The cosmopolitan city will soon be an “innovation hub” with 369 new homes, offices, studio spaces and workshop spaces also planned.
Famous for sticks of rock and its listed pier, the city of Brighton & Hove is London-on-Sea.
Lively, young and cosmopolitan, it continues to attract a fashionable crowd of émigrés from the capital and pull in celebrity residents such as DJ and musician Fatboy Slim, comic actor Steve Coogan and rocker Noel Gallagher.
Its affinity with London goes back to Georgian times and flourished in the 20th century.
Brighton was the first location outside the capital to get an Art Deco Astoria cinema.
Built in 1933, it closed in 1977 and survived for 20 years as a bingo hall before falling vacant and becoming an “at risk” heritage building.
Despite its listed status, however, the former cinema has controversially been bulldozed to make way for a block of 70 flats with token architectural references to the Thirties.
Called ROX Brighton, the scheme is in the town centre Valley Gardens conservation area, a 10-minute walk from the train station with a 55-minute commute to Victoria.
Prices start at £199,000 for a studio apartment.