The huge new plans to transform two forgotten Cardiff Bay buildings

The latest planning application for the site includes proposals to partially demolish it and build a new eight-storey building

Two forgotten buildings in Cardiff Bay are set to be transformed into a new sixth form college having lain empty for 20 years. New plans to convert Merchant Place and the adjoining Cory’s Buildings into the new home of Cardiff Sixth Form College have been revealed, with part of the historic site set to be demolished if approved.

The sixth form college, which is currently based in Trinity Court on Newport Road, revealed plans to take over the 19th-century buildings last year and later published CGI artist’s impressions of the proposed multi-million pound campus. The plans were announced months after the buildings on the corner of Bute Place and Bute Street were bought by Cardiff council in a bid to protect the city’s architectural heritage.

New plans have now been submitted to Cardiff council after the independent college agreed terms to acquire the site, as well as another nearby plot of land, to provide a permanent new home for its teaching space and boarding accommodation.

The plans show that the existing Grade II listed buildings, which have been vacant since the early 2000s, would be restored with extensive internal and external alterations made to the site. Despite their listed status, however, part of the buildings will be demolished if the plans are approved, with a huge new eight storey-building built on the site.

As part of the proposals, a two-storey section to the rear of Merchant Place would be knocked down, with developers taking care to retain as much of the building’s existing fabric as possible. This small section, which faces an internal courtyard and was previously approved for demolition in 2008, would be replaced by the new eight-storey building.

This new building will house a library, canteen and a rooftop auditorium under the plans, which will feature exhibition spaces as well as facilities where students can practice public speaking and debating, while also offering views across the city. Classrooms will be spread over four floors, with a large science department split over two levels, while the new building is also set to accommodate a sports hall and assembly halls.

Other sports facilities and amenity spaces are also included in the plans. Around 500 pupils will use the school, with around 80 per cent of these boarding at another new site on nearby Pierhead Street, owned by Parmer Waterside, which will be subject to a separate planning application.

The college moved to its current site at Trinity Court in 2012 but is looking to move again due to the complex not being purpose built for a school, with undersized teaching spaces and a lack of larger spaces for performing arts, sports and assemblies proving challenging. The planning application submitted to the council by DWD Property and Planning adds: “CSFC would like to increase its offering to students, both in capacity and the quality of teaching spaces and facilities. The most efficient way to ensure that the facilities are tailored to meet the needs of the students is to design a new state of the art complex across the two sites identified.”

Around 365 pupils currently attend the college, with this set to increase by more than a third after the move to the new Cardiff Bay campus. The college also currently employs 116 members of staff, with 44 additional jobs set to be created by moving to the new site to compensate for the increased number of pupils.

The school is described in the application as “one of the top A Level schools in the world,” having achieved the best A-level results for independent schools in the UK this year with a 95% pass rate at the top A* or A grades. It has students from all over the world, with the majority boarding in college accommodation in Cardiff. During the 2022-23 academic year, the co-educational school is charging fees between £20,600 and £53,600.

The five-storey grade two listed buildings that could now house the college were designed by Bruton and Williams, with Merchant Place built in 1881 and Cory’s Buildings constructed eight years later for Cory Brothers & Co – whose business interests included chandlery, brokerage, colliery and wagon ownership and coal exporting. They were bought by Cardiff council in January 2021 and marketed the following month, with Cabinet Member for Investment and Development, Councillor Russell Goodway, saying at the time that the buildings had been “lying empty for far too long now.”

The planning application for the Merchant Place and Cory’s Buildings site has been submitted to the council’s planning department for approval. A separate application relating to the site of the proposed new college boarding accommodation on Pierhead Street will be “submitted in due course”.