Plans for Coventry city centre £300m revamp

Plans for a £300m revamp of Coventry city centre, including a cinema complex, hotel and flats, have been unveiled.



The city council's proposal for the south of the city also includes a new store and car park.

The council said the plan was based on comments received from "thousands of local people" who had taken part in a consultation.

It said detailed plans would be submitted in March.

Deputy council leader George Duggins said a decision over the redevelopment was due some time in the early-autumn.

Linda Bigham, cabinet member for city development, said the plans was "firmly rooted in the 10 priorities set by local people".

"I believe that this is the beginning of one of the most exciting transformations our city has seen for 50 years," she added.

Mrs Bigham said it was important independent retailers were supported throughout the process.

She added that "some existing tenants will need to move to new premises and we'll do what we can to support them in making this happen".

The city council said it had worked in partnership with the other major landowner, Aviva, on the proposal which covered Bull Yard, Shelton Square, City Arcade, Barracks car park and Hertford Street.

New £300m vision for Coventry city centre is unveiled after plans are redrawn



THE biggest redevelopment of Coventry city centre since the post-war years has hit delays and has been radically redrawn, the Telegraph can reveal today.

Coventry City Council bosses told the Telegraph the start of building work will not now be until winter 2015/16 – at least a year later than originally hoped.

They accepted the international economic climate had been a factor in the changes to rebuilding plans first envisaged before the 2008 credit crunch led to recession.

A new £300million blueprint unveiled today for the south half of the city centre reveals huge changes to the £1billion vision presented by US architects Jerde in 2009 – which was well received by Coventry people in a public consultation.

Jerde’s vision was embraced by then Conservative council leaders as a plan introducing modern features alongside the best of Coventry’s medieval and post-war architectural heritage.

But Martin Yardley, the council’s city development director, told the Telegraph yesterday: “One criticism of the Jerde plan was it was a North American model and Anywhereville.”

He said the new plan would be more true to Coventry city centre’s post-war rebuilding created by then city architect Sir Donald Gibson – notably the cross formed by the Lower and Upper Precinct, Market Way and Smithford Way.

Key new pedestrianised walkways around the city centre would now also be more in line with existing street routes, including Queen Victoria Road and Hertford Street.

David Cockroft, the council’s city centre director, said the latest vision drawn up by new consultant architects, UK-based Benoy, was true to the original design principles of the Jerde plan.

Mr Yardley said, given the economic climate in the last three years, no attempt had been made to attract a preferred developer to market the scheme – on land predominantly owned by the city council and Aviva Investors.

He said the new plans presented a “deliverable” scheme which would reduce the risk to a developer and other investors.

Key features still include a newly-built “anchor store” – now proposed as a 120,000sqft three-storey building in a slightly different location near Bull Yard – including a new car park.

It is hoped it would attract a major new department store, which in turn would help attract more quality retailers as tenants of Coventry city centre. Coventry Market would have a new glass frontage near to the anchor store.

Coventry City Council’s deputy leader George Duggins, said the city centre’s regeneration remained a key priority for its Labour leaders.

He added: “We have to bring forward plans and unless we do that, the city centre will be in deep trouble. Coventry is the 11th largest city but the city centre is 49th for footfall.

“We’ve not going to change that overnight, but we have to arrest this decline. If not, we will go off the radar.”

He said the new plans would link into the current £7million Public Realm redevelopment in Olympic year, which include a larger pedestrianised square in Broadgate, and improved links to Coventry station.

Mr Yardley said the challenge remained to attract shoppers who were visiting other places like Birmingham and Leamington instead.

The new plan incorporates 443,000sqft of new retail space to provide a mix of retailers, including small independent stores along Hertford Street.

A new hotel/cinema/restaurant and retail complex at Bull Yard would help “drive the night-time activity”.

The narrow “tunnels” linking Broadgate to Hertford Street would be opened up, Coventry Point would be demolished, and Shelton Square would be rebuilt.

Mr Yardley said the eventual rebuilding of the south and north of the city centre could still value more than £1billion. He said some ideas in the Jerde plan were already underway, with the Olympic improvements, and the £60million “Bishopgate” development in Bishop Street.

Outline planning permission for the new Coventry city centre south scheme is expected by the autumn.

The hope is to attract a preferred developer by early next year.

Mr Cockroft said: “We would like to think we would put spades in the ground by the end of 2015. Coventry city centre south would then be completed by mid-2018.”

Key features of the Jerde masterplan now SCRAPPED include:

■ Roof-top gardens the size of seven football pitches – originally promoted as cascading public gardens, which would help cool buildings and reduce the city’s carbon footprint.

■ A newly-created circular pedestrianised “loop” which was to take in the new shops and public squares.

■ A new repositioned circular building for Coventry Market – now abandoned after the government listed the 1958 market as of national historic and architectural importance.

■ A “river”, which would have partly followed the line of the former River Sherbourne, will now “not necessarily” go ahead, Mr Yardley said.

■ Potential futuristic and modern features – as represented in the Jerde plan by the “design concept” of an “egg-shaped” new library building – are not in evidence in the new images.

That woman in the white top and sunglasses gets about a bit, doesn't she?

And what about theatres? Surprisingly few for such a large city!

Market traders unhappy at £300million blueprint for Coventry city centre



MARKET traders say they are “disappointed” with a new £300million plan to rebuild the city centre for the 21st century.

They say it is “scaled down version” of a more ambitious £1billion redevelopment drawn up by American architects Jerde four years ago which has been radically revised.

They are unhappy the 1958 circular market – now listed by the government for its “historic importance” – will stay put when it was to move to modern new premises.

But traders also welcomed the council’s commitment to give the market more prominence in the new-look city centre alongside a new department store.

David Cockroft, the council’s city centre director, said the government’s Grade II listing of the market meant it would have to stay. But service areas would be improved and it would have better links to IKEA and new stores.

Market traders’ representatives including trader Bill Duffin, backed by city Labour MP Geoffrey Robinson, had urged the council to do more to fight the 2010 listing, saying other post-War listed buildings had been demolished.

Traders also requested moving the market and finding a new use for the 1958 building.

Pete Donnelly (pictured above), chairman of Coventry Market Traders Federation, said: “This looks like a scaled down version of the Jerde plan, and not dissimilar from how the city centre is now, which is disappointing.

“We need a new city centre, so we’re pleased they’re going to do something, and this gives the market more prominence.

“But the market has a footfall of four million people and it desperately needs upgrading and refurbishment, with heating and air conditioning. We’re also concerned about losing entrances, which English Heritage said were an important part of the original design.”

It's hard to see what revamping the city centre will truly achieve, since the issues with it are surely fundamental to its design. Surely there would be better uses for £300 million in the present climate?

Unlike Coventry before the rebuilding, and unlike other traditional city centres today, Coventry's centre seems awfully impersonal, with - for want of a better way to put it - poor interaction between shoppers and shops. And opening up parts of it in the revamp won't address that.

The attraction with traditional city centres is the close relationship between shoppers and shops, and that used to be the case in the old Smithford Street and City arcade and Hertford Street. There's something 'homely' about old-style shop fronts, whereas modern 'corporate style' shop fronts are almost a barrier, a kind of cold expression of "we want as much of your money as we can get out of you". If I go shopping, especially browsing, I want shops to have some mystery, some feeling of being 'natural' as opposed to the usual glass/aluminium/steel monstrosities that pollute our modern city centres.

I truly wish that Coventry had done what Magdeburg did, for example. The authorities there wanted to demolish all the old buildings and, well, make it like Coventry. The citizens rebelled, and the result is that most undamaged or lightly damaged old buildings were kept and refurbished, and only the gaps filled with modern ones. It gives the city an 'organically developed' feel, much more interesting and personal than Coventry's planners achieved with wholesale redevelopment. Interestingly, Dresden's baroque buildings were almost all demolished, and replaced with communist blocks of flats; now that city plans to remove at least some of the flats and build facsimiles of the baroque buildings. So it's never too late!

If only.......

Flapdoodle, I couldn't agree more. When I was a child, Coventry was a great place to live, despite the wartime destruction, wasn't it? I left in 1984, and it was changing for the worse then; what I've seen of it since has left me something close to despair. It's almost as if someone has a grudge against the city! I don't understand why our heritage is so undervalued in almost every town and city in this country; if it's somewhere nice, big business wants - demands very often - to build on it. I don't like Birmingham, but I hear that they are doing a lot to preserve and promote their heritage, with new museums and various other initiatives; yet Coventry has probably more significance historically than Birmingham, and it seems to do little. I know the Herbert Art gallery is still there, as is the Transport Museum, and the Blitz museum; but for such an important industry as watchmaking, it's left to a few amateurs to do something on a voluntary basis. And what of Coventry's other industries? Ribbon and silk weaving, cycles, motor cycles, machine tools, etc? And what of the industries that preceded all of these - hatters and cappers and dyers? These were industries of national significance, yet there appears to be little interest in the city in bringing them into the limelight.

With the loss of so much industry, surely the city would be better advised to spend money on something more imaginative than bodged re-vamps of the city centre? Re-vamps don't bring jobs and prosperity; and I fail to see how relatively low-paid public employees staffing the university will make the city prosperous, either. A good set of interactive museums supported perhaps by some traditional industry involved in restoring our heritage just might bring money into the city, as well as preserving traditional skills and knowledge.

When I was a child, Coventry was a great place to live, despite the wartime destruction, wasn't it?

Coventry was the greatest place in the whole world for me and Gosford Street was the best place in Coventry

Gosford Street is pretty horrible now. What was it like when you were growing up?

In a word Flapdoodle, paradise

The best pubs (although I was too young to drink in them), the best shops, the best cafés, an amusement arcade, five cinemas and two specialist model shops wthin easy walking distance, a boy's club round the back, an ice-cream parlour round the corner, a football stadium up the road and every night the prettiest girls in the city used to flock to the street looking for lurve! The only thing missing was a decent chip shop, I had to walk up Far Gosford Street for that!

Everything pivoted around the Mermaid Inn. When that closed in 1967, the whole street died. Two more pubs closed shortly afterwards.