THE owners of a recently-built multi-storey car park in Bolton, providing almost 1,000 spaces, want to convert some of it to a self storage business due to ‘very low’ use and the implications of the Covid pandemic for office working.

Orbit Investments opened the eight-floor car park, with capacity for 972 vehicles, in 2018 at Parklands Office Park, Middlebrook, close to the Spirit of Sport roundabout.

At the time the Orbit said that they were building the multi-storey building ‘for the benefit of business users at Parklands together with potential visitors to Middlebrook’.

Parklands houses large office buildings for firms such as Keogh’s, EON, RBS, AXA and AO.com.

In a planning document submitted to Bolton Council in support of converting the building, TPO Transport, on behalf of Orbit said: “Since completion of the multi-storey car park tenants have decided not to relocate their off-site parking to it, and they are still leasing spaces off-site, primarily at the Bolton Wanderers football ground.

“The level of use at the car park has therefore been very low.

“The prospects of development at the football ground have reduced, meaning that the supply of off site parking is likely to remain for a number of years.

“There is of course Covid-19 and the implications this will have for office use and consequently parking demand.

“While Orbit consider the demise in office use is being significantly overstated at present, they do anticipate there will be a reduction in parking demand at their office sites albeit they still anticipate parking demands well in excess of local authority parking standards will be the norm.”

The document went on to outline Orbit’s plans for part of the structure.

It stated: ” Orbit are now looking to use the space in other ways to provide a self storage facility to meet the demands of this growing market sector.

“The ground, first and second floors would be used for the self storage units with the upper decks of the car park remaining as car parking.

“In all 263 spaces would be used for the self storage leaving 709 for parking.”

It added that even with the reduction in parking there would still be 1,962 parking spaces on the Parklands site.

The proposed self storage would be unlike conventional ones in that access to the units would be by vehicle, with customers parking outside their storage unit rather than parking in an external car park and carrying or trolleying items into the building.

The planning application is currently out for consultation and will be decided on by the council at a later date.