Planning has been approved to convert the ground and first floors of the former multi-storey Euro Car Park in Bangor, into lock-up storage units.
According to the planning application, the demand for car parking in Bangor city centre has decreased dramatically in recent years and the former operator, Euro Car Parks, gradually reduced the amount of spaces available within the facility.
Despite reducing the space available to the public, the site was regularly vandalised, and management of the facility became very costly for the operator. The losses incurred together with the ever-dwindling demand, made the facility severely loss making for the operator and the lease was surrendered in January 2021.
The site has operated as a car park since 1997 and despite several car park operators being approached, no-one can be found to take on the facility.
The long-term intention for the facility is for it to once again operate as a functioning multi-story car park. However as there is no immediate prospect of this happening anytime soon, the owners would like to use the ground and first floor to create lock up storage facilities for individual rental.
The lock-up units will be created by building partition walls from the existing hardstanding to the existing ceiling, with roller shutter access to the front. The spaces will be various sizes wide and the depth of one car park space. The internal one-way access road through the car park will be retained for access to the units and to the rest of the car park.
The intention is to convert the ground and first floors only and leave the rest of the floors available for parking as soon as an operator can be found. Externally there will be no change to the building and access will remain as it is currently.
At any point in time when the whole car park becomes viable again then the internal partitions will be removed and the facility will revert to being a multi-story car park facility, if relevant permissions are secured.
