Coventry council today confirmed that it is to anchor a major development at the centre of a £1.5bn regeneration of the Warwickshire city.
The local authority is to take around 200,000 sq ft at Irish developer Cannon Kirk’s 3.2m sq ft Friargate development, as tipped by Estates Gazette last November.
The move would see the council become the first tenant for the 37-acre proposed Friargate business district and would reduce the number of council offices across the city from 27 separate buildings to just nine.
The council confirmed it would need £40m to build its new office with a further £19m needed to make other building changes across the city.
A new bridge deck, funded by £12.7m from the government’s Regional Growth Fund, will link Friargate, which is located next to Coventry’s main railway station, to the rest of the city centre.
The scheme will be funded through prudential borrowing, which would see the council borrowing the money to pay for the building and paying back the loan over 40 years.
Once complete, the new office will cost £800,000 a year less to run than the council’s current buildings.
Councillor Ann Lucas said: “We need to do something radical to make Coventry great again, and I’m not prepared to sit and do nothing while the city’s economic decline continues.”
She added: “We’re the country’s 13th-largest city with the 47th-largest shopping centre. That’s not good enough.”
GVA is letting agent on the scheme.
lisa.pilkington@estatesgazette.com
