£62m plan for new homes gets go-ahead
AMAJOR £62m project to replace a derelict building in Runcorn with homes, a hotel and care home have been rubber-stamped by planning chiefs.
The council’s development management committee unanimously backed proposals by Shah Capital to bulldoze most of East Lane House next to Runcorn Shopping City and replace it with 144 apartments, nine houses, a boutique hotel and care home.
The seven storey care home will have 66 rooms, while the five storey, 85-room hotel will be run by Best Western under its ‘boutque’ Aiden brand and will include a restaurant for 60 people, gym and bar.
The plans say the hotel will provide 28 full time jobs, while the care home will employ 10 people.
Addressing the meeting at the DCBL Stadium in Widnes on behalf of the applicant, Georgia Goff, senior planner at Nexus Planning consultancy, said: “East Lane House has been vacant for over 12 years and is currently in a dilapidated state
“This proposal provides an opportunity to redevelop this well located, vacant, brownfield site to provide a hight quality, mixed-use development.” The building has been long abandoned and has been targeted by arsonists in the past.
This latest application is the third for the site since 2005, with previous plans including a shopping centre and conversion into 448 flats.
The flats plan was approved on appeal in 2015, but nothing came of the proposal as the thenowners – Absolute Living Developments – collapsed into liquidation.
Shah Capital picked up the site in 2016, but this is the first formal planning application the company has brought forward.
Committee member Cllr Rob Polhill told the meeting: “This has been coming on for quite a while and I welcome that someone is at least going to have a go at this.”