Planners back a café, sauna and cold plunge for a Portland Road print shop

A former print shop at 186–188 Portland Road, Hove, could reopen as a café and health and wellness centre with an electric sauna and cold plunge baths. Council planning officers have advised the Planning Committee to grant permission when it meets at 1pm on Wednesday 28 October. Brighton and Hove News¹ first reported the plans.

Richard Harmer applied for the work. The ground floor, on the corner of Portland Road and Titian Road, would hold a street-facing café, studio spaces, a treatment room, showers and toilets. Outside the Titian Road entrance there would be a decked seating area. The rear yard would get a timber-clad sauna, a changing room and two cold plunge baths, under a pergola that replaces the old roof.

The first plans had a wood-fired sauna with a flue. That changed to an electric one, and a condition would rule out heating it with wood, gas or any other fuel.

The council received 21 comments in support and seven objections. Supporters pointed to the design and the benefits of a new social space. Objectors raised poor design, noise, traffic and overlooking. One neighbour said: “I do not want to see or be seen by customers who are using or about to use the sauna.”

Officers say conditions can deal with that. Customers could use the sauna and cold plunges only between 8am and 9pm, and a noise management plan would have to be approved before they open. The chiller for the baths could not run between 11pm and 7am unless it was on its lowest-noise night setting.

The meeting at Hove Town Hall is scheduled to be webcast.