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19
Nov
Food retailer close to signing deal for Starbeck's building unit, says owner
The owner of the derelict Harpers building on Starbeck High Street says he is close to finalising a deal to rent out the ground floor of the site after its redevelopment.
Graham Bates told the Stray Ferret:
We are in discussions with a food retailer to take a lease on the ground floor. We’re very close to agreeing heads of terms.
He declined to name the company, but he said it was not Tesco, which will be opening new stores in Harrogate and Ripon soon.
The Harpers building, which stands next to St Andrew’s Church, was originally a Harpers grocery store and was later a McColl’s supermarket. But it had been vacant for two years when youths set fire to it in 2018, and has remained a burnt-out shell behind hoardings ever since.
Mr Bates has spent years trying to get planning permission to redevelop the site. He originally wanted to create 26 small flats on the upper floor, but that plan fell foul of planning regulations, which, he said, stipulated that developments of 15 or more dwellings must include some affordable homes.
Mr Bates maintained that that would make the scheme financially unviable.
He later had planning permission to create 14 homes – just under the 15-home threshold – but a change in the regulations lowered the bar to just 10 homes.
As a result, he submitted a planning application last month to create just nine homes in the building’s renovated shell.
The development would have retail space on the ground floor, with nine flats above. Image: E3 Architecture.
He said:
A big housebuilder developing a large scheme should be able to afford an element of affordable housing – and rightly so. But with a scheme this small it’s just not viable.
We could have fitted loads more flats in and created even more housing, but when we looked at it, [the affordable housing criteria] meant it just wasn’t financially possible.
The reality is that if every small developer has to go through what we’ve had to, it’s hardly any wonder that we haven’t got anywhere near the 1.3 million homes the government wants to build.
A decision on the planning application is expected by the end of the year, and Mr Bates hopes to be able to announce the identity of the company leasing the ground floor retail unit at the same time.
He said:
I don’t think there’s a lot [the planning committee] can object to. We’ve done everything they’ve asked.
We are where we are. Hopefully, we’ll get planning permission by the end of the year and we’ll finally be able to get started on the work.
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