A plan to demolish The Galleries shopping center and create a new part of Bristol city center has been formally submitted to the city council.
Developers have submitted an outline application to demolish the 34-year-old shopping center and multi-storey car park and in its place create a new city center for Bristol, with 450 new homes, shops, leisure facilities, restaurants, health and community spaces, a new hotel and accommodation for 750 students.
Those behind the plan say it will open up the rest of the city center to connect to Castle Park, and create new streets between Broadmead and the park filled with bars, cafes, shops and restaurants.
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The Galleries shopping center will remain open for the time being. Bristol Live first revealed that bosses of individual stores were given two years’ notice of the plans in early June 2022, but the shopping center is expected to remain open well into 2025 while first the outline and then the detailed planning application is made. goes through the processes at city hall.
The plan was proposed by the land’s owners, developers Deeley Freed and LaSalle Investment Management. “We are pleased to have submitted this planning application after a lengthy pre-application process,” said Max Freed, of Bristol-based Deeley Freed. “This is a vital plan for Bristol and we are very grateful to everyone who has been involved in the four-year consultation,” he added.
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“This is a unique opportunity to reinvent, revitalize and modernize such a large part of the city centre. Our vision is to completely transform this inward-looking 1980s shopping center, making the location more diverse, safer and greener. The development opens up the city center to Castle Park, with a real focus on addressing Bristol’s priorities across housing, health and wellbeing, climate, ecology, tourism and the economy,” he added.
“In response to feedback during the planning process, we have increased the public open space, incorporated more communal space and reduced the height of the tallest element,” he said.
The Galleries first opened in October 1991 and was seen as the future of retail in Bristol, alongside the regeneration of nearby Broadmead. Its status as Bristol’s premier shopping center was overturned first by The Mall at Cribbs Causeway and then by Cabot Circus, but the long-term future of city center shopping – for both Broadmead and The Galleries – has been most affected by people who chose to shop online instead of visiting the center regularly.
That’s why the developers have drawn up a plan that will be ‘mixed use’, complementing other plans to create hundreds of new homes in the city centre. The plans include up to 450 new homes, of which 20 percent (just under 100) will be classed as ‘affordable’ in planning terms, and approximately 10,000 sq ft of ground floor space for ‘retail, leisure, food and drink, healthcare and community’. use’, and then approximately 40,000 m² of office space above that.
There will also be a 250-room hotel, or ‘aparthotel’, and purpose-built student accommodation for 750 students, with one and a half hectares of the entire site being devoted to ‘high-quality public realm and green space’.
The developers say they have listened to concerns about how tall the proposed tallest buildings would be, and have reduced the height of the tower blocks and generally scaled back the plans.
In 2022 the developers talked about a 300 room hotel – it is now 250 rooms – a purpose built student hall for 800 students – it is now 750, although the number of new homes that could be built there appears to have risen from 240 to 450.
Illustrations from 2022 also showed that the project’s Grade II listed building – a 28-storey apartment block – would be located on the south-eastern corner of The Galleries site, on the corner of Newgate and Fairfax Street, where the pedestrian bridge crosses Castle Park to the shopping center is located.
In February this year, the developers produced illustrations showing that this proposed tallest building has been reduced to 22 storeys and moved to the south-west corner, further along Newgate, on the corner of Union Street, where the main entrance to The Galleries is. from Castle Park.
The developers hope that Bristol City Council’s new planning committee can decide on the scheme this year, with work possibly starting next year.