Highland heritage organisation objects to plans for new Inverness city centre hotel on site of Ironworks music venue
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A heritage organisation says the design of a proposed new hotel is out of keeping with the area it would be in.
Bricks Group wants to redevelop the Ironworks live music venue site to create a visually-striking £30 million 155-bedroom Courtyard By Marriott residence.
The new building, set back from Academy Street, would rise in height in steps towards the seven-storey rear in Rose Street.
The latest planning application has been lodged with Highland Council, and Bricks says the hotel would accommodate up to 100,000 visitors a year, providing a major boost for the area.
It would also create 90 construction jobs for a two-year period, followed by 65 full-time jobs when the premises opened.
However, the Architectural Heritage Society of Scotland’s (AHSS) Highlands and Islands Cases Panel objects to the proposal because it claims it will present an unacceptable impact on the conservation area in that part of the city.
The group feels it is overdevelopment of a constrained site and Dr Alastair Disley, speaking on behalf of the panel, said: “The development is out of scale with neighbouring properties and the historic urban fabric.
“The development objective has been to achieve a target number of bedrooms rather than an assessment of what is an appropriate scale of development for the site and its context.”
Other objections include:
- The impact on neighbouring properties that are located within the conservation area.
- Overshadowing which will impact on the future use and viability of some historic properties.
- The visual impact on important views and the backdropping effect to the Old High Church.
Dr Disley said the majority of the historic buildings in the city centre were three-storey and attic structures, adding: “The scale of the historic urban fabric reduces towards this area of Academy Street.
“There is therefore an established pattern of roof heights that are quite distinct from that of spires and considerably lower than the development proposed.
“This is particularly evident in the Academy Street elevation prepared by the applicant, which clearly shows the scale of the buildings stepping down from three-storey and attic nearer the town centre, to two-storey and attic at the development site.”
He added: “The façade to the bedroom block at the rear has a vertical unbroken, planar wall surface creating a monolithic block.
“The change of colour and materials to try and delineate an attic space will not achieve the desired effect.
“Evidence for this can be seen at the 1960s development of River House on Young Street which tried unsuccessfully to achieve the same effect.
“The visual interpretation of the upper floors as attic space can only be achieved if there is a significant set back from the building façade in addition to a change in materials and colour.
“The height is excessive, and will have a severely detrimental impact on the existing properties located in the conservation area along Academy Street which are immediately adjacent to the development site and located within the conservation area.
“This impact will be apparent visually from the external realm and will also have a detrimental impact on the use of the properties themselves, limiting the activities that they can support and therefore potentially putting their future viability at risk.”
The redrawn application by CRGP Architects follows Highland Council’s rejection of an initial design in December 2020.
Councillors slated it as unattractive and out of keeping with its surroundings, while the council’s Historic Environment Team (described the proposal as “monolithic”, “featureless” and “devoid of architectural quality”.
The applicants say they have since “listened and learned” through months of close liaison with planners and city centre stakeholders.
A spokesman for Bricks Group said: “We have gone through all appropriate channels to address what was required in advance of submitting our planning application.
“We have followed all protocol and liaised extensively in relation to statutory consultees for this application and we feel very pleased with the progress achieved.
“While we appreciate AHSS’s right to make a public comment, the statutory consultee in this case is Historic Environment Scotland who have examined our application and lodged no objection.
“The comments from AHSS, however, will be addressed in detail by us ahead of the planning committee meeting.”
The spokesman added: “We have liaised extremely closely with Highland Council planners, and other key sources, in the course of 2021 to reach this stage where we have submitted an application we believe will be successful.”
