Glancy Nicholls presents proposal for another student tower in Birmingham

Located on the corner of Thorp Street at 34-36 Horse Fair, near Holloway Circus and Smallbrook Queensway, proposals by Birmingham-based firm Torsion Development envisage a 13-storey redbrick tower offering 182 studio bedrooms alongside facilities and bicycle storage.

Glancy Nicholls’ scheme is one of several student accommodation blocks either in planning or construction in the city, including a proposed 1,205-bed scheme by Associated Architects for University College Birmingham and a proposed 50-storey tower by Stride Treglown.

The practice’s latest proposal is for land behind the former White Lion public house, filling an existing gap in Thorp Street. The site is close to Hurst Street and the city’s Gay Village and Chinatown.

Planning documents say that the 13-storey mass of the proposed 6,048 m² The scheme matches accepted plans for an apartment hotel on the site of St James House by Cartwright Pickard, which were approved in 2021 by Birmingham City Council.

The Horse Fair site includes the former White Lion public house, designed by local architects James and Lister Lea for Davenports Brewery, dating from 1986. It will be restored as part of Glancy Nicholls’ scheme, with recent extensions removed and a refurbished frontage.

The practice has a number of other high-rise projects in progress, including the 47-storey private residential tower, Essington. Approval was granted in 2020 for a 37-storey Glancy Nicholls tower at 211 Broad Street, but work on the scheme has not started and it remains unclear whether planning consent has expired.

In February, Birmingham City Council controversially approved plans to demolish the nearby Ringway Centre, designed by Rotunda architect Jim Roberts, to make way for a mixed-use residential scheme by Corstorphine & Wright. The participants said this week that a judicial review of the scheme would not take place.