Newcastle is set to approve the demolition of the eight storey Hadrian House office building and its replacement with a 507-bed purpose-built student scheme. As Place North East reported, the applicants are Argon and Sona Estates.
The obsolete office problem, answered differently
Elsewhere in this fortnight’s briefing, Sheffield is converting 94,000 sq ft of surplus offices into an ambulance hub. Here Newcastle is taking a different route with the same underlying problem: demolition and replacement rather than conversion.
Both are legitimate. Which one applies depends almost entirely on the building. Some 1960s and 1970s office blocks have floor to ceiling heights, structural grids and services that can be reworked. Others cannot economically be anything other than what they are, and knocking them down produces a better outcome than a bad conversion.
The environmental argument cuts the other way, and deserves stating. Demolition throws away the carbon already embodied in the existing structure, and there is a growing and reasonable body of opinion that says retrofit should be the default. A committee approving demolition should be satisfied that reuse was genuinely tested rather than dismissed.
The student housing question
Five hundred and seven beds is a large scheme, and purpose-built student accommodation always attracts the same criticism: that cities are building for students while local people cannot find a home.
The counter-argument is stronger than it is usually given credit for. Newcastle has two large universities and a substantial student population that has to live somewhere. Where purpose-built accommodation is not provided, students take ordinary terraced houses in residential neighbourhoods, converting family homes into shared houses and pushing up rents for everyone else. That is precisely the Section 257 HMO problem we covered in Salford, where 99% of the converted buildings inspected failed to meet standards.
Adding 507 purpose-built beds in the city centre takes pressure off the residential streets around the universities. It is not a substitute for building family housing, and it is not in competition with it either.
The thing to watch
The real risk with student accommodation is oversupply. Several UK cities have approved beds faster than student numbers have grown, and the sector is now exposed to changes in international student recruitment, which policy has made considerably less predictable.
An empty student block is a difficult building to repurpose, with small rooms and shared facilities that suit almost nothing else. Newcastle’s committee would be right to ask what the current bed supply and demand position is, rather than assuming the demand of five years ago still holds.
The city centre effect
Set against Igloo’s £70m One Founders Place proposal in Stephenson Quarter, Newcastle is adding both workers and residents to its centre. Cities that only add offices empty at six o’clock. The mix is the point.
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