Plans went on display last week for the next phase of Station Hill in Reading town centre. After a generation of inactivity on the site, recent years have seen things progress apace. We’ve watched 598 apartments go up in two blocks on the site of the old Friar’s Walk shopping centre, with a new pedestrian bridge and route through to the station lined with a slowly emerging cluster of food and drink outlets. A gleaming new office tower, now 80% let, occupies the plot closest to Reading station, with its lobby playing host to the exhibition. Let’s take a look through the latest proposals.

The empty Xafinity House is the last legacy building within the site. “Xafinity” was a finance brand that only existed between 2005, when it emerged following a take over of Hogg Robinson, and 2018 when it rebranded again to XPS. For the past 7 years it’s solely existed as a postal address for this empty office block on Greyfriars Road, which is now finally set for demolition. This opens up building plot “AB”, and together with a further tower on Plot D, the new proposals will see 600 new apartments, in buildings ranging from 15 to 23 storeys above the ground and podium levels. The office building earmarked for Plot C of the long-standing masterplan would form a later final phase.

It’s worth a quick analysis on the evolution of the wider plans and land use at the scheme. Digging up the 2020 outline planning permission that the developer had secured for the site, we can see that a larger office element was envisaged. They had presented three different illustrations of schemes that would conform with their proposed (and subsequently agreed) maximum height parameters, with the office space ranging from 39,000 to 46,000 square meters, in a building of at least 25 storeys above plaza level. Now the office element is tentatively labelled as 32,500 square meters within 22 storeys, and is deferred to an undated future phase.

Excerpts from the approved 2020 outline planning application.

Meanwhile the apartment buildings proposed here are much closer to the approved height limits, indicating keener market demand for residential. Although, I should add that the design put forward steps down in height to break up the built form, and a gap is left between plots AB and D that could have been filled for increased density. The architect at the exhibition explained to me that they wanted to maximise daylight into the flats to offer the best quality of life. That ruled out the full continuous L-shape design, and with it reduced the plan from a theoretical maximum of 750 units to the proposed 600. Within that, 12.5% would be affordable housing. It’s always complicated assessing the finer details but I think that’s slightly in excess of the 10% agreed as part of the outline consent back in 2020.

They’ve done a great job with the public art around the site so far. The illuminated artwork covering the station underpass is frequently positively commented upon, and I really like the yellow flag flutter-effect thing in front of the office tower. I’m not so sure about “The seed”, but the plan is now to move that yellow sculpture further along an enlarged central Station Hill Square, allowing a lawn to be created beside the fountains. This improved space is the highlight of the latest plans, with two new cafes or restaurants to front the square at the base of a new 20-floor residential tower.

As always with Station Hill, the change of levels makes things interesting. Previous owners of the site had proposed using the natural ground level. Thankfully, what ultimately went through is the level access through from the station to Friar Street via the link bridge over Garrard Street. That’s clearly the best solution overall as it entices far more footfall along a useful route between the western side of the town centre and the station. However, the downside is that those levels do need to be reconciled somewhere and that’s what we’re seeing in this new western phase of the development. The plans involve extending the podium right through the scheme creating an elevated public realm to be called Station Hill Gardens, with a staircase down to street level at the western end of Garrard Street. 

The stairway (mostly cropped out of the above) is described as “gentle steps”. Quite what makes them gentle is unclear from the designs, but it appears to me that it will not be a heavily used access point. As designed currently, the elevated podium within this new western end of the development will be used mostly by the residents of the apartment blocks.

Active frontages at this western end of the podium are reserved mostly for resident amenity space with the exception of one unit labelled as community use. The cafe spill-out shown on the right above is speculative as that would be within the deferred office building. Also above, you can see a proposed play area. This northern stretch of the gardens is effectively a dead end, concluding as a balustrade one storey up from the pavement below, by the station drop-off area. I fear this elevated zone may be a windy and bleak location, especially before the office tower is built to shield it. I do wonder whether they’d be better ramping down gradually to street level once beyond the central square.

I asked what was under the podium section here and was told there would be nothing beneath. The outline planning consent allowed for 700 basement parking spaces, partly to offset the spaces lost from the demolished public multi-storey. But interestingly, the new residential phase is described as car-free, and apparently the basement parking at the Friar’s Walk “Ebb & Flow” blocks is under-utilised. That does beg the question, if the podium isn’t covering any parking then why continue it right through the scheme? I suspect the answer is the balancing act they’re trying to achieve between premium, (semi-)private and secure amenity space for residents to bolster the appeal of their apartments, with their wider obligations to deliver a functional, thriving city centre business district. For me, I think they could tip the balance a touch more towards the latter.

The play area shown is a kind of earthy National Trust-esque affair with quite large slides. Whilst it looks classy, maybe the more likely demand from apartment residents would be play features for younger children. Perhaps your standard municipal metal and plastic playground would be more used than the arty wooden teepee design? I guess it’s swings and roundabouts. Or rather it probably should be…

All that said, the lower street level on Greyfriars Road has been thought through. New cycle lanes will be provided, and along with additional residential entrances we have retail space at both corners – the one with Station Hill and the Garrard Street junction. The architect said he hoped to upgrade at least one of those to a two storey aspect. Trees would be planted along both frontages, helping transform the existing grey landscape into something much greener and more welcoming.

Station Hill has been a long-awaited and very welcome addition to Reading’s skyline. Most people don’t care too much about the skyline, with the street-level transformation being by far the more important. And we’re on the path to success there: they’ve brought Siren Bar to Friar Street, new coffee shops Notes and shortly 1650 Coffee Co to Friars Walk. Restaurants Angelos and Kawaii are to arrive in due course, with Flight Club now confirmed for the largest unit by the fountains for a Darts-themed bar with outdoor seating. In recent days, a golf simulator venue has applied to fit out the Garrard Street two-storey unit for another new leisure facility for the town.

Yet, this further phase doesn’t look set to add too much to that roll call. These new plans are big on density but small on destination, especially given it’s still only yards from the busiest station in the region. As such, despite all its positives, from me it’s a B+ for phase 3A as currently proposed.

What do you think of the plans? The developer kindly shared the images with me for this article. I did say I’d encourage some feedback to their consultation email address, SHPhase3@redwoodcomms.co.uk

It would be nice for them to get a flurry of emails, to prove anyone’s actually read this far! You can also see the plans yourself for another week, with the display boards still up in the foyer of One Station Hill. And of course, comments welcome below as usual, no registration required.

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