controversial one. Councillors recently expressed concerns about the biggest ‘Co-living’ development proposed in Bristol – on the site of the Premier Inn at the Bearpit roundabout, after the developers changed the plans to concentrate all the communal space in the building on the top two floors, leaving the shared flats with no separate communal space at all, apart from a hallway.
The proposal for a 113-room ‘Co-living’ development on Coronation Road will be the biggest south of the river. Currently, there are plans to build a 60-room ‘Co-living’ block above the former HSBC Bank on the end of East Street in Bedminster, while converting the bank building itself into a dentist’s practice.
The site on Coronation Road is being called ‘St John’s Gate’ by the developer, a company called Land & Buildings. The site will also have communal gardens, courtyard space and rooftop terraces, ‘plus ample bike storage for residents to encourage sustainable travel’.
The ‘Co-living’ boom is being touted as a way to create affordable accommodation for single people and ‘key workers’ who can’t afford to live in rented accommodation anywhere near the city centre – albeit they end up living in a single room in what is a similar model to student halls.
“It will provide affordable but high-quality rental accommodation for key workers and young professionals which is badly needed in the city,” said Louis Lane, an associate director at Alec French Architects, who claimed the ‘Co-living’ development would ‘help to address the shortage of low-cost homes in Bristol’s city centre’.
“Co-living developments address a growing challenge within cities like Bristol that has been getting progressively worse for many years,” he added. “How can the people who need to live in our city centres afford to do so as land values rise ever higher and development costs continue to soar?
“Co-living offers an answer to this problem by providing key workers with affordable, one-bedroom apartments and shared, high-quality services in a desirable location. This provides an alternative housing provision to opting for a house share or settling for apartments of lower quality or in less convenient locations.
“We also believe that the redevelopment of the buildings in St John’s Road will breathe new life into what has become an unattractive site. It will greatly improve the urban character of this area and provide passive security into Lucky Lane while also delivering attractive homes on a brownfield site,” he added.