Hotel firms eye up derelict Plymouth city centre office block

Plymouth city centre’s derelict Mayflower House office block may not be torn down after all – because it is being eyed up by hotel companies.

The vast ramshackle and disused building, where a dead body was discovered in 2020, has attracted attention from eager developers since the site went on the market in January 2021.

The building has planning permission to be demolished and replaced with an 18-storey tower containing student flats, but property consultants now say that plan is unlikely to be realised because the post-Covid economic climate and a lower demand for student accommodation make it unviable.

Instead, the plot has attracted the gaze of developers looking to create homes or a hotel – with most of them wanting to keep and refurbish the existing building.

Mark Slade, an associate at property consultancy Bruton Knowles in Plymouth, said: “We are delighted to have received interest from both residential and hotel operators as well as other parties, who in the main are seeking to revive the existing structure.”

Mayflower house has gone on the marketed as a “development opportunity” after the company which owned it went out of business. It has been used by rough sleepers with police finding evidence of drug use and even a dead man inside it in 2020.

Bruton Knowles has been brought in, on behalf of fixed charge receivers, to find a new developer for the site, on the intersection of Mayflower Street and Armada Way, as a “mixed use development opportunity”.

Bruton Knowles described it as a “well-recognised office building” which was once used by insurance company Eagle Star. It said that, given its strategic position close to the University of Plymouth campus, as part of the “recent trend” for conversion of office buildings and the construction of new buildings to provide student accommodation for the expanding university sector, previous owners saw an opportunity to create a “landmark” building on the site, to complement the adjacent Beckley Point student flats skyscraper.

In 2016, Mayflower House was given planning consent to be razed and replaced with 490 student flats above 25,000sq ft of office and commercial space.

The previous developers commenced a strip-out of the building but demolition never happened, and an attempt to amend the plans to 332 student bedrooms, 2,381sq m of offices and a 120-bed hotel, was never submitted.

Bruton Knowles said that due to the economic climate and more recently the dramatic impact of Covid on the viability of major developments, particularly in the South West, it is “regrettable and somewhat inevitable that the scheme has stalled, given the numbers of students now in the city”.

It said that as such, Mayflower House now provides a “strategic and exciting” opportunity for a new, reimagined future use and Bruton Knowles is already in discussion with a number of interested parties very early in the marketing process.

Mr Slade said: “We look forward to attracting significant interest and securing a new owner to repurpose this building to provide an exciting scheme for this crucial area of Plymouth which will complement future growth around the railway station and university.”

Prior to its recent marketing, London-based property developer L&UK Property had been advertising the revised student flats and hotel idea on its website, saying it was due to be “completed on time for the 2023 student intake”.

A company called Mayflower House Developments Ltd, whose two directors are also on the board of L&UK Property and share the same address, went into voluntary liquidation in January 2021.

Corporate recovery specialist Begbies Traynor was appointed liquidator, but the 0.133-hectare (0.328-acre) plot is being marketed on behalf of fixed charge receivers, because it was subject to a loan.

This fixed charge was for £2,688,159, and provided to Mayflower House Developments Ltd by London-based property unit trust company White Hall Lending Ltd, secured on the leasehold land and buildings at 178 Armada Way, including Mayflower House.

Documents submitted to Companies House say the property has a book value of £3.5million but is only likely to realise £1million, meaning White Hall Lending is owed £1,688,159.