Watch: What will happen on the Boots Island site within the next 10 years
By Matthew Taylor
The £300m regeneration of the Boots Island site will ‘be completed within 10 years’, developers have said.
Plans have been submitted to Nottingham City Council to build 907 homes, 666 student flats and 630,000 sq ft of office space where the derelict warehouses stand.
Construction is aimed to begin in 2019 after the plans were submitted by Nottingham-based Lavignac Securities and Aim-Listed Conygar Investments.
Since 2006, a great number of largescale planning applications have failed and been abandoned, including a Tesco Superstore in 2011.
However Christopher Ware, director at Conygar Investment Company, has offered assurances this time around the development will succeed.
He said: “We have worked very hard to submit a planning application that we believe is practical and deliverable.
“We don’t want a premium product that no one can afford.
“What we want is to have people here, living on the site, and breathing life into it and for that to happen, it has to be affordable homes with real people living in them.”
The project is aimed to be completed within 10 years although Terje Width, director at Lavignac Securities, hopes tenants will be moving in much earlier than that.
He said: “It is probably a 10 year plan to get it all done – hopefully it will go faster than that but that is what we are aiming for.
“Short-term, a lot of jobs will be created to bring the site forward and, longer-term, it will be a new and exciting place, not only to live, but also to work and to play.”
Lorraine Baggs, head of inward investment at Invest in Nottingham, said: “It is one of a number of planned schemes that forms part of the Southern Gateway and will breathe new life into a site which has sat unloved for many years.”
A Nottingham City Council spokesperson said: “The Island Site is a key location in Nottingham’s landscape that has needed redevelopment for some time.
“We look forward to reviewing the application and the planning committee will make its decision in due course.”
