Big plans to redevelop a former HSBC Bank in the heart of Bedminster into a ‘co-living’ home for 60 people have been unveiled. The plan would see the bank site on the corner of East Street and Cannon Street redeveloped, along with the current Bedminster Pharmacy and the now-closed William Hill bookmakers next door.
As well as the plan for what would effectively be a giant shared home for 60 people, the project would see a new community health hub which would include an expanded pharmacy and seven consulting rooms.
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The bank closed in HSBC’s wave of 2021 closures, and has been a prominent empty site at the end of East Street ever since. The owner of the Bedminster Pharmacy next door, Tariq Muhammad, who set up the business in 1994, has bought the bank site and the former bookies, and is now proposing the major residential development of all three buildings.
A consultation event is being staged today - this afternoon from 12.30pm to 6.30pm inside the former bank, and a website has been set up for people to view the plans and give feedback.
The building itself would retain the bank’s curved red-brick frontage on the corner of East Street, but behind it a new six-storey building is proposed, above the ‘health hub’ on the ground floor. ‘Co-living’ - or at least homes in multiple occupancy (HMO) on this scale - is a new concept for Bristol, after it crossed the Atlantic from the US to recently-developed sites in London and Manchester. Two major ‘co-living’ projects in the city centre have already been proposed - one in an 18-storey tower block on the site of the Premier Inn overlooking the Bearpit roundabout, and another as part of a project on the current site of the Rupert Street NCP car park.
The concept is similar to that of purpose-built student accommodation, where individuals live in en-suite rooms but share communal facilities like kitchens and living room spaces. The idea is controversial, with developers telling Bristol City Council it would need to reduce its minimum space requirements for new developments by around a half for the concept to be economically viable in the city.
At Bedminster, the prospect of a new ‘health hub’ to replace the existing Bedminster Pharmacy will be an added bonus in an area where thousands of new homes are being built with no expansion proposed of an already over-stretched NHS primary care service.
Those behind the scheme said the existing Bedminster Pharmacy would move to a temporary location nearby while work is being carried out.
After setting up Bedminster Pharmacy in 1994 - it was called Pharmacy Plus back then - Mr Muhammad has since set up two companies: Invatech Health and The Evergreen Group, a property company.
