Four-storey holiday flats planned for city centre street

Four new holiday flats could be built on a city centre street.

A planning application has been submitted for the current building at 9 King Street near The Grand Opera House to be demolished and a block of holiday apartments to be built in its place.

It says:

• The proposed development will provide a new and appropriate town centre use which will help support the vibrancy of York’s city centre.

  The building is currently vacant and in a state of disrepair and the creation of a holiday lets on an unallocated site is acceptable.
  

‘Not a flood risk’

The four-storey building would feature four bedsit flats for visitors to the city.

The building was previously a restaurant but is now empty.

Being so close to Kings Staith you might expect visitors to occasionally get their feet wet when entering and exiting, when the Ouse is in flood.

But architects ArkleBoyce have taken this into account. The ground floor accommodation is more than 3m above the highest point of the pavement outside.

And a flood risk assessment report “concludes that, though the site is located in Flood
Zone 2, the site levels indicate the property itself will not flood in the modelled 1 in
1,000 year storm event”.

A planning statement says the current building “stands out” on the street because of its “limited architectural merit ” and that the property has visibly subsided.

Its roof level is also lower than neighbouring buildings on the street.