Former Smith Street post office could become a luxury restaurant
THE empty St Peter Port Post Office could soon be a luxury restaurant after plans were submitted by the owners of seafront eatery The Hook.
Number 16-20 Smith Street has been unoccupied since the spring of 2021, when Guernsey Post moved their town centre offering into the Market building Coop.
In the planning application Mark Woodall of architects Naftel Associates said the new restaurant would add more night-life and life to Smith Street, ‘making it a friendly route to and from Town,’ he wrote in the application.
The restaurant will be able to seat 55 guests in a main area and a further 23 in a separate tapas area and would include an open kitchen to allow diners to watch kitchen staff in action,
‘This will positively impact the restaurant’s atmosphere and will be a unique feature of the proposed restaurant,’ wrote Mr Woodall.
As the property is a protected building the architects said they plan to retain the architectural and historic features and the details of the main facade.
All of the planned changes are to the ground floor of the property, except for ducting for a kitchen extractor, which will go through an unused lift shaft and finish on the property’s flat roof.
The property, plus a building at the rear in Le Marchant Street, was sold for just over £1m. in November last year.
Since it shut in 2020, two other applications on the building have been granted full permission, but no work was undertaken.
In November 2020, before the post office shut, Castinet Investments Ltd applied to split the building into two retail units, and in September of 2021, Sandpiper, which runs the island’s Morrisons and Iceland stores, was successful in an application to refit the premises as a grocery store.
The property has been associated with luxury foods before as, until 2007, it was the home of culinary gift shop Oil & Vinegar.
