Developer Zinc Real Estate has applied to Exeter City Council for planning permission to replace Clarendon House, overlooking the Paris Street roundabout, with a 297-bed student accommodation complex arranged in three blocks up to ten storeys tall.
Its application follows two rounds of informal public consultation, three meetings with councillors and four with council officers during which time the scheme’s tallest block has been reduced from twenty to ten storeys and the number of student bed spaces reduced from 350 to just under 300.
Clarendon House is a five-storey 1960s office block which sits between the seven-storey Leonardo Hotel in Western Way and a terrace of three-storey houses in Heavitree Road. It is currently part-occupied by Exeter Jobcentre Plus.
The redevelopment proposals would entail its demolition and replacement with three connected blocks between seven and ten storeys tall.
The resulting student accommodation complex would contain 163 cluster flat bedrooms of 13 square metres each and 134 individual studios, around 90% of which would measure just 18 square metres.
The scheme would also include a ground floor commercial unit with Heavitree Road frontage. The developer says it is “looking to engage with community partners to explore possible uses” of this unit.
Proposed Clarendon House student block aerial view. Image: Chapman Taylor.
Zinc Real Estate, which is based in London and The Netherlands, first sought public feedback on plans for a 350-bed scheme of up to sixteen storeys on the site in December 2023 after two months of meetings with city councillors and officers.
It subsequently altered the scheme by removing six storeys from one of the proposed blocks and adding a single storey to each of the other two, removing 40 student bedspaces from the design.
These revisions resulted in proposals for a 310-bed scheme with a ten storey block beside the Leonardo Hotel, a seven storey central block and a nine storey block at the foot of Heavitree Road.
Shortly after the company sought public feedback on the revised design in December last year it submitted a separate application to the city council for permission to convert the existing building to 32 residential flats instead. This change of use application has yet to be determined.
The company nevertheless made clear that it also intended to pursue planning permission for the student accommodation scheme.
It subsequently submitted an application for full planning permission for its final 297-bed version of the design after removing another thirteen beds in August.
A formal council consultation on the plans has prompted a handful of objections so far. Most say that the scheme is still too tall and several question the need for more student accommodation in the city.
Comments can be submitted via the Exeter City Council website until Sunday 5 October. The application will be determined at a later date.
