Plymouth’s towering Civic Centre building could be reinvented as a major conference centre with flats above designed to be rented by the day, as part of a bold plan to reinvigorate the city centre.

Urban Splash, the Manchester-based development firm which bought the city centre tower for £1 in 2016, will ask for a variation to its planning consent, dropping the idea of using the lower floors for shops, cafes, restaurants, bars, and hot food takeaways in favour of creating an “international conference centre”.

The plan, being worked on in partnership with the University of Plymouth, would see creation of a conference space that could hold up to 700 people.

The declining fortunes of high street retail and leisure are being seen as a key reason for the change, with new ways of enticing people into the city centre being explored.

How Plymouth's redeveloped Civic Centre could look at night

Urban Splash will also look to create flexible office space on the lower floors on the Royal Parade side of the block.

But they would retain the plan to contain 144 flats on the upper 12-storeys, though these will only be for rent, not sale, on very flexible terms which could see them hired by the day, in some cases.

Again, the revised plan, if approved, would be a radical attempt to bring people into the city centre, to live or stay, even for a short period.

Plymouth currently has only 2,000 city centre residents, whereas Manchester, which had the same number 25 years ago, now has 60,000.

Urban Splash wants to start construction work on the Civic Centre as early as 2021, and could have the entire building transformed in two years.

Along with Plymouth City Council, Urban Splash has bid for £17million from the Government’s Future High Streets Fund.

This cash would be split between the redevelopment of the Civic Centre, into what will be renamed The Civic, and a major upgrade of Plymouth Guildhall, just opposite the skyscraper, into another conference and events centre, also usable as a weddings and graduations location, and even doubling as a music venue too.

The partners will hear if their bid to the fund is successful in April 2021, and, if it is, work would begin pronto.

Even if the bid fails, Urban Splash, which has successfully regenerated Plymouth’s historic Royal William Yard, says it wants to continue with redevelopment of the Civic Centre, estimated previously as a £40million project, and would explore other funding options.

James Couth. Manchester-based development manager at Urban Splash, said: “We want to revitalise that area of the city centre, to act as a catalyst for renewed confidence.

“The intention is to start building next year. We would do it all at once, we wouldn’t phase it. The current estimate is about two years.”

He said twin plans for the Civic Centre and Guildhall would create a venue for large conferences, community use and entertainment, also generating “night time activity” in the area.

The Civic would contain an approximately 40,000sq ft conference facility spread over the basement, ground- and first-floor, next to 20,000sq ft of work space.

The Civic and Guildhall could work together as an attraction and Mr Couth said: “There is demand for a conference centre in Plymouth. The advice we have had is that once the conference centre is up and running it would bring about 50,000 people into the city centre every year. That’s positive activity.”

He added: “The high street is heading this way anyway. People are moving away from physical space to buy items, more people are shopping online. Where high streets are dominated by retail they have been hit the hardest.

“The future of the high street will be more of a mix, more about experiences, with some retail, but also with leisure, health and well-being, community uses, all those things together. And residential too.

“There is not a lot of residential development within Plymouth city centre, it’s all focussed to take advantage of coastal views.

“In Manchester, if you compare it to 25 years ago, we had a similar sized city centre to Plymouth’s, about 2,000 people. Now Manchester city centre has 60,000 people.

“That has had a positive impact on the city centre, with more business during the day and activity at night, and a nicer environment.

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“By building residential in the city centre it will bring people into the city centre to live, and encourage other developers and investors to deliver more.

“The flats (in the Civic) will be flexible in terms of people renting them. The idea is to have people renting a flat for anything from one day to five years, or anything in between.

“So if people could not find a hotel space they could stay in an apartment for however long they are there. It’s build to rent, the apartments would not be on the open market for sale.”

Mr Couth said Urban Splash had been “exploring other avenues of funding” should the Future High Street Fund tilt fail. But the company is quietly confident the bid will succeed.

“We will carry that process on,” Mr Couth said. “But we are in a good position with deliverablity. And the partnership between the council, private developer and the university, the Government likes that.”