Barberry Developments has secured a deal to bring forward a prime Coventry development site after four years of trying.
The company has forward sold the former Royal Mail sorting office at Bishop Gate to Coventry University for an 850-bed student housing scheme.
Barberry will be retained to develop the £65m scheme.
Barberry sold the site after failing to secure funding for retail, office and private rented residential-led schemes.
The site is already the subject of a 2011 consent envisaging a 400,000 sq ft retail-led scheme. It failed to materialise given the lack of appetite to commit to the 125,000 sq ft supermarket which anchored it.
Work will start next month on demolishing the former sorting office. Development of the student flats will start once a revised planning consent is secured. The first rooms are likely to be available for the beginning of the 2018/19 academic year.
Barberry Developments director Henry Bellfield said: “We acquired the former sorting office in 2011 in what was undoubtedly a difficult development market and since then we have looked at a number of options, so we are delighted to have persevered with the site and struck this deal with Coventry University.”
