Sheffield parking: Upset as developers put off finishing Porter Brook flats to build 'temporary' car park

Grainger Residential Ltd is set to build a large flat complex on a half-hectare space on Summerfield Street, off Ecclesall Road, made up of at least 150 student flats and 237 apartments next to the River Porter in Sharrow. The first part of the project, Brook Place, was completed in 2019, and the remaining space is currently a wasteland of unused brownfield land.

But now, instead of pushing forward to complete the project, Grainger has applied to the city council to instead open the remaining space as a “temporary car park” with 102 spaces for two years.

In papers put to the council, the group do not say why the housing project cannot progress yet, only saying there are “ongoing pre-application discussions”.

"The use of the application site for car parking over a temporary period of two years is appropriate in terms of the efficient use of the land whilst negotiations continue on the redevelopment potential of the site,” the developers say.

The temporary 102-space car park would be placed very close to Ecclesall Road, one of Sheffield’s busiest routes, and directly outside the new Clean Air Zone. A second separate car park has also recently opened on Pamona Street.

The change in plans have been met with upset by the Sheaf and Porter Rivers Trust, who in a public comment said they had ‘recently’ been invited to comment on how the project could maintain public access to the river bank, and thought they had been “well received”.

“We were therefore rather surprised and disappointed to discover that agents for Grainger were at that moment submitting this planning application to turn the Summerfield St site into a car park,” the comment reads.

"… our experience is that these supposedly temporary parking uses almost always continue much longer than initially proposed, incentivised by the ready and low-risk income they generate as compared to the cost of building sorely needed homes.

"The current parking proposal seeks to kick [proposed improvements for the river] even further into the future whilst extracting even more value from the site but without any of the long- promised public benefits… we intend to register a strong objection.”