Leonard Charles House, Swansea

Client: Coastal Housing Group
Status: Completed

Leonard Charles building on Oxford Street Swansea, was a former department store which Morganstone redeveloped into residential and commercial units in partnership with Coastal Housing Group. The scheme consisted of thirty-two apartments, a ground floor commercial unit, and an underground car-park.

The original building was a four storey steel and concrete frame located on a busy street close to the city centre. The building was stripped back to the existing frame before being reclad in rainscreen and curtain walling, and an additional fifth storey added to the top. The ground floor was reconfigured to provide a lobby with lift and stair access to the upper residential floors and access to the bin stores. The remaining area of the ground floor is a commercial unit that was fitted out to shell and core stage only. The basement of the building was reconverted back into an underground car park for the scheme and a central communal plant room was installed with gas fired boilers to provide space heating and low temperature hot water and water booster pumps.

The development is now named Leonard Charles House, and was a finalist in the New Development Award at the CIH Cymru Housing Awards 2017.

Coastal Housing Group is a not-for-profit industrial and provident society, existing only for the benefit of the community, operating in Swansea, Neath Port Talbot, and Carmarthenshire.

Coastal formed in 2008 after a merger between Swansea Housing Association (formed 1978) and Dewi Sant Housing Association (formed 1991) with the objective of regenerating older stock and building new houses to improve the local community and provide good quality affordable homes.  For further information please visit www.coastalhousing.co.uk