Designs to turn Liverpool's most successful music studios into a set of apartments offend the eye, according to the city council's planning committee.
The studios are the largest recording studio outside London and have attracted names such as Pulp, New Order and Coldplay. Councillors said they were concerned about the loss of Parr Street Studios and want plans for its transformation to be reviewed.
The city's most prominent actors, artists and musicians have demanded Parr Street studios be left as a cultural resource for the city as it prepares to be Capital of Culture. But the studio has been losing money and only the goodwill of the owners, Hit and Run, a company owned by Phil Collins and other members of rock band Genesis, have kept it open, according to the site's developers. They want to turn the studio into 47 apartments along with shop, office and leisure space.Film director Alex Cox and head of LIPA, Mark Featherstone-Witty, are among those who have added their voices to the campaign to save the building where three award-winning albums have been recorded.
City centre councillor Steve Munby said he wants Phil Collins to meet the city council's chief executive, Sir David Henshaw and MP Louise Ellman to try and create a survival strategy for the studios. He said there had a fantastic response from people who want the studios to remain open and add to the city's cultural standing. Ex-Brookside star Dean Sullivan, representing North West producers and directors, said the studios must stay as they are.
While director Alex Cox said they were too important to the creative community in the city to be allowed to close. "The Capital of Culture may be a rip off and a joke but the Parr Street studios isn't," he said.
But Cllr Munby said he was also working to save the studio on behalf of his ward constituents. The new development would include private members club 3345, which people living in the city do not want to close. He said: "It's the only time in my life I have come across residents supporting licensed premises."
One city centre neighbour called the bar an oasis of calm in the Ropewalks. Councillors deferred decision on planning permission because they said the design for the new building, which forms part of the development, was unattractive.
The planning committee said the city centre already had too many "tatty" developments with "planks of wood and wire netting balconies". Businesses based in the studios have called the plans to close the studios disastrous for a city, which prides itself on its musical heritage.
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