£6 million boost for The Grand

The Greater Birmingham and Solihull Local Enterprise Partnership and Birmingham City Council have agreed to provide £6 million of grant support towards the cost of interior works at The Grand Hotel, 1 Church Street, Birmingham.

The work to the hotel will complete the restoration of the Grade II* Grand block, following on from £14 million of works undertaken by its owner, Hortons’ Estate Limited, to date. This includes the restoration of the facades, installation of a new roof and remodeling of the Colmore Row shops and offices.

The first phase of the internal works will commence immediately, creating nine of the 170 new bedrooms, lift shafts and plant rooms and adding a new external terrace and kitchen block. The project will take a year to complete.

This will be followed by the fit-out of the hotel, including the restoration of the ornate Grosvenor Room and the grand staircase.

Hortons’ estimates the works will cost in excess of £25million and anticipates they will be completed in time for the hotel to open in 2018.

Tony Green, chief executive of Hortons’ Estate, said:

The works that we have undertaken to date have proved complex and expensive and have taken longer than we hoped to complete. However, we are delighted with the results and the public reaction to them.

We have always been committed to bringing the whole building back into use, rather than simply restoring its fabric, but the hotel element has never been financially viable. The grant has enabled us to move forward and we are very grateful to both the LEP and Birmingham City Council for their support.

£4 million of the grant funding is repayable, subject to the commercial success of the hotel.

GBSLEP board member Pat Hanlon said:

This support will not only bring another first class hotel into the city but also brings back to life one of our finest buildings. My thanks go to Paul Heaven, chair of the Growing Places Fund committee, and its members who have championed this project. Its completion will achieve another great step forward in the renaissance that Greater Birmingham is currently seeing and will help attract even more businesses and visitors.

Councillor Tahir Ali, Birmingham City Council cabinet member for development, transport and the economy, said:

This is a major development project which will not only revitalise a prime city centre location but will also create around 200 jobs, including 80 direct jobs at the hotel alone, providing a significant boost to the local economy.

This landmark historic building has stood empty for more than a decade and so I am delighted that significant progress is now being made to restore it to its former glory. However, in order to be able to take this project forward as planned, there is need to address the funding shortfall, which has emerged as a result of changes to government regulations. This is where Birmingham City Council has been able to help – further demonstrating the benefits that partnership working can bring to our city.