Approval (with conditions) has been granted to change the use of a "community space", that’s intriguingly remained empty for seven years within the Portswood Sainsbury’s store, into a 24-hour gym.
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The 1000 square metre space, facing the service road leading to the car park, had originally been secured for community use under a Section 106 planning agreement in 2010.
A council planning meeting on July 16 at Southampton Civic Centre heard that while the obligation was for Sainsbury’s to give the council first opportunity to use the space for community use, there had been no take up.
The gym application was also to extend car park hours to 5am – 11pm Monday to Saturday, and 8am to 10pm on Sundays. Currently it’s open half an hour either side of trading hours (7am – 11pm Mon-Fri; 7am-10pm Sat and 11am-5pm Sun).
A council officer reported that the nature of the 24-hour gym is that its use “can be controlled inside the building”, so music would not be audible, and there could be controls on light spill. Numbers attending the gym during night-time hours were also predicted to be low.
Speaking against the application, Sue Swallow from the Outer Avenue Residents’ Association said that she didn’t feel “that much effort has been put in to finding a community use for this space”.
“Once the community space is lost, it’s gone. And who’s been promoting it? There doesn’t seem to have been anybody interested in finding a use for this community space.... Even if the whole space wasn’t used it could be a sub divided space and part of it could be used for community use, which is what it was originally intended for,” she said.
Another speaker against said that 24/7 opening hours “would be excessive” and that apart from the district centre where most venues shut at midnight, it is surrounded by a residential area so “local residents are going to be severely affected by noise and disturbance from gym goers coming and going all through the night... and parking in nearby roads when the car park is closed.” And she added that during the rush hour she thought it would add to traffic problems close to a main east/west route.
Speaking in favour of the application, agent Gary Morris explained that originally the space had been intended for a library, but “the council pulled out” during the course of the application, so “at that point Sainsbury’s had nothing to put in there, so that’s why it was just it was set aside for community use for the council to use if they find a use.”
“The store opened seven years ago and since that time... the council’s not found a use for it for either itself or one of its partners.”
He said separately Sainsbury’s have marketed the site through an agent and there had been no interest in it for community use, but there had been for other uses. But because of the restrictions the company hadn’t been able to enter into any arrangements.
He added that the section 106 required a “reasonable period of time for the council or one of its partners to occupy it”, and it was thought seven years is “a pretty good period of time”.
Portswood doesn’t currently have anything comparable to Pure Gym’s offer while many other areas do, and customers would be likely to combine trips to the gym and district centre, which is also very accessible by means other than car, he suggested.
The application was approved unanimously by the panel.
Confusingly, a much smaller meeting room behind the cafe has been used by some community groups, and a condition of approval for the gym was that Sainsbury’s formalise it for community use, including creating a booking system, and advertising it to the local community.