Fresh plans for empty perfume shop on Coney Street

Fresh plans have been submitted to bring a landmark former perfume shop in York city centre back into use.

Burgins Perfumery at 2 Coney Street had been trading for 137 before it went out of business in July 2017, according to a planning report.

The shop has been empty ever since.

The Feoffees of St Martin le Grand church on Coney Street and St Helen church on St Helen’s Square – a charitable organisation – have now submitted a planning application to turn the unit into a cafe.

A planning application submitted to City of York Council says:

• Coney Street is generally considered to be York’s premier shopping street, yet retailers, especiallt in yhe fashion sector, have been closing shops.

  [St Helen’s Square] has become a focus for restaurants, mostly with outside seating areas, which adds to the cosmopolitan character of the location.
  

Open till 11pm

It adds that the shop would suite becoming a cafe rather than a restaurant because there is no courtyard into which they could run an air duct from a kitchen.

And it says the proposed opening hours would be from 8am to 11pm seven days a week.

Previous plans to Landmark Coney Street building to be reborn as a café“>open a new branch of Lucky Days cafe in the empty shop were abandoned earlier this year – with the owner of the chain Chris Holder saying he encountered numerous bureaucratic difficulties in making changes to the Grade 11 listed building.

Mr Holder, who already has three Lucky Days branches elsewhere in the city centre – in Parliament Street, Church Street and Low Petergate – applied for planning permission to convert the building into an eatery and takeaway, with an outdoor seating area.

He said he faced a series of requirements in relation to interior alterations and was also told he could only have two tables, each with two chairs, outside the premises, when he had wanted four tables, each with four.

The Burgins shop first opened as Mark F Burgin’s pharmacy in 1880 and it was taken over by the Wright family in 1934, who changed it into a perfumery in 1972.

The Feoffees have been approached for a comment.