A plan to demolish the Galleries Shopping Centre and create a new part of Bristol city centre has been officially submitted to the council.
Developers have submitted an outline planning application to demolish the 34-year-old shopping center and its multi-storey car park and create in its place what will essentially be a new city center for Bristol, with 450 new homes, shops, leisure facilities, restaurants , health and community spaces, a new hotel and accommodation for 750 students.
Those behind the project say it will open up the rest of the town center to connect it with Castle Park and create new streets between Broadmead and the park lined with bars, cafes, shops and restaurants.
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The Galleries shopping center remains open for the time being. Bristol Live first revealed that store bosses were given two years’ notice of the plans in early June 2022. However, the shopping center is expected to remain open well into 2025 while first the design and then the detailed planning application goes through the processes at the town hall.
The plan was proposed by the property owners, developers Deeley Freed and LaSalle Investment Management. “We are delighted to have submitted this planning application following a lengthy pre-application process,” said Max Freed of Deeley Freed in Bristol. “This is an important undertaking for Bristol and we are very grateful to everyone who has taken part in the consultation, which has been ongoing for four years,” he added.
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“This is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to reinvent, revitalize and modernize such a large part of the city center. Our vision is to completely transform this inward-looking 1980s shopping center and make the site more diverse, safe and green. “The development opens up the city center to Castle Park, with a focus on addressing Bristol’s priorities around housing, health and wellbeing, climate, ecology, tourism and the economy,” he added.
“In response to feedback during the planning process, we increased public open space, incorporated more community space and reduced the height of the tallest element,” he said.
The Galleries first opened in October 1991 and, alongside the redevelopment of nearby Broadmead, were seen as the future of retail in Bristol. Its status as Bristol’s leading shopping center was destroyed first by The Mall at Cribbs Causeway and then by Cabot Circus, but the long-term future of city center shopping – for both Broadmead and The Galleries – was most influenced by people’s choices Shop online instead of visiting the center regularly.
That’s why developers have been working on a “mixed-use” concept that complements other plans to create hundreds of new homes in the city center. Up to 450 new apartments are planned, of which 20 percent – almost 100 – are classified as “affordable” for planning purposes, and around 10,000 square meters of ground floor space for “retail, leisure, gastronomy, health and community”. “Possible uses” and around 40,000 m² of office space.
There will also be a 250-room hotel or “aparthotel” and purpose-built student accommodation for 750 students, with one and a half hectares of the entire site set aside for “high-quality public spaces and green spaces”.
The developers say they have taken concerns about the height of the proposed tallest buildings to heart and have reduced the height of the high-rises and scaled back the plans overall.
In 2022, developers spoke of a 300-room hotel – now there are 250 rooms – and a purpose-built student residence for 800 students – now there are 750, although the number of new apartments that could be built there has increased from 240 to 450 seems to have increased.
Illustrations produced in 2022 also showed that the development’s landmark building – a 28-storey block of flats – would be located in the south-east corner of The Galleries site, on the corner of Newgate and Fairfax Streets, where the footbridge is opposite Castle Park to the is located shopping center.
Back in February this year, developers produced illustrations showing that the proposed tallest building had been reduced to 22 storeys and moved to the south-west corner, further along Newgate, at the corner of Union Street, where the main entrance to the Galleries located in Castle Park.
Developers hope Bristol City Council’s new planning committee will be able to decide on the plan later this year and work could potentially start next year.