The Argos store that has stood on East Street in Bedminster for decades has suddenly disappeared - and a new building will soon replace it.
A five-storey building of 50 flats will occupy the large space at the top end of East Street, with new stores fronting South Bristol’s main shopping street.
The plans were quietly given permission by city council planners last March - without even going to a public committee - and the demolition crews that have been working on taking apart the large former Argos warehouse behind the store reached the front this month.
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This weekend, the frontage had been completely removed, leaving a pile of rubble where once a great British high street stalwart once was.
Argos was bought by Sainsbury’s in 2017, and by September 2018, the supermarket giant had moved the Bedminster store to a section within its store in Winterstoke Road in Ashton Gate.
In late 2018, local developer Firmstone - which owns the St Catherine’s Place shopping centre opposite and have planning permission for a major development there as part of the Bedminster Green regeneration project - took on the store and submitted a planning application.
In March last year, the firm won permission to build 50 flats on the site, with a series of ‘flexible’ shopping and business units fronting East Street itself. Work on that building is expected to start in the next few weeks, after the remnants of the old Argos store is cleared away.
The flats are proposed as a mix of one- and two-bedroom apartments. A total of 22 will be one-bed, and 28 will be two-bed, and within that, some will be for one person, two people, three people and even apartments designed for four people to share in two beds, the developer told council planners.
Firmstone, which set up a company specifically for this development, will have to pay a total of just over £302,000 as part of the Community Infrastructure Levy scheme, which goes into a local pot for the council to spend on community projects in and around Bedminster and Southville.
The developers also told planners that the project would not be economically viable if they had to meet the council’s policy of having 30 per cent of the flats classed as ‘affordable’, for local people - which should have meant 15 of the flats were either sold to the council as council flats, a housing association for affordable rent, or sold as a shared ownership scheme.
But Firmstone did say they were open to negotiations back in 2018, and offered four of the flats for affordable housing.
But no housing association came forward to take on such a small number, and even Bristol City Council’s own housing team initially said they would, but in the end decided not to, and instead opted for the developer to pay £175,000 towards the provision of social housing in other development projects elsewhere in the city.
Firmstone’s plans for St Catherine’s Place shopping centre have already seen the former DSS office building converted into flats. The plans for the site next door and the shopping centre itself have been given approval by the council already and will see a 13-storey building constructed with a total of 180 flats involved across the site - none of which will be classed as affordable either.
Read more: Everything you need to know about the Bedminster Green project
That makes a total of 230 flats being built by Firmstone on either side of East Street with no affordable housing provision on site.
When the proposal secured planning permission in March last year, the developer's director Francis Firmstone said: "The combined impact of the redevelopment of the former Argos store and St Catherine's Place will make a major contribution to the revival of the East Street area and inject significant investment into this part of Bedminster.
"It has taken some time but now we've been given the go-ahead, we're keen to get moving on delivering our plans. We've been developing homes and shops in Bedminster for over 15 years, are very committed to the area and are looking forward to playing our role in creating the next chapter in its regeneration,” he added.
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