According to an application submitted by Dandara, the plans include retaining 10 Commercial Street and all but one of the listed Howard House Esplanade and Commercial Street façades. Storage would be provided for 40 bicycles on the ground floor of the site, which is adjacent to Liberation Station.
If the development is approved it will join a number of other newly built offices on the Esplanade, including the recently completed Cooil House, which was built on the site of the former KOKO-Kasbar nightclub, JTC House, which lies on the former CI Tyres building and Gaspé House, which is built on the site of the former Cosmopolitan nightclub, as well as the International Finance Centre’s buildings IFC 5 and 1.
Anthony Gibb, a historic buildings expert commissioned by Dandara, said in a report that although the development would lead to the loss of a historic façade, it could also serve as an opportunity to hide aesthetically displeasing outer walls of some newly built offices nearby.
‘Where the loss of the heritage asset in the form of the façade of number eight is contrary to [planning policy] and it would have a negative impact on the asset, the creation of a four-storey façade would have a positive impact on the streetscape as a whole,’ his report says.
‘In addition the creation of a high-quality building that reflects the architecture of the present day can be considered a more appropriate response than the retention of an historic façade alone and thus can be seen as a positive outcome.
‘The balance between negative and positive can therefore be argued as having a neutral impact overall, although this depends on the quality of the new building being demonstratively higher than the norm and of greater value than the existing listed façade.’
