Property developer Elliot Lawless has sold a former city centre cinema to the Legacie Group.
Mr Lawless, owner of the Elliot Group, has confirmed the sale of the former Paramount building off London Road to Legacie Developments for an undisclosed fee.
Mr Lawless bought the Paramount site from administrators in 2019. The Liverpool developer claims to have spent millions of pounds on completing the residential scheme.
READ MORE: Questions over 'stripped out apartments' inside Elliot Lawless building
A spokesman for the Elliot Group said the completed scheme contains 488 units, and is now nearly full let to students ahead of autumn term. The former cinema was renamed Exchange.
Legacie, the new owners, was founded by Liverpool businessman John Morley.
Mr Lawless said to the ECHO: “When we acquired the building its cladding had essentially been condemned, post-Grenfell, the roof was so leaky the basement had flooded and we needed to retrofit a sprinkler system.
"Everything has now been put right and passed by the council’s building regulations team but it’s fair to say that this was one of our more challenging projects.
“Exchange was our twenty-third successfully-completed project in Liverpool meaning that we have delivered more than 2,500 units in the city alone."
The ECHO recently published photographs of 'stripped out ' apartments inside the building. Mr Lawless told the ECHO that the rooms had to be stripped of their fixtures and fittings to meet fire safety standards.
The developer said he spent millions of pounds ensuring the site met with building and fire safety standards following the Grenfell disaster in London.
The original Paramount scheme was set to turn the former Odeon cinema site on London Road into a 488-bed student accommodation block. But the scheme ran into trouble and stalled in 2015.
Developers Pinnacle Student Developments Ltd (PSDL) later collapsed with massive liabilities. The site then stalled and passed into the hands of administrators.
PSDL is now about to be dissolved by a liquidators Quantuma Advisory Ltd. Their latest report has revealed that PSDL owes tens of millions of pounds to creditors.
The report reveals that the company owes £25,066,757.55 to HMRC and £13,505,055.74 to Pinnacle Student Buyers, a company which represents investors in the property scheme.
