Friargate development

Hi All The worrying thing for me about the Friargate development is the time frame of 15 years to complete. A lot can happen in 15 years as we all know on many occasions in Coventry buildings have been demolished to make way for new and the land stands derelict for years becoming an eyesore. The Belgrade plaza being a typical example all new buildings surrounding a near football pitch size piece of boarded up land which spoils any improvements made to the area. If this happened to the Friargate development I think it would deter business`s from moving there and wouldn't give a good impression to visitors coming to Coventry from the railway station.

Hi mickw I also share your fears, even though I most likely will not be alive to see the completion. An analogy for me is like the thirty years prior to the economic down-turn where loads of us were building our home extensions. The money that we spent moving rooms or as one called it, playing chess with our bathrooms & kitchens which was for no gain. I just hope that his development is worth all of the hassle of digging a hole & then moving it.

I see the birds in the bottom photo are now homeless, proves now the council do nothing for the homeless. The council has done move damage than Hitler ever did, heard this week that the old Cathedral tower was nearly pulled down shortly after the blitz, as it was leaning, but someone told them that it was always leaning, so it stayed up.

Hi Phillip I was chatting to a retired couple in the Town Wall Tavern last month who had recently moved into one of the sheltered flats down the road. They told me they were delighted with it and the surrounding bars and restaurants, the only down side was the view of the old car park across the road from them. £59 million isn't a massive amount of money in the construction industry. So I can`t understand the reasoning in taking 15 years to complete the Friargate project. Having worked in the construction industry for many years I would estimate that Friargate would take 4 years tops to complete. I think the council should re-think the time frame as I think 15 years could be commercial suicide.

I think it's more to do with how long it will take them to get enough tenants to fill all the space, rather than time to construct. And personally on that basis I consider 15 years optimistic. As you say Belgrade is still half built and that isn't half as big. If they built the whole thing speculatively I doubt it would take many years at all. But it's not and stuff will be built to demand. In about 10 years since this was mooted we've got one tenant signed up (the council - thus leaving a large space within the city centre vacant), and one supposedly promising to come based upon the council signing up, although nothing is apparently signed yet and although I'm far from connected what I've heard suggests it's public sector. So thus far NO private sector interest. Without the council agreeing to move into it its no interest at all. Stuff like this (and any redevelopment) needs momentum. If just those buildings get done without any others being confirmed and started, all interest will peter out and it'll end up no different to like it is now - a handful of office blocks with a lot of empty space around it oddly filled in.

The 'story' is that a soldier in Coventry after the November 1940 raid noticed the Cathedral tower was leaning and was planning to demolish it as he believed it was not safe. Someone stopped him by telling him that the tower had been leaning for hundreds of years and it was left alone. I see Friargate, in a way, as going towards reversing some of the damage inflicted on the city by the ring road and recreating an urban grid and relinking up the main transport hub with the city centre - it is even more vital that the KNUCKLE thing is done, IMHO, to make Coventry into a transport hub rather than a local suburban station to Birmingham (Which is what it may become if HS2 happens.)

AD is quite correct. If you look at the City's specualtive office development over the last 50+ years it has only taken place when rentals have reached or have approached a certain level whereby the developer [or his funder] can get an adequate return on his invesment. In between times the market has stagnated and development has ceased. We are in such a period currently.This therefore begs the question whether the Council are paying over the odds or using their government grant to subsidise the developers/funders. Whatever offices the Council intends to release as part of these moves it is likely that their rental value will be 50% of rents payable at Friarsgate. Either way they are likely to be paying in excess of the proper rental value and this on its own will not be enough to initiate further developments.

AD, flapdoodle, Mick, I couldn't agree more with all your sentiments! BTW, I have heard back from the Council to say the horse sculpture will be removed, have some minor repairs carried out then put into storage while the work is being done. They have yet to inform me where and when it is being replaced. Just to lighten the load, there are some extra Brownie points on offer for the first person who can guess the "name" of the horse depicted in the sculpture? (Please mark any replies as CHAT)

The ring road island looks truly terrible now - looks like a bombs gone off. I'm confused by the Council image in that Telegraph story: Looking at that there's going to be no entry on or off the ring road coming in from Warwick Road?

Admittedly in the image you post there doesn't look room for vehicles but there is definately two lanes still showing on the copy of the plans that I have seen. I'll email someone tomorrow and see if I can find out. Incidentally, I'm led to believe that "Trigger" (the black horse sculpture) is to eventually be moved to somewhere in those trees to the right (in the image, as we look) of that red vehicle.

The artist who made the horse was living in the area of Lancashire (Pendle) that I grew up in when he died in 2010. He was only 46, and a policeman - and seemed to be well liked with his artwork appearing in numerous places around the country. As for the ring road - I believe that during work the only way to get onto the ring road from Warwick Road will be by going down to the IKEA junction. I think it sort-of makes sense to effectively use the IKEA junction in this way - the junctions on the ring road are very close together and some of them have quite light traffic, I believe, and as a road it's never really been up to capacity - an over-engineered solution, that didn't understand, perhaps that arterial roads into a small city centre are more than enough for most of us. It's a big change, and one I think for the better. It reminds a bit of how the ring road in Birmingham is underneath the 'old' library - the route from Birmingham's main station to Brindley Place (Where there's a large concentration of leisure facilities) is quite brilliant and well linked up, and will be even more so when the 'ziggurat' library is demolished (A shame, as I think it's a striking building, but badly located.) The 'new' route from Coventry station to the city station that runs through Greyfriar's Green could potentially be a fantastic entrance to a city, via a small area that retains a lot of the city's pre-war character. Footfall through the area may make it an attractive place for businesses. I may well get stuck in the chaos of the ring road while this is going on - but I don't care, as improving the environment of the city is far, far more important than a few minutes the ring road shaves off my journey to work. (Those few minutes are wasted anyway, as the traffic is merely moved elsewhere - from the city centre into suburban and inner city streets.)