A Royal Mail sorting office is set to be demolished to make way for a huge new block of flats. The Royal Mail's Cardiff West delivery office has stood on Cowbridge Road in Canton for decades but will be knocked down after a planning application was approved by the council.
The current two-storey office block will be replaced by a four to five-storey building containing 20 one and two bedroom flats on the first to fourth floors. The ground floor will comprise commercial units, with shops, cafes and restaurants among the potential new occupiers.
A planning application to demolish the sorting office, which was built in the 1960s, was approved by Cardiff council on Friday, July 8.
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The application, which was submitted by RPS Planning & Development on behalf of the applicant, The Cardiff Property, states that the ground floor will have over 500 square metres of flexible retail space. There will also be a bin store and resident cycle stores for up to 28 bicycles.
On the first, second and third floors of the block, there are set to be six one bedroom apartments, with two on each floor. There will also be 12 two bedroom apartments, with four on each floor.
The fourth floor will house a pair of two bedroom apartment. Outside, there will be more cycle parking as well as rain garden planting to assist with sustainable drainage.
The application states that the Cowbridge Road East site is "suitable, available and viable as a residential development site" and points to its proximity to Victoria Park as well as several shops and restaurants. It also mentions that Taff Housing Association will be the end occupier of the apartments, while no occupiers have yet been identified for the retail floorspace.
The new apartment block will also be built adjacent to another major development, with the site of a former car showroom next door to the Royal Mail office also being turned into a four to five storey residential block. That apartment block will provide 23 affordable housing units, and the new development has been designed to "reflect and complement" the adjacent scheme.
As a result, the design will feature buff and green bricks, and aluminium standing seam roof and fascias, as well as grey UPVC windows and aluminium doubled glazed shopfronts. No start date for the work has yet been given.
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