The old London Road Co-op in Brighton is to be converted into a university halls of residence with room for 351 students.
Brighton and Hove City Council Planning Committee gave planning permission for the scheme today a year after turning similar plans.
The main differences are that the new scheme will preserve the façade of the 1930s building and provide homes for fewer students.
Behind the façade the old building will be demolished and the new building will be between three and six storeys high.
It will have shops at street level although the council said that it did not know which shops might occupy the premises.
There will also be three disabled parking spaces and 150 cycle racks.
The developer Fresh Student Living and Sussex University are working together on the scheme with the university allocating students to the building.
The developer said that the halls would be mainly aimed at mature students but not exclusively.
The council has insisted on a management plan being agreed for how the building is run as a condition of planning permission.
A permanent management and security team would be on hand.
After turning down the previous planning application, the council locally “listed” the building to protect its frontage.
Planning committee chairman Councillor Christopher Hawtree said: “It’s a victory for our stance against boil-in-the-bag architecture which often sees our distinctive buildings replaced by developers serving up easy bland designs.
“I appreciate concerns about the impacts of student accommodation. But the universities bring great benefits to the city and new halls take the pressure off family houses elsewhere.
“We are also insisting that at least 20 per cent of the construction workforce will be local people which is more than might easily have been the case.”
A planning officer’s report said that good reasons for approving the plans included improvements to the area and the building’s high energy efficiency.
The scheme should also put a stop to vandalism and squatting in the existing building.
The developer will pay about £500,000 to improve local open spaces, job opportunities, transport and public art.
This will do no end of good for regeneration of London Road. It is a sad fact, however that endless building of student accommodation by the Uni. of Sussex has meant a minor townscape forming ever deeper into the Downs. They have built right up to the Park border now. Overtrading! Bit of a sausage factory.
Lets just hope that the troublesome, immature, childish brat students learn to behave themselves in their new accommodation; anything that gets them out of neighbourhoods where hard-working tax payers live (and have to put up with their students and their anti-social brat behaviour) must be a good thing
The question on everyone’s mind is this; will immature students brats, who are away from mummy and daddy for the first time, treat the property with respect?
Or will the student brats do what they normally do; blast out loud music, ignore recycling protocol and act like they own the street?
My life was made absolute HELL by students until I moved away. Amanda is right: many (not all) students are ill-behaved, immature brats. Both university’s should have in place a system of punitive sanction (removal from the university) against students who move into neighbourhoods en masse and make residents lives hell
will there be extra transport laid on to cope with all these noisy shouting,screaming lot,WHY WAS IT NOT MADE INTO FLATS FOR THE POOR PEOPLE THAT ARE WAITING FOR HOMES IN THIS TOWN IS ALL THE COUNCIL THINKS ABOUT IS BLINKING STUDENTS