A York nightclub whose trade has been hit be late bars and drink discounting looks set to be allowed to downsize.
The owners of Club Salvation have applied to reduce the size of the venue and put holiday apartments above.
They also want to convert neighbouring buildings into holiday lets, with 17 apartments in total. And councillors are being recommended to give the scheme the green light.
Club Salvation has been operating as a club at 23-25 Tanner Row since the 1980s. A previous application sought to close the club and put a restaurant in its place.
The new plans would see the nightclub retained, but significantly smaller. It would no longer operate on the first floor, and instead just open on the ground floor.
That would see the capacity reduced from 800 to 500 people.
The application states: “Originally the nightclub used to be open five to six nights a week but, after the government allowed bars to have late licences, there has been a steady decline.
“The dynamic of York has also changed considerably with many premises over the river been granted alcohol licences in the addition to late licences, this in turn has diluted the customer base in the Rougier Street area.
“The owners tried to respond to the decline with cheap drink nights to try and keep the customers and eventually turned to attract a student customer base.
“This has been quite successful. However the expected cheap drinks eat into profit margins. The club charges approximately half the price of drinks elsewhere.
“At present the club opens Wednesday, Friday and Saturday during term time, which equates to Wednesdays and Fridays for 26 weeks of the year and Saturdays for 50 weeks of the year, although out of term time the Saturdays are very much less busy and at Christmas they do not open at all.
“Most nights the first floor is closed off after a certain time and sometimes it doesn’t even get opened up.
“Therefore, having just one floor would make it more viable and have little impact on the club itself.”
Numbers 27, 29 and 31 George Hudson Street are three houses with shops dating from about 1860 and are Grade II listed.
But converting them to holiday flats “would not result in any harm to the significance of the assets,” a report to York’s planning committee says.
There are concerns about the impact of noise and air pollution from the club affecting the holiday flats.
“Subject to planning conditions noise and air quality impacts on the serviced apartments are acceptable and the serviced apartments should not adversely impact on the functioning of the retained night club,” the council report says.
Councillors will consider the application at a meeting of planning committee B on Monday 20 May.