A popular sports bar and restaurant in Par-la-Ville Road will need to make way for a proposed seven-storey, 96ft-tall office and apartment block should it be given the go-ahead by planners.

Construction work in Hamilton?s main business neighbourhood has only just ceased following the completion of the multi-storey First Bermuda Commercial Bank building a a short distance away from where the new office and apartment complex would be sited.

The M.R. Onions restaurant and sports bar, currently on the first floor of Atlantic House, will be displaced by the new building. It is not known if the bar will find a new location.

Bermuda Realty Company runs offices in the ground floor of the two-storey Atlantic House and is seeking permission to knock down the entire building and replace it with a seven-storey building featuring a mixture of offices and 33 apartments.

The estate agent company will occupy the office space in the lower floors with private residences, consisting of 11 studio apartments, 21 one-bedroom and one two-bedroom apartments from floor two to the top.

In the two basement levels there will be 34 car parking spaces, with 20 of those for use by the private residents.

There will be entrances on both Par-la-Ville Road and from Park Road. At present the space behind Atlantic House is used as a car park but this will vanish under the rectangular building.

Two pieces of public art will feature in the complex, one being placed at street level next to the Park Road entrance, while the other is proposed to be put on the sixth floor of the building?s Par-la-Ville Road facade and being ?a sculpture in a bridge configuration.?

Planning chiefs are being asked to use their discretionary powers to allow the building to be one storey higher than the six-storeys permitted in the zoned area.

Such a request is allowed on the grounds that the new block contains a sizeable residential component.

The private apartments will start in the second floor. There will be a communal roof garden space.

According to the application lodged at the Department of Planning this week the building will fit in with the commercial corridor of Par-la-Ville Road and is outside the ?view corridor? of the Cathedral.

?The Par-la-Ville Road corridor is unlike any other place in the city. It is a concentrated area of commercial structures, built out to side yard lot lines and at various setbacks from the street,? notes Lorraine Huinik, in a supporting letter from Cooper & Gardner Architects.

?The proposed building will result in a positive contribution to the Par-la-Ville Road commercial corridor and will vastly improve Park Road elevation and add to the city in general.?

She further states that the building will be of a contemporary style with significant amounts of glazing making the structure ?transparent and light in appearance.?

If given the go-ahead the building will be bordered by an empty lot on one side and a car parking area on the other.

The total floor space of the proposed building is 94,504 square feet.

Vehicles accessing the building will do so from a route off Trott Road. The planning documents state: ?The residential component will increase traffic to the site, but only marginally, as parking is not provided for every residential unit.

?Given the location of the units it is reasonable to state that this will help to reduce the number of work trips generated from the site.?

Phil and Lori Talbot, the owners of M.R. Onions, were off the Island and were not contactable as the went to press.

A call to planning application client Brian Madeiros, of Atlantic House, was not immediately returned late yesterday.