Apartments vision for 1950s 'flatted factory'

PLANS TO GIVE HISTORIC CITY CENTRE BUILDING A NEW LEASE OF LIFE

- ALEXANDER BROCK Local Democracy Reporter

Lee Bank Business Centre and, right, how it could look

A UNIQUE 'flatted factory' built in the 1950s is to be converted into new apartments.

Developers have applied to add five storeys to Lee Bank Business Centre, in Holloway Head, in Birmingham city centre.

The building will rise to 12 storeys and create 215 apartments but the original details of the building's exterior would be lost.

Proposals were also put forward for nine townhouses at the back of the site.

The building was originally designed in the 1950s as a so-called 'flatted factory' for industrial use and it later became a home for workshops, offices and training facilities.

It is one of the buildings that campaign group Brutiful Birmingham has lobbied the council to save from demolition in the past as a unique slice of postwar history. They called for it to be repurposed.

It had a sister factory at Waterlinks House, in Dartmouth Street, which was later repurposed into an international business school.