Plans for huge tower block in the centre of Cardiff approved.
Ted Peskett, local democracy reporter
Plans for a huge new 35-storey tower block in the centre of Cardiff have been approved.
The 113m-high building proposed for land in Wood Street will consist mainly of apartments.
The ground floor of the tower has been earmarked for commercial space and a separate pavilion building will also be constructed as part of the wider development.
This pavilion building could be used as a cafe or restaurant and will contain a spill-out area for tables and chairs.
At a Cardiff Council planning committee meeting on Thursday, June 8, councillors were largely in favour of the development.
Committee member Cllr Garry Hunt said the tower and pavilion could play a vital part in improving Central Square.
However he also raised concerns over the potential look of the building. He said: “I just wondered if we are missing a trick.
“It is basically a block and I just wondered if more thought could be given to the design.”
Cllr Emma Reid-Jones, who also sits on the planning committee, questioned whether it will be a good place for future residents to live.
Council officers defended the design of the building.
Graceful
The council’s head of planning, Simon Gilbert, said he accepted Cllr Hunt’s comments on the building’s simplistic shape.
However he added: “It is quite graceful in terms of its slender nature on that gable end.”
The officer went on to describe the design of the building as “striking” and that he thinks it is a step up from a lot of the tall buildings that exist in the city.
When the application for the building by Rightacres Ltd was initially put to the council the design showed the building to be 30 storeys high.
However they later amended the application and proposed the height of the building to be 35 storeys high.
The number of apartments that the building will contain has gone up as a result from 330 to 364 and the proposed position of the building changed to being half a metre further to the north.
Concerns were raised over the potential overbearing nature of the tower and that its size would lead to a loss of sunlight in neighbouring buildings.
A report attached to the application states that the proposed repositioning of the building by the developers is based on the council’s concerns that the original positioning would reduce the width of the footway along Wood Street.
It is also hoped the development, which forms part of the wider Central Square masterplan, will help the continued regeneration of the area and promote economic development.
Central Square has been through a lot of change in recent years with the demolition of St David’s House in 2019 paving the way for the new HMRC tax office building and public area, which includes the Betty Campbell statue.
A new BBC Cymru headquarters now also calls Central Square its home and a long-awaited new bus station looks set to be completed this year.
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When in a thousand years an inquisitive passing alien space ship discovers the remains of a ruined and overgrown city they will wonder at this black monolith standing high above the debris of the past and how it came to be and who commissioned such conceited banality.
This is what happens when you give a child rectilinear toy bricks to play with, their imagination atrophies…
For me this edifice sums up the philistine nature of Cardiff Council in its selfish ignorance of its surroundings and population…
If that part of Cardiff is still above sea level in 1000 years.
Aesthetically, it reminds me of the monolith from 2001: A Space Odyssey
Yes indeed, to both your points…
NeoSoviet Brutalism like it or learn to like it over a few years in a gulag somewhere on the Gower…
Swansea has the tallest building in Wales.
So Cardiff has to have something taller.
Read A Secret History of Time to Come by Robie Macauley, a decayed America with ghostly skyscrapers, extraordinary career, Japan post atom bomb, fiction editor of Playboy, look him up. If you like of course…
Seems this council is hell-bent on destroying Cardiff’s city centre. What a contrast to the elegant and imaginative architecture of old Cardiff that Labour seem determined to erase under a new concrete jungle!
Cardiff is a city up for sale – and it will go to the highest bidder.
What plans have Cardiff got for mooring a floating prison hulk in the Bay…
Armed police to welcome refugees to Portland Harbour, God forbid this is repeated in the waters of Cymru.
If these floating prisons are anchored to the sea bed will it produce revenue for the Crown.
Fossil-Fuel Warrior Sunak and Pirate of the Channel Braverman shame us from the Equator to the Pole.
Stupidly tall. Again.
Yet more daft planning from Cardiff with Wales’ gov egging them on. Shifting the centre of Cardiff south towards a rising sea is plenty stupid, but add to that the mess caused by all that traffic that is drawn to this new centre. Despite all the declarations of adherence to some version of the Green Gospels the City and Wales’ gov fail abysmally to create the public transport that is meant to overcome all the current problems and enable people movement to flow with ease. Or is that more deviant thinking while they just get on with harvesting the revenues… Read more »
Why? To make a load of money for developers.
Why dont they move into the coal exchange and similar builfings and save them from a slow death?
What is the obsession with Cardiff City’ planners for Tower blocks is it a craving to be loke other major cities at the expense of the characteristics that marks one town or city from another.