A housing association has drawn up plans for a landmark 17-storey building on Hove seafront to help tackle the shortage of homes in the area.
Hyde is holding a public exhibition on Saturday (21 November) to display the plans and invite feedback from the public, in particular, from neighbours.
The plans are for 107 homes in a 56-metre high tower block with 52 parking spaces for cars and 149 for bikes on the Sackville Hotel site in Kingsway.
The hotel collapsed while refurbishment work was being carried out almost ten years and was demolished.
Brighton and Hove City Council has previously given planning permission for flats on the King Alfred site rising to more than 100m – almost twice the height – just half a mile away.
Both sites are in the Hove seafront tall building zone.
Hyde also plans to work with the council on improvements to the Hove lawns area to the south of the site and to the west of the King Alfred Leisure Centre.
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The housing association said: “The Hyde Group has announced plans for a high-quality major residential development on the former Sackville Hotel site on the corner of Sackville Gardens and Kingsway on Hove seafront.
“The plans will deliver 107 new homes as part of a major redevelopment of the site within a 17-storey building.
“The site has been derelict for around nine years, an eyesore on the seafront since the former hotel partially collapsed and had to be demolished in 2006.
“Several previous attempts to develop the site in recent years have stalled. Given the site’s prominent location, Hyde’s proposal is to deliver a high-quality building that will enhance the surrounding area.
“Brighton and Hove has a significant shortage of housing land and a huge shortfall in the supply of all types of housing, with an additional 30,000 homes needed by 2030 in order to meet the objectively assessed housing need. It is vital that we make the best use of available land.”
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Tom Shaw, development director (south) for the Hyde Group, said: “This is a prominent site on Hove seafront which deserves a high-quality building with real architectural and design merit.
“Hyde has a strong track record of investing in delivering high-quality developments and creating places where people want to live and work.
“We believe that the proposed development will enhance the surrounding area and Hove seafront as well as providing investment for improvements to public open space on the seafront itself.
“We are working with Brighton-based architects Yelo on the plans and would invite local people to attend the public exhibition and to see the plans.”
The public exhibition is taking place in the ballroom at the King Alfred Leisure Centre on Hove Seafront from 10am to 4pm on Saturday (21 November).
Councillor Robert Nemeth, who lives close by, said: “This proposal presents an opportunity to build the city’s first quality tall building.
“Those living around the site must be given a chance to properly see the plans in their current form and, ultimately, express their concerns. The public open days are the start of this process.
“I have no doubt that the scheme will evolve and am confident that the end result will be something of which the city will be proud.”
I LOVE the tower design. But both the height and design are profoundly out of keeping with the area and unacceptably tall. It smacks of what Sirus Taghan got up to with the Medina House site (and he failed and failed and failed).
Hyde Housing is supposed to be a social housing provider but these days has abandoned its remit because of ever decreasing government grants to HA’s. So it conjures market housing schemes instead and so-called “shared ownerships” – which are not exactly a bargain and can lumber people with properties they cannot leave because the 20% or 40% of whatever percentage ownership they take, is not universally acceptable. Many say the open market is cheaper.
So where can we put this outsize offering instead? I reckon It belongs somewhere like Scandinavia. Has a Nordic sort of feel to it. It does not say “Hove”.
Haussmann got it pretty right.
On a seafront you don’t want to start putting up high rise buildings, look at other cities around the world in a similar location. Others will want to follow and within a few years its the norm, a wall of concrete and glass.
These are different plans which were approved in april ???
http://wam.brighton-hove.gov.uk/PlanningWAM/doc/Supporting%20Document%28s%29-3299157.pdf?extension=.pdf&id=3299157&location=VOLUME4&contentType=application/pdf&pageCount=1
I think it is likely that the people who proposed that scheme are selling the site on (for whatever reason – probably financial)and that Hyde have either bought it outright or will buy it contingent upon receiving planning consent.
Rest assured Hyde do not provide quality homes and recent local developments are all style with quality construction and workmanship sadly lacking – their development above Tescos in St James Street is an unmitigated disaster where the construction company (Bouygues) has lost over £2million and One Hove Park by the same conteactor is not much better! Caveat emptor indeed!!
It is grotesque, totally out of keeping with the surrounding buildings – please not more architectural blunders in Brighton and Hove. The 60’s brought architectural chaos to Brighton that we all still have to bear – Kingswest, Churchill Square, Conference Centre, Hove Town Hall to name but just a few.
Hope the Council will throw it out as the ugly building it is and remember our history with pride with all the wonderful architecture along the seafront that once made Brighton and Hove so special.
The design is only a sketch but it could be more interesting than the dreadful blocks which fill so much of that part of Kingsway.
But 52 parking spaces? The costs of running an automobile equal a large part of a mortgage/rent.
Sussex Heights and Bedfords Towers are grotesques along Brighton seafront and whilst not as high this monstrosity will without doubt damage Hove seafront yet the greed of the developer will be hidden in the usual cloak of ‘local housing need’ and a ‘building with real architectural merit’ when all Hyde are after is a profit – lets not forget that the CHEAPEST Shared Ownership one bed flat at Hove Park was an astonishing £300,000 so way way out of reach of any first time buyer on a local average salary of £25k or so!!
Pathetic, you’re all stuck in your ways.
This is a great design and not everyone cares about the height because actually some of us know that the only thing we CAN do is build vertically, and we need more homes.
Just accept change for once, and embrace it.
How pessimistic and negative your thinking on this is…. You have bought into an awful lot of propaganda…or are you a developer?
Interesting design but way too out of keeping with the surrounding area, the height truly shocked me. I mean 17 storeys? Where is there anything of that height even close by? Tower blocks are better in town centres. This part of Hove seafront has had enough architectural horrors, I fear this is just another nail in the coffin of a once lovely mixed range of houses and apartments. Upping the ante like this will set a precedent and encourage more high blocks being built in the area. It’s just a shame that the lovely Sackville hotel wasn’t reconverted to five beautiful villas as they originally were, a real landmark in the area.
Another ugly 60’s tower block which will be demolished in 30 years time.Follow Manchester/Birmingham/London/Dubai/Shanghai buildings.Uk artichects were trained by failed 1960’s architects.Ugly designs.
So according to your analysis the site is better left derelict???!!!
The Alan Phillips proposal for the site a few years ago was thrown out by the Committee, and went to Appeal. The Council’s Planners and lawyer put up a good defence of the Committee decision, but it seemed that – during the day-long session (including site visit) – the Inspector was swayed by the continual references to “Professor” Phillips by his expensive barrister. (I witnessed all this.) All this was complicated by representatives from the adjacent building which was then a hodge podge of bedsits, and now demolished, with building work now underway there. They objected to the Sackville plan. What is their view of the current plan? Meanwhile, one of the ugliest blocks on that stretch of Kingsway, and that is saying something, is Girton House. Once a notable building, its front has been in-filled beyond description. Be all this as it may, I feel sure that, as I said earlier, a sticking-point with the current proposal will be the 50 parking places. Oh, my, the Sackville Hotel’s bar, with its grand piano, was a nice place to go for a drink (and its collapse remains a mystery, a matter perhaps of the loss of supporting walls…).
Awful design: oversized and totally unsympathetic with the surrounding buildings. Any dense housing should be situated by Hove Station and not on a front line position like this.
We must not return to the 1950s/60s when even demolishing much of Brunswick Terrace and surrounding Regency housing was considered to build ‘modern’ high rise buildings. If this sort of monstrosity is passed by Planning, I’m off!
This is a bold, distinctive and first class design in my view. Exactly what is needed for a significant tall building on Hove seafront! Personally I’m all for it! In my view, this proposal is far superior to a smaller but mediocre or pastiche scheme which in the long run would actually be worse for the area and the seafront. Look around you for plentiful examples…. In short it’s exciting and to be commended and I for one would love to see it built.
This block may well be, in isolation, a great design but the FACT remains that this site and Hove seafront are not suitable for such a ‘significant tall building!!
It is an absolute imperative that people look at proposals from the perspective of how it will impact those around it and not to just judge it like a painting on a wall.
Look at it from the perspective of the people living directly behind the site, for whom this would be an intimidatingly looming and overbearing presence – and that’s before you look at overlooking, overshadowing, light loss and the rest.
A developer who went along to look at the exhibition today told me he thinks it would open up the rest of the Kingsway for development. Exactly what many residents fear most.
Is that the same site that Frank Gehry’s very similarly designed two towers were going to be? His would have created 750 new homes as opposed to 107…
No, it is a different site. Something easily established before wasting life on putting fingers to keyboard.
Further to my one of yesterday about the Alan Phillips proposal of a few years ago.
After all that, it did not get built.
There is the distinct possibility that even if this one got permission, it would not get built. For a relatively modest outlay, the owner of the land will be able to “sandbank” it: that is, with such permission, its value goes up, and he can borrow against that. And so it goes on. There need not be a housing crisis if homes were built upon land which has gained planning permission.
This is, of course, also linked with banks’ refusal to lend money.
The whimsical nature of the current proposal suggests that this could be another fantasy similar to the proposed tower on the sack-factory site in Portslade a while ago.
Not to mention Alan Phillips’s plan for housing on an island in the Channel.
architects often put forward proposals – as with the recent Colonnades notion – to get a bit of publicity in local papers.
At first glance it’s better than the original 25 storey “loo roll” proposal that can be seen here http://imgs.re/images/2015/11/20/image.jpg
However the reduced height has resulted in increased width – encroaching on surrounding buildings.
It’s still completely out of proportion to other buildings in the area and would look completely out of place on the sea front.