The third version of Bristol’s city centre will sweep away the post-war dream
(Image: PAUL GILLIS / Reach PLC)
Radical changes to create what will be the third new look for Bristol city centre have begun during 2025 – and are set to really get going during 2026 and for the rest of the decade. Work has already begun at one of the key locations to create a city centre that, within five or ten years, will be characterised by tall buildings, and a huge increase in population to bring the heart of Bristol back to its history as a densely-populated residential centre.
The year 2025 saw more plans submitted and approved, and work to clear away the post-war redevelopment of the city centre start. An area from the Floating Harbour to the Bearpit – devastated by the Luftwaffe and rebuilt by Bristol’s post-war planners will now be rebuilt again in the years to come.
It will effectively be the third new look for Bristol city centre in its 1,000 year history. The city centre grew organically over the course of centuries around the bridge, the castle and the two rivers, the Avon and the Frome, that met at a spot just south of the bridge which gives Bristol its name.
The old city centre of Bristol – looking from Corn Street to the crossroads with the High Street on the right, Wine Street straight ahead and Broad Street to the left. The old ‘Dutch House’, a centuries-old timber building, is on the right. Pictured in the 1930s(Image: Know Your Place Bristol)
The warren of narrow terraced medieval streets, densely packed with homes, shops, factories and churches, evolved over time in between the rivers, but came to a fiery and tragic end with the Bristol Blitz in 1941.
The post-war rebuild of Bristol city centre turned that bombed-out warren of streets into the present layout we see now, inside a ring road stretching from the Bearpit’s offices and hotels, through Broadmead’s department stores, shops, multi-storey car parks and shopping centres to Castle Park’s green spaces and 1960s eyesores.
READ MORE: The story of Bristol’s long lost city centre in 18 pictures
That age of post-war rebuild is now over. Its last hurrah was Cabot Circus in the first decade of the 2000s. Now, the city is about to embark on the process of knocking a lot of that down and starting all over again. The pace of change could be rapid – but the speed will depend on the same kind of rapid global economic forces and social changes that have turned what the planners envisaged in the 50s, 60s and 70s into something that has quickly become out of date.
So quickly, in fact, it’s happening in less than a generation. Broadmead and Bristol city centre generally was the future once, and these plans listed below look set to be its future again.
The post-war redevelopment of Bristol’s city centre was based on two principles. That people would continue to do what they had done for centuries and go to Bristol city centre to shop, work and socialise, and that they would do that in the last third of the 20th century and beyond, by car. Both of those principles have been severely dented by the 21st century’s rapid changes.
Now a new Broadmead and a new city centre is required – otherwise the gradual decline that so many in the comments sections of Bristol Live articles about Bristol city centre don’t hesitate to complain about, will continue.
So what is the vision for the new city centre of the middle part of the 21st century? How will the third iteration of Bristol city centre be created, and where?
A year ago, the city centre and Bristol’s heart stood on the starting line of more radical change, and now, during 2025, the starting pistol has been fired.
The upheaval required to reach the new Bristol city centre will be massive. There will be endless walls of coloured chipboard, protecting demolition sites as tower blocks emerge behind them for years. Broadmead and the city centre could feel like one big building site for a decade or more.
What will emerge into the 2030s will be a very different kind of city centre – and one that, paradoxically, will be closer to what Bristol was like in the 1930s than the 1990s, albeit one full of build-to-rent tower blocks and student accommodation rather than tenements.
The days when people had to go to Bristol city centre to go shopping ended with Amazon and the explosion of online shopping. As numbers declined so has the need for parking spaces, and one feature of all the plans that have been proposed for the city centre is that the multi-storey car park will, largely, be a thing of the past.
There will be thousands more people living in the area between the Bearpit and Bristol Bridge than there are now – and, like the last time there Bristol city centre was that densely populated, 100 years ago, few, if any, will own their own cars. Most, maybe almost all, will live in rented flats, or be students in student accommodation, or live in a new form of housing called ‘co-living’ which will effectively be the kind of shared flats that students are now used to, but for single people who have their own rooms but shared social spaces in tower blocks.
The three ‘eyesore’ bank buildings at St Mary Le Port, on Bristol High Street, now fenced off and awaiting demolition, pictured on March 6, 2025(Image: Paul Gillis/Bristol Post)
And on the ground, the roads will be much more pedestrian and cycle-friendly and even less accommodating to the private motorist in their own car. Bristol city centre is already effectively a cul-de-sac for the private motorist, with bus gates and no-through roads – it’s somewhere that is virtually impossible to drive through anymore. And with almost all of the multi-storey car parks gone, in five to ten years time, if you do still drive there, it’ll be a place you park on the outskirts of – at Cabot Circus or Millennium Square – rather than in.
As with many regeneration schemes, once it is clear change is coming, the local planners struggle to keep up with the pace of that change, and can only try to shape what it looks like when it does come. And so in summer 2023 Bristol City Council launched a major consultation on the council’s own plans for the entire city centre including Broadmead and Castle Park, with some radical ideas to create a more pedestrian and cycle-friendly environment, closing or changing up to 12 streets.
So let’s go on a tour of all the key sites in Bristol City Centre that could well be transformed before the end of this decade:
Haymarket/Bearpit
(Image: PAUL GILLIS / Reach PLC)
We’ll start with the place you can already see change is happening – the Bearpit. This year saw the end of the 20-storey Premier Inn hotel, as it was demolished from the top down, concrete block by concrete block.
That building used to be the tallest in Bristol – apart from St Mary Redcliffe’s spire – and it is set to be replaced by something even bigger.
READ MORE: Bristol Premier Inn hotel is torn down as demolition works continue
It’s ironic, some may say fitting, that the old Premier Inn at the Bearpit has been the first major landmark to go, as it was once at the heart of the change that created the post-war Bristol city centre.
That now closed-down hotel was a converted office block, and started life as the headquarters for Avon County Council, built in 1972, so is a key place in the story of the post-war, late 20th century Bristol city centre.
Views of the area next to the Bearpit roundabout, showing plans to demolish the Premier Inn and build two new towerblocks (Image: Olympian Homes)
Two tower blocks will be built in its place. One of the buildings will be 18-storeys and house 136 people in a ‘co-living’ set-up, while the other would be a 28-storey building housing 445 students.
Horsefair
Across the road from this building site is Primark – that’s not going anywhere soon, don’t worry – and the Horsefair. Department stores were very much part of the post-war 1960s vision for Broadmead, but everyone has a department store on their phone now.
The former department store on the Horsefair and St James Barton closed down permanently on Saturday, May 15 2021, with the building going up for sale just days after.
It was one of 49 branches across the UK to close after the long-running retailer chain fell into administration. Debenhams had occupied the four-floor unit for nearly 50 years, since 1972, after taking over from Bristolian store Jones, which opened its doors to customers in May 1957.
Debenhams didn’t survive the internet shopping revolution and the huge building it was in won’t either. Bristol Live was the first to reveal plans to completely demolish the 1950s department store, back in June 2023. What will replace it will radically change that side of Broadmead forever.
Early in 2024, councillors gave the green light for the huge Debenhams building to be demolished, and a major development with two big tower blocks – one 28-storeys high – to be built. There will be 502 flats, 100 of which will be classed as ‘affordable’, including 75 for ‘social rent’.
An artists impression of what will replace Debenhams – as seen from Merchant Street in Broadmead(Image: AWW Architects)
It will create a new ‘northern gateway’ connecting the Bearpit roundabout to the rest of the city centre for the first time since the war, when a medieval lane called Barr’s Street – swept away and covered over by the Debenhams building for 60 years, will be recreated and reopened.
In the meantime, the ground floor of the vast empty department store is enjoying one last hurrah, as an “urban sports centre” called Shredenhams. That skater joy continues. Developers had said they wanted to begin demolition work in 2025, but that’s been put back now to 2026.
Rupert Street
Head down from the Bearpit towards The Centre, and the road splits at the Bay Horse pub. In the little island in between Rupert Street and Lewins Mead, there’s already some student flats, Bridewell police station and, in the middle of it all, the Rupert Street multi-storey car park.
This is another site where developers were given planning permission to demolish and rebuild in 2024. A firm called Greystar was given the go-ahead to knock down the multi-storey car park and replace it with a series of tower blocks up to 21-storeys high, that will house almost 600 people.
A CGI of how the scheme planned for the Rupert Street car park site in Broadmead would look(Image: Alec French Architects)
As well as the Purpose-Built Student Accommodation (PBSA) for 328 students, the 249 ‘co-living’ rooms would see people who aren’t students live in accommodation that is similar to those PBSAs, with en suite rooms and shared communal facilities. The plans also include a car park with 400 spaces.
Councillors gave permission for this back in March 2024, but it was only just given permission by council officers after thrashing out a series of conditions, at the end of November 2024. We had been expecting the demolition of the car park to begin in 2025, but it hasn’t happened – again, the wider global economic forces are playing a part. It could begin in 2026.
The Galleries
‘Block visuals’ showing the extent of the redevelopment of the site of the Galleries shopping centre in Bristol city centre. Another view with more detailed buildings, looking across Castle Park from St Philips Bridge(Image: NPA Visuals/Deeley Freed/Bristol City Council)
Let’s head back into ‘town’ and to The Galleries, where the biggest single change to the city centre is about to take place. When Bristol Live first broke the news on July 1, 2022, that there were plans to demolish The Galleries shopping centre and its associated multi-storey car park, it was perhaps the first time many in Bristol realised the scale of what is about to happen in the city centre.
The Galleries was Bristol’s first large shopping centre – if you’re a certain generation, that remembers a city before The Mall at Cribbs and Cabot Circus, you won’t forget being awed by the escalators and the mezzanine levels and the food court and the pristine futuristic feel of the place. Now, with shops and businesses there waiting to be told when they have to leave, it’s something of a tired and old site almost waiting to be put out of its misery.
Planning permission to knock the place down and rebuild it into an entirely new huge part of Bristol city centre was approved by councillors back in January 2025. It’s a huge project, to level an area that measures almost five acres, includes a branch of the River Frome, drops multiple levels from the edge of Castle Park to the bottom of Fairfax Street, and includes a shopping centre with listed buildings embedded within it.
Ultimately, the plan is for the Galleries, and its multi-storey car park to be cleared and replaced by a densely-packed development of high-rises between seven and 28 storeys high, containing offices, student accommodation and build-to-rent flats. On ground level the huge site will be lined with shops, bars, restaurants and venues stretching from Castle Park to Broadmead.
Mary Le Port
For a thousand years, the centre of Bristol was easy to find – it was the crossroads where Corn Street, the High Street, Wine Street and Broad Street meet, and there was a large monument called ‘the High Cross’ there just to leave no room for doubt.
Since the blitz levelled the historic old city, that focal point has shifted and now, if you ask anyone in Bristol where exactly the city centre is, some will say the area in front of the Hippodrome, others might say the middle of Broadmead, and some might even say the spot where Cabot Circus and Broadmead meet.
View from St Peter’s Church looking up Mary le Port Street at Building C(Image: MEPC/ Feilden Clegg Bradley Studios)
Back at the High Cross, or where it was before it was moved to a country estate in Wiltshire, things are changing again. Or at least, they should be.
The northern side of the High Street from Bristol Bridge to the old, historic city centre at the junction with Wine Street and Corn Street was once filled with tightly-packed medieval and Georgian buildings, homes and shops until the area was almost completely destroyed by the Luftwaffe during the Bristol Blitz.
While the rest of the historic core of Bristol city centre was turned into Castle Park, the High Street end saw three brutalist office blocks built in 1962, which have previously voted the worst eyesore buildings in Bristol. The development project will eventually see the three former bank buildings at the corner of Wine Street and High Street replaced with one nine-storey and two eight-storey office blocks, with independent retailers, cafés, restaurants, and bars at ground level.
The developer is also promising to expand the park, restore the ruined St Mary le Port church tower, and reinstate three historic city centre streets that were lost during the Bristol Blitz. Councillors granted permission for the scheme back in December 2021, but it’s been a project caught up in investor/developer limbo ever since.
(Image: Paul Gillis/Bristol Post)
Four years on, and 2025 has seen something starting. The area was fenced off, and the developers eventually got permission for their plan for the way they are going to demolish it. Will 2026 be the year those eyesore buildings are pulled down? Possibly.
Waverley House
(Image: Alec French)
A short walk across St Nicks Market from the High Street and down to Baldwin Street, where another multi-storey car park is going to be replaced.
Developers have submitted a planning application to demolish the now-closed NCP car park on Queen Charlotte Street – the road that runs from Baldwin Street down to King Street and Queen Square, and with it also demolish the 14-storey block of student flats that sit on the southern end of it. There’s no prizes for guessing what will be built in its place – a new PBSA, with rooms for 507 students, increasing the number of students living there from 217.
The plans were first submitted in August 2024, but have stalled at City Hall, awaiting a decision from the planners.
Nelson Street
Artist’s impression of a proposed PBSA development for 300 students on the site of Nelson Street multi-storey car park in Bristol City Centre(Image: Downing)
Our tour takes us back towards where we started, into the back streets behind where the vast Fry’s chocolate factory once stood on Union Street. Bristol Live revealed in 2023 that the Nelson Street multi-storey car park had been sold – and its buyer has acted fast. In the first half of 2024, the new owners unveiled plans to demolish this city centre multi-storey car park, and build a PBSA – purpose-built student accommodation – in its place.
In October 2025 those plans were revealed in full – with a stepped series of tower blocks that would house up to 300 students, right in the heart of the city.
