Planning approval for Shrewsbury's Dana Prison site welcomed by owner
The man behind plans to transform Shrewsbury's historic Dana Prison has welcomed the news that councillors unanimously backed the new plans.
But developer Trevor Osborne also said that the approved plans are not as good as the ones which were rejected late last year.
The proposal to turn the former prison into student accommodation, flats, office space, and potentially a restaurant, was unanimously approved by Shropshire Council's central planning committee on Thursday, and now the next stage of looking at how the development will be constructed will begin.
Mr Osborne said: "I was very pleased indeed to see that it was a unanimous decision by the committee.
"We're now going to look at implementation issues. We were enormously disappointed at the refusal of the previous application at the end of last year and we spent time working with the council to come up with a scheme which wouldn't have a lot of local opposition.
"To be perfectly frank, it's not as good a scheme as was proposed previously, but it's what local people want.
"Local people are less opposed to it than they were.
"The concern locally is that car parking is a big issue and it is necessary for some sort of parking scheme to be put in place locally - that is down to the council and the local people to sort and I hope that they can.
"I'm pleased that we can now get into the details about how it is constructed and who builds it."
The previous scheme was rejected by the committee over concerns about a lack of parking space and the effect on nearby roads.
The new plans include converting the gatehouse into three residential units, the A wing to student accommodation – with a maximum of 109 and a minimum of 88 units, B and D wing into 16 apartments and C wing into 16 student rooms.
The prison kitchen will become either retail space or a restaurant, and the education block and workshop building will be demolished for a four-storey residential block with 30 apartments and car parking on the ground floor. A gym will also be retained, and the Lancastrian School will become 11 apartments.
Two new buildings will house offices and residential units and there will be 91 car parking spaces on site.
