Coventry to get £1 billion rejuvenation

Coventry City Centre is to undergo a dramatic redesign over the next two decades, which will see £1 billion pounds pumped into the city.

Flattened in the Second World War, the new design will re-emphasise Coventry’s medieval heritage, whilst creating space and greenery in the new shopping areas.

Ken Taylor, Coventry City Council Leader said, “A new city centre will see us transforming ourselves once again to be one of the country’s most important and successful cities.” To do this, the Council have enlisted architects, the Jerde partnership, responsible for the rejuvenation of downtown San Diego and adventurous undertakings like the Bellagio hotel in Las Vegas.

Their masterplan involves a waterway recreating the course of the River Sherbourne through the city centre. The surrounding shopping area will be transformed into a pedestrian-friendly zone, leaving more open space and increased foliage at the centre of the city. Buildings around the shopping centre will follow the lines of the ancient walls of the city and clear views of Coventry’s three spires will be maintained.

Financing for the project will predominantly come from the private sector. The commercial backers are Modus, Aviva Investors, and Royal London who own much of central Coventry at the moment. The current backing for the plan is therefore a mixture of commercial property investment, developers and the Council itself. With the current financial outlook bleak, Paul Beesley, Head of Project Development at the Council, insisted, “We are still in a good position. We will be looking for investors in four years time when most analysts say the market will have recovered”.

This plan is not the first attempt to regenerate the city centre. There have been various schemes over the years but none on the same grand scale. Beesley claims that the potential for positive results from this project corresponds to the scope of it. He said, “In the past, schemes were sitting in a wider context. The new design hopes to capture and connect these old schemes as well as facilitate new schemes in the future”. The aim is to create a more cohesive city centre under the new design.

The new rejuvenated city centre will be essential to bring business back to the city. There has been recent success with the opening of Ikea, whilst Severn Trent Water and Qualifications and Curriculum Authority moved their headquarters to the city. Tied in importance is the need to attract new and more diverse retailers. As the eleventh largest city in the UK, Coventry is ranked 43rd in terms of retail business; a drastic difference that the Council hopes to remedy.

The plan is very much still in the early stages, with the Council consulting members of the public on the new design. It has been a grassroots attempt, with an open office set up on City Arcade specifically to hear people’s views and help them understand the specifics of the design.

Over the past couple of weeks, the office has seen around two hundred people a day filter in and out to give their opinion on the plans. A website and a Facebook page have also been created to facilitate the debate. Beesley described it as an “organic process”, repeatedly stressing the involvement of the people of Coventry in the design’s progression. The plan will be tweaked come January in accordance with the feedback received.

It remains to be seen whether the new revitalised city will hold interest for Warwick students in the future. With the developments unlikely to be totally completed for another fifteen to twenty years, a new generation of students may find that Coventry holds more attractions in the years to come.