£6 million scheme brings new accommodation to York

It will redevelop a former pub and working men’s club


S Harrison, a York-based developer, has finalised a contract to turn the derelict former Lawrence Street Working Men’s Club, as well as the neighbouring Tam O’Shanter Pub, into student accommodation. The buildings have stood since the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries respectively.

An artists impression of the development

In York it sometimes seems that you can barely move for pubs and premium student accommodation, and now it appears that the latter will be even more prevalent at the expense of the former.

The accommodation is said to come replete with a gym and a cinema, and is intended to be ready for the start of the 2017/18 academic year.

Reports on the cost of the development differ: Business Quarter reports the contract as £6 million, whilst York Press has the number as £10 million.

New accommodation appears to be something on the mind of property developers and the University of York alike: back in last September, it was reported that plans had been set in motion for two new colleges to be built on the Hes East campus, on the basis of increasing numbers of upper year and postgraduate students looking to live on campus.